For you years, I was fascinated by the idea of the Ascension; we hear all about the resurrection--but then what. I figured there had to be lots and lots of books about this, but there weren't! This book is my journey to discover the Ascension.
Below is a sample of the book. If you'd like to read the entire thing, it's available now!
Below is a sample of the book. If you'd like to read the entire thing, it's available now!
Introduction: Something Happened
Something happened.
Jesus rose. We hear about it every Easter. We sing songs about it. We even have an Easter Bunny to symbolize the event.[1]
But Christ didn’t just rise from the dead. He ascended to Heaven.
We hear the stories about Peter and John and all the heroes of the New Testament, and they’re unstoppable Christians—fearless and bold. And sometimes we wrongly assume that they just got that way. That Christ died for their sins, and bam! They’re instantly changed! On the contrary, the disciples were actually quite cowardly in their actions after the resurrection.
It wasn’t until after the Ascension that they’re on fire for Christ. So, what happened during the forty days? Something happened.
You’d think that everyone and their brother would want to talk about an event that incredible. But you’d be wrong. And it leaves us with more than a few questions.
Where do you go if you want to understand what happened? Matthew? You won’t find it there. Mark? Kind of, but it’s text that most Bible scholars now accept was not in the earliest version. What about John? Surely good old John would have a lot to say! Not exactly. He talks about Jesus doing miracles, but nowhere in John does he ascend to Heaven.
So how is it that Christians came to believe that Jesus not only rose from the dead, but stuck around forty days before ascending to Heaven? That’s where Luke comes in. Luke is the only Gospel that talks at any length (even though it’s short passages) about Jesus ascending. He does so in both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, which he also authored.
Sprinkled throughout the Bible are references to the Ascension, which tells us that it was something early Christians believed. The Apostle Peter believed it,[2] as did the Apostle Paul,[3]and it’s fair to say that all the other apostles did as well.[4]
So, important is the doctrine that the original statement of belief that most Christians (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) go to—the Nicene Creed—includes it. That means if you belong to any of those groups, you are kind of supposed to believe in the Ascension.[5]
# # #
So, what’s the deal with the Ascension anyway? Shouldn’t this be plastered all over the place? Wouldn’t there have been a giant atomic bomb-sized glorious viewing that you could see all the way from Rome? Why did only believers see it?
First, it is referenced outside the Bible—more on that in later chapters.
Second, we have to consider the nature of Christ. He performed miracles, but that was never his ministry. He didn’t come to Earth to be the flashy miracle guy. His ministry was the way he lived his life.
People frequently say, “If there is a God, then why doesn’t he announce it?” What I often think about this phrase is “Doesn’t he?” Every day, things happen that are beyond science—things that can only be described by the word miraculous. They deeply move us—heck sometimes we even like them on Facebook. But the thing is, miracles are forgotten pretty quickly. You are quicker to forget a miracle than you are a simple kind gesture in a time of need.
And let’s not forget if God did announce himself, the whole freewill thing would go out the window. If we could walk outside right now, look up and see God up in the sky, then why wouldn’t we believe in him? But unfortunately, on Earth we can’t have that kind of relationship.
So, in answer to that question about why people didn’t see it from miles away, the reason is probably as simple as it was not all that spectacular. Jesus didn’t ride up to Heaven on an atomic bomb with a cowboy hat, shooting out fireworks from his eyeballs. It was more likely a beautifully intimate moment witnessed by those closest to him. It wasn’t meant for the entire Roman Empire to see.
# # #
So, we have this intimate event that only a select few even saw. Great. But why is that event even important?
Close your eyes and take a road trip through history with me; we’re about to get Biblical, so buckle in.[8]
Think back to those early Sunday school stories; the ones about the fall of Eden, Noah, the Tower of Babel, Moses. They’re great stories and even better lessons for history…but they also have a theme. The entire Old Testament has a theme, in fact. God’s people mess up and they fall; God picks them up and they excel; God’s people mess up and they fall; God picks them up and they excel. It’s like a bad broken record. If you’ve ever read the Old Testament from cover to cover, you probably asked yourself at least fifty times, “Seriously, what’s wrong with these people? Why can’t they just listen to God?!”
