Why do you stand looking up at the skies?
Acts I:II
It wasn’t just wind, chasing
thin gunmetal clouds
across the loud sky;
it wasn’t the feeling that one might ascend
on that excited air,
rising like a trumpet note.
And it wasn’t just my sister’s water breaking,
her crying out,
the downward draw of blood and bone…
It was all of that,
the mud and new grass
pushing up through melting snow,
the lilac in bud
by my front door, bent low
by last week’s ice storm.
Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,
begins to nurse her child,
beginning the long good-bye.
+ Kathleen Norris
In this short poem, Kathleen Norris grounds us again in the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ ministry, “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Too often Christians are caught with those first disciples “looking up at the skies”. We long too deeply for what is to come. But the poem challenges us that being born again is about being born again in this life, in this earthly existence.
The images of birth, the budding lilac, the storm, and the nursing of a child are about the earthy and messy mystery and wonder of our human lives. They remind us of our being in this world for which Christ died. And whilst Norris says birth is the “beginning the long good-bye” it is also the start of our journey in a creation which God loves so much. A creation that God redeems and chooses to be fully present in through Christ and in the Spirit.
Our lives may be hidden in the ascended Christ, but our lives are lived in this world as participants and signposts in the coming kingdom of God now. N.T, Wright reflects on this in his book Surprised by Hope. He says, “Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonise earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.” The ascension then is also not about looking up but living with confidence that our lives are hidden in Christ’s ascended life so that we can live flourishing and faithful lives now.
