There used to be a time when all Christians thought there were three levels of creation: the lower level, called Sheol, the shadowy land of the dead, later called Hell; the middle level called earth, and the upper level called Heaven. It was a three-story universe.

You will find some wonderful Christians who still think this way, but many of us don’t, and we don’t think we ever had to in order to be either evangelical or orthodox.

We recognize that there is a biblical world picture and a biblical world view, and they are not of the same spiritual value. We let the world picture serve merely to set the story before us. The world view, on the other hand, is what we are after.

The world view tells us about God. The world view tells us the ultimate truth of who God is and who we are. We don’t stumble over the literal world picture. Rather, we accept it as a symbolic intent of conveying literal truth about God being able to pull off being God.

So when the story is told of Jesus going “up,” what is important?
That we believe this is a literal description of a time/space event?
No. Rather, the important angle is we believe the symbolic, but real truth, and that is God rules by validating the life of Jesus as God’s way, truth and life working under us, above us, and with us. God’s experience of our humanity in Jesus carries the day. That’s the beautiful declaration of this day.

What meaning is there for the way we live, love and behave that we believe Jesus ascended into heaven?

Well, let’s start by saying what this belief doesn’t mean. When we say Jesus ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God, as the expression of God’s rule, we are not saying that God is the great fixer of all evil or even our self destructive ways. Neither does it mean that God just does whatever God whimsically decides.

Now, don’t get this wrong. Frankly, it is a complete baffling mystery to me, but sometimes God does seem to fix things. A miracle happens. Not always, for sure.

But sometimes. Sometimes the God we worship in Jesus answers our needs. The big idea of the rule of Christ is not that God overpowers creation, but rather that God loves us so much to keep relating to creation and within creation.

Jesus says the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. (Matt 5:45) Good is showered upon all God’s children regardless of merit. But the visibility of that good varies.

Sometimes we are astonished by the clarity of the in-breaking good; sometimes we are unable to even glimpse the good and its strange timing.
Jesus ascending into heaven with our human experience means our prayers are always answered. But so often in a different form and time than what we think we need.

We are all subject to the arbitrariness of nature, the random banality of evil, and the sometimes uncontrollable aspects of our own willfulness or the tyranny of others. (A)

So let’s make sure at First Pres we never suggest a belief so glib as to imply that as long as Air Jesus has got the ball, it’s okay if we’re down in the fourth period because we will win the game anyway. (B)

The truth for us at First Pres is that God’s providential care is too deep for us to see clearly and understand totally. We are often baffled.
Sure, faith has power, absolutely. But it is not magic. Magic moves in one direction-----from its user toward the thing it affects. But the mystery of faith always moves in many directions, touching everything at once. (C)
For God is always doing more than one thing and more than one thing at a time. Which is why when we pray the prayers of intercession that Dave will offer later, speaking to God on our behalf, and we say, “hear our prayers,” we will be specific, yes, but we will also remain open to whatever improvisations Christ’s Spirit will do. Improvisations regarding timing and form.

So when we gather today and sing “Jesus Reigns,” it is not the idea that there is an understandable reason for everything that happens. Maybe we could step back and provide reasonable explanations and describable causes for events, but God’s rule does not necessitate God being a puppeteer, guiding and manipulating.

The big idea of the rule of Christ is not that God overpowers creation, but rather that God loves us so much to keep relating to creation and within creation.

As the Presbyterian faith proclaims, “In life and in death we belong to God.” We “belong” not as objects for God to control but as loved children. God will never give up on us.

I know some decide that there is some reason for everything that happens, and they find comfort in the hope that it will all get sorted out in the end.
Others decide all is chance, and God makes a nice principle of unity, but God is ineffective or uninvolved in real time.

But biblical faith doesn’t opt for either position. Biblical faith grants the mystery that while God does act directly once in a while and for which we give thanks, God’s will is not first a reason that causes events. Rather, God’s will or reason works in the midst of events.

There is not so much then a reason for everything that happens as much as a loving reasoning working in and through all things.

I like what Yale Divinity School professor Wes Avram says. He points out that salvation doesn’t really reside in the why of things as much as in what of things. Not, “Why me?” or “Why us?” or “Why this?” but rather, “What goodness, God, are you doing in me, in us, in this?”

So when we prayerfully, poetically say God is “in control,” we are being very truthful with our faith. But we are ever so mindful of the mystery of what we believe, and how it is all beyond our own understanding and certainly beyond our control as if we had some secret knowledge. Quite the contrary.

To joyfully sing that God is in the midst of the moments of our lives and remains faithful to us despite our rejection and betrayals of God’s goodness is the deepest of all mysteries. And this is so hard for us who are so used to being able to define all things, to explain all things and to understand all things.

We mold God into the shape of what we think is reasonable or right or moral. But God’s glory begins inside God and not in our ways, nor in our thoughts.

Sometimes even the most difficult stuff of life becomes the workshop of God’s goodness. It is this hidden quality of God’s rule, along with the long periods of silence as regards God’s speech that constitutes the danger to hope.

When we are suffering, it is the victory we cannot see. We can walk down the corridors of hospitals and nursing homes, through the streets of cities, and across battlefields. We see, smell and touch suffering. It is the hope, “the rule of God” and “Jesus ascended into heaven” that we cannot see.
What is hidden is that through the humanity of Jesus taken into heaven, into God’s own life through Jesus’ suffering, death and exquisite life---God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death will be no more; sorrow and crying and pain will be no more. (Rev. 21:4)

Look, here is the great promise of this day: When the gaze of the Eternal Son of God discovers a homeless woman crawling into a cardboard box to sleep; when the Lord sees a young man robbed of dignity and purpose by mental illness; when the Divine Heir of all things sees a mother weeping over the grave of her own child, when a man battling the last savage assault of cancer, the One at God’s right hand does not see a charity case, a pitiful victim or a hopeless cause– he sees a “brother” or “sister.” (D)

In the mature, steadfast life of faith, the kind of faith that many of you have, where you are in it for the long haul, you know appearances can be deceiving.

On Monday morning, we look around remembering the great Sunday hymns of today, and we say what gives? And we remember the difference between what is real and what can be seen.

In Saint-Exupery’s great story, The Little Prince, a mysterious fox promises to tell a little boy the greatest of life’s secrets. When at long last the secret is told, it is this: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (E)

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(A) Dr. Wes Avram, Asst. Professor of Communications, Yale Divinity School. Where the Light shines Through. 2005.
(B) Ibid.
(C) Ibid.
(D) Dr. Thomas G. Long, Professor of Preaching, Candler School of Theology, Emory, University. Letter to the Hebrews. 1997.
(E) Ibid.