The Jewish people were privileged in the sense that they knew no matter how badly they screwed up, God would eventually rescue them and all would be well again. They expected it. The prophets predicting a Messiah who would rule over them should really not be all that surprising—of course God would send someone to rescue them. They had messed up, and the kingdom God had given them with David had been taken away, so of course a new king from David’s line would come and rescue them. That’s just the way God did things—God’s redemption was just as predictable as Israel’s sin.
The Ascension is the fulfillment of this promise. When Jesus left earth, he created a new kingdom in the line of David in Heaven. This pattern of God’s people sinning, and God’s people being redeemed could finally be resolved once and for all.
Lots of men and women have been raised from the dead; the resurrection of Christ is really nothing special. Sure, it’s an amazing, unexplained feat that can only be attributed to divine intervention, but pause for a moment and ask: what’s so special about the resurrection? Christ raised dead people; so did his disciples. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing that he rose from the dead, but if that in itself is enough to worship a person, shouldn’t we also be praying to people like Lazarus?[9]
The amazing thing about the resurrection is not the act, but the act that followed—the theology that feels more like a footnote in history: The Ascension. Which leaves us with a very important question to ask: If it’s so important, then why is it only mentioned in the Gospel of Luke? Why isn’t the Ascension mentioned more often in the Gospels?
First, let’s consider dates. More than likely, Luke and John were the last Gospels written, which means they had more time to digest things. The resurrection, by human standards, is more fascinating to tell, and there’s a chance that the early writers of the Gospel hadn’t quite considered the significance of what happened.
Let’s also considered the missing fragment of Mark; it cuts off in a very unusual place. Most scholars agree that the ending in place was not by the original author…but most scholars also believe where it cuts off isn’t the original ending. So, what are we left with? The most popular theory is that while the added text isn’t completely Mark, it isn’t completely not Mark either. What does that mean? It means there’s a very strong chance that the original version of Mark did mention the Ascension—just not quite like the translator wrote it—perhaps with different syntax, but the same meaning.
The most important thing to remember about the Gospels is they were written with an audience in mind. Think about Abraham Lincoln; there have been over 15,000 books written about him. How can people still make money writing about Lincoln? Easy…they write about him from different angles that people haven’t considered. Some biographers will spend little or no time writing about Lincoln’s death because that’s not what their book is about. So, when we think about why the Gospels each wrote different accounts of the post-resurrection, it’s because each one was writing for a different purpose.
# # #
The resurrection was great. I believe in it. I believe it was miraculous. But I don’t believe that Christ is Lord because he rose from the dead.
There’s more written about Christ’s ministry before his death than the events that happened after his resurrection, but when we look at Ascension, we begin to see that there’s power in small details. We begin to see that something happened after the resurrection—something happened to transform the lives of believers and make them more than followers.
The problem with the Resurrection of Christ is as believers we have a tendency to believe in the miracle and not the theology. When we look at what happened after the resurrection, and further at the Ascension of Christ, we begin to see what happened to transform the followers—and in seeing this we might just be transformed ourselves.
Something did indeed happen during the forty days; why didn’t God spend more time revealing? That’s something that we will not know on Earth. But when we look at what he does reveal in the Ascension, we begin to see that Jesus was not done teaching; and as we begin to understand these teachings, we will be transformed ourselves.
Jesus rose. We hear about it every Easter. We sing songs about it. We even have an Easter Bunny to symbolize the event.[1]
But Christ didn’t just rise from the dead. He ascended to Heaven.
We hear the stories about Peter and John and all the heroes of the New Testament, and they’re unstoppable Christians—fearless and bold. And sometimes we wrongly assume that they just got that way. That Christ died for their sins, and bam! They’re instantly changed! On the contrary, the disciples were actually quite cowardly in their actions after the resurrection.
