The Ascension Of Our Lord
MATTHEW 28:16-20 (Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23)
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus had not appeared to the eleven remaining apostles after his resurrection. Two women, Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” had come to the tomb of Jesus at dawn of the first day of the week (Sunday). An angel announced to them that Jesus had risen. They were told to “go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead and he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him.” The women exit the tomb in fear and joy, and run to tell Jesus’ disciples. Before they get to the disciples Jesus himself met them. He repeats the message of the angel, to report to the disciples that they must go to Galilee, “and there they will see me.” Today’s gospel takes up at the meeting between Jesus and the Eleven on a mountain in Galilee to which Jesus had directed them.
This part of Matthew’s gospel is known as The Great Commission. The Eleven saw Jesus “and worshipped him.” The two terms “mountain” and “worship” indicate a divine appa-rition, since in the Old Testament God is partial to mountains for meeting places, just as the gods of the heathens were said to dwell on mountains and high places. Matthew notes that some of the Eleven doubted. We may assume their doubt had to do with the reality of Jesus’ resurrected body, since they did see him. The Gospel of Luke handles the theme of doubt by depicting the risen Jesus showing them his hands and his feet and eating a piece of broiled fish in their presence. The Gospel of John depicts the risen Jesus showing his disciples his hands and his lanced side. The risen body was indeed the same body that had been tortured and crucified but no longer subject to the laws of physics. Matthew responds to their doubt with the words of Jesus in the Great Commission.
The Matthean Jesus begins, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Thus his credentials to send them on their universal mission. Matthew has in mind the appearance of “one like a son of man” in chapter seven of the Book of Daniel. After a vision of four horrible beasts coming up out of the sea – representing the historical king-doms that had subdued the Jews, Daniel looks up. On the clouds he sees a human being coming to God (the Ancient of Days) and “to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, etc.” In the Book of Daniel the “son of man,” the human being, is a symbol of a hoped for kingdom of the Jews that would smash their enemies and rule them forever. Early Christianity gave a new meaning to this vision when they interpreted the son of man as Jesus. Therefore all four gospels attributed to Jesus the title “Son of man.”
With this divinely given authority Jesus commissions his disciples to “make disciples of all nations….” This is a major change. In Matthew 10:5-6, when Jesus sends them on their first mission, he commands, “Go nowhere among the nations (Gentiles), and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” that is, Jews only. Their time of training is over. Now they must proclaim him to all nations. Before Jesus began his ministry of teaching and healing both he and John the Baptizer had been baptizing people as an outward sign of the repentance of those who accepted the invitation to repent. Now baptism is elevated to enrollment in the Divine Family. They must baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
When the Israelites passed through the Red Sea (the Sea of Reeds), later theologians interpreted this passing through the sea as a “baptism into Moses,” as Paul notes in his First Letter to the Corinthians 10:2. The Israelites did not sit down on the opposite bank and stay there. They moved on, drinking and eating what God provided, as Paul reminds us in the same passage of 1 Corinthians. Similarly the baptism of Christians is not a sitting down and remaining “on the opposite bank.” Therefore Jesus adds to the command to baptize, “…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” One thinks of the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7; the command to mission in Matthew 10; the instruction in parables in Matthew 13; the community regulations in Matthew 18; the instructions of Jesus’ last discourse in Matthew 24-25. There is no sitting down for a Christian. Baptism is only the beginning, the empowerment to “teach all nations” and enroll them in the Divine Family.
A keen observer will notice that in this reading from Matthew for the feast of the Ascension something is missing. There is no ascension of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel! Quite the opposite! Jesus’ last words to his disciples in Matthew’s gospel, “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” For an ascension of Jesus one must turn to a different theology, that of Luke 24:50-51 and Acts 1:1-11(today’s first reading); and a yet different theology in John 20:17. Instead of understanding the ascension of Jesus as a movement from place to place, earth to heaven, the real meaning of the ascension is given in today’s second reading, Ephesians 1:17-23, that Jesus is “far above every authority, power, and dominion…not only in this age but in the age to come…, given to the Church as head over all things, the fullness of the one who fills all things….”