It wasn’t until after the Ascension that they’re on fire for Christ. So, what happened during the forty days? Something happened.
You’d think that everyone and their brother would want to talk about an event that incredible. But you’d be wrong. And it leaves us with more than a few questions.
Where do you go if you want to understand what happened? Matthew? You won’t find it there. Mark? Kind of, but it’s text that most Bible scholars now accept was not in the earliest version. What about John? Surely good old John would have a lot to say! Not exactly. He talks about Jesus doing miracles, but nowhere in John does he ascend to Heaven.
So how is it that Christians came to believe that Jesus not only rose from the dead, but stuck around forty days before ascending to Heaven? That’s where Luke comes in. Luke is the only Gospel that talks at any length (even though it’s short passages) about Jesus ascending. He does so in both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, which he also authored.
Sprinkled throughout the Bible are references to the Ascension, which tells us that it was something early Christians believed. The Apostle Peter believed it,[2] as did the Apostle Paul,[3]and it’s fair to say that all the other apostles did as well.[4]
So, important is the doctrine that the original statement of belief that most Christians (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) go to—the Nicene Creed—includes it. That means if you belong to any of those groups, you are kind of supposed to believe in the Ascension.[5]
# # #
So, what’s the deal with the Ascension anyway? Shouldn’t this be plastered all over the place? Wouldn’t there have been a giant atomic bomb-sized glorious viewing that you could see all the way from Rome? Why did only believers see it?
First, it is referenced outside the Bible—more on that in later chapters.
Second, we have to consider the nature of Christ. He performed miracles, but that was never his ministry. He didn’t come to Earth to be the flashy miracle guy. His ministry was the way he lived his life.
People frequently say, “If there is a God, then why doesn’t he announce it?” What I often think about this phrase is “Doesn’t he?” Every day, things happen that are beyond science—things that can only be described by the word miraculous. They deeply move us—heck sometimes we even like them on Facebook. But the thing is, miracles are forgotten pretty quickly. You are quicker to forget a miracle than you are a simple kind gesture in a time of need.
And let’s not forget if God did announce himself, the whole freewill thing would go out the window. If we could walk outside right now, look up and see God up in the sky, then why wouldn’t we believe in him? But unfortunately, on Earth we can’t have that kind of relationship.
So, in answer to that question about why people didn’t see it from miles away, the reason is probably as simple as it was not all that spectacular. Jesus didn’t ride up to Heaven on an atomic bomb with a cowboy hat, shooting out fireworks from his eyeballs. It was more likely a beautifully intimate moment witnessed by those closest to him. It wasn’t meant for the entire Roman Empire to see.
# # #
So, we have this intimate event that only a select few even saw. Great. But why is that event even important?
Close your eyes and take a road trip through history with me; we’re about to get Biblical, so buckle in.[8]
Think back to those early Sunday school stories; the ones about the fall of Eden, Noah, the Tower of Babel, Moses. They’re great stories and even better lessons for history…but they also have a theme. The entire Old Testament has a theme, in fact. God’s people mess up and they fall; God picks them up and they excel; God’s people mess up and they fall; God picks them up and they excel. It’s like a bad broken record. If you’ve ever read the Old Testament from cover to cover, you probably asked yourself at least fifty times, “Seriously, what’s wrong with these people? Why can’t they just listen to God?!”
The Jewish people were privileged in the sense that they knew no matter how badly they screwed up, God would eventually rescue them and all would be well again. They expected it. The prophets predicting a Messiah who would rule over them should really not be all that surprising—of course God would send someone to rescue them. They had messed up, and the kingdom God had given them with David had been taken away, so of course a new king from David’s line would come and rescue them. That’s just the way God did things—God’s redemption was just as predictable as Israel’s sin.
The Ascension is the fulfillment of this promise. When Jesus left earth, he created a new kingdom in the line of David in Heaven. This pattern of God’s people sinning, and God’s people being redeemed could finally be resolved once and for all.
Lots of men and women have been raised from the dead; the resurrection of Christ is really nothing special. Sure, it’s an amazing, unexplained feat that can only be attributed to divine intervention, but pause for a moment and ask: what’s so special about the resurrection? Christ raised dead people; so did his disciples. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing that he rose from the dead, but if that in itself is enough to worship a person, shouldn’t we also be praying to people like Lazarus?[9]
The amazing thing about the resurrection is not the act, but the act that followed—the theology that feels more like a footnote in history: The Ascension. Which leaves us with a very important question to ask: If it’s so important, then why is it only mentioned in the Gospel of Luke? Why isn’t the Ascension mentioned more often in the Gospels?
First, let’s consider dates. More than likely, Luke and John were the last Gospels written, which means they had more time to digest things. The resurrection, by human standards, is more fascinating to tell, and there’s a chance that the early writers of the Gospel hadn’t quite considered the significance of what happened.
Let’s also considered the missing fragment of Mark; it cuts off in a very unusual place. Most scholars agree that the ending in place was not by the original author…but most scholars also believe where it cuts off isn’t the original ending. So, what are we left with? The most popular theory is that while the added text isn’t completely Mark, it isn’t completely not Mark either. What does that mean? It means there’s a very strong chance that the original version of Mark did mention the Ascension—just not quite like the translator wrote it—perhaps with different syntax, but the same meaning.
The most important thing to remember about the Gospels is they were written with an audience in mind. Think about Abraham Lincoln; there have been over 15,000 books written about him. How can people still make money writing about Lincoln? Easy…they write about him from different angles that people haven’t considered. Some biographers will spend little or no time writing about Lincoln’s death because that’s not what their book is about. So, when we think about why the Gospels each wrote different accounts of the post-resurrection, it’s because each one was writing for a different purpose.
# # #
The resurrection was great. I believe in it. I believe it was miraculous. But I don’t believe that Christ is Lord because he rose from the dead.
There’s more written about Christ’s ministry before his death than the events that happened after his resurrection, but when we look at Ascension, we begin to see that there’s power in small details. We begin to see that something happened after the resurrection—something happened to transform the lives of believers and make them more than followers.
The problem with the Resurrection of Christ is as believers we have a tendency to believe in the miracle and not the theology. When we look at what happened after the resurrection, and further at the Ascension of Christ, we begin to see what happened to transform the followers—and in seeing this we might just be transformed ourselves.
Something did indeed happen during the forty days; why didn’t God spend more time revealing? That’s something that we will not know on Earth. But when we look at what he does reveal in the Ascension, we begin to see that Jesus was not done teaching; and as we begin to understand these teachings, we will be transformed ourselves.
Chapter One: Jesus Appears to the Marys
More people believe in angels than in hell. And why not? It’s far easier to believe in good things than bad. Unfortunately, most people believe in the Nicolas Cage kind of angels;[12]the kind of angel that humans can actually become if they’re swell people; the kind that have wings and float around just waiting to save us. That’s not necessarily false, but it’s not exactly Biblical.[13]
So, when the gospels record angels at the empty tomb of Christ, it’s important to remember what angels are in the Bible—to put it simply, angels are messengers from God.
There’s an important lesson to be learned about the women Jesus is about to appear to, but before we get to that, we have to understand the angels.
Depending on the gospel account, there was between one to four angels at the tomb; contradictory, right? Not exactly. Remember, the Gospels are four different writers with four different purposes writing for four different audiences. They aren’t contradicting each other; they’re recording different aspects of the same story.
The greater importance isn’t on the detail—how many angels there were—it’s on the meaning of the details. What, if anything, do the angels mean? If angels are Heavenly messengers, then what is it that they are announcing?
First, it’s obvious that their message is that Jesus has resurrected and he is the Messiah. Just as gospels noted that angels were there to announce his birth, they are there to announce his resurrection.
But there’s more. The Gospel of John gives an important detail in 20:11. He says that two angels were sitting.
Impressive, right? It’s not every day you read about two angels sitting on the job. More curious, however, is not what they’re doing, but where they’re doing it—they’re sitting where Jesus body was only a short time ago.
It’s time to get all Old Testament. The Old Testament is notorious for laws—lots and lots of laws.[14]Some laws that make sense[15]and some are a little…odd.[16]But tucked in there with all of those laws is a lot of stuff about a certain Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was built in Moses’ time and they took that bad boy everywhere. It represented God’s covenant with the Israelites and it’s a permanent fixture throughout the Old Testament.
So, what does that have to do with two angels sitting where Jesus was? On top of the Ark were statues of two cherubim—or angels.
What the Gospel of John is painting is a real life Ark of the Covenant. They aren’t just sitting back on the tomb’s recliners—they’re sitting on the stone that held Jesus’ body; John’s record is saying, “Guess what? There’s a new covenant in town.”
# # #
When Apple rolls out a new iPhone, what do they do? They hold a big press conference that’s meant to get their base followers excited and then they’ll go out and tell their friends who will also get excited, and before you know it millions of people have new phones. Every company uses the same strategy—market to your base—your product evangelist.
It makes sense that God would market his new covenant the same way—he’d tell his disciples all about it, so they could go spread the news to the world. But something unusual happens on the way to the podium to make the big announcement—God markets it to the audience you’d most likely suspect: the women.
It would be like Apple going to a third world where there’s absolute zero cellular signal, Wi-Fi, or electricity and saying, “Isn’t this cool?” I’m sure they’d think it was pretty amazing, but what are they supposed to do with it?
Today a woman is just as likely to start a revolution as a man; two thousand years ago? Not so much. So, what is God thinking? What’s he trying to teach us here?
If you are a Bible conspiracy theorist, then it isn’t at all surprising—Jesus was, after all doing the old bait n’ tackle with her; hints and blatant descriptions of Jesus and Mary locking lips are in all the ancient manuscripts. Unfortunately for Biblical conspiracy theorists, the ancient manuscripts come to light too long after Jesus’ life to make them anything but just stories people were telling. The simple fact is there’s nothing in the Gospels to suggest that Jesus was involved in a relationship with Mary in the gospels.[17]
So, if it’s not because he wanted to see his old sweetheart, then why? Was it because he was a card-carrying member of the local feminist movement of Jerusalem, and he wanted to set his boys straight on who he reallyloves? Not likely.[18]
So, what gives? There are 11 confused men who risk an awful lot to follow Jesus. Couldn’t Jesus have done them a solid and let them know all was well? Of course! But he didn’t…and that certainly begs the question why.
On the surface, the best reason is simply because the Marys were the least likely suspects for a crime. If one of the disciples had gotten to the tomb first, then people could have more easily said they stole his body—heck, they didn’t even go to the tomb first and people still say this!
The fact that it was a woman who was the first eyewitness makes it more believable for the mere fact that a woman would not be able to carry out the plot to steal his body—they’d have to roll away a large stone, carry a rather heavy body, and fight off Roman guards. There are plenty of women who could carry off this plot—they’re called women warriors and they’re champions in swordplay; Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones—she might be able to pull it off…but these women? Not so much.
But God rarely teaches us things on the surface. There’s something much deeper and personal about what’s about to happen. The disciples had a much different relationship with Jesus than the women did.
The first lesson Jesus gives post-resurrection is about the relationship we can have with him.
# # #
Before getting too far along, let’s address the elephant in the room. The women appear first in all four of the Gospels…kind of. When you read all the accounts side by side,[19]each gospel tells a slightly different story. Some mention that Jesus appeared in front of several women, others say it was only Mary Magdalene. Some say Mary went to the tomb, saw it was empty, told the others, then went back to the tomb.
So, are we really to believe that the Gospel is to be trusted when we have four different books saying four contradictory things? If they got this all messed up, they must have gotten the rest all messed up. That’s certainly a fair point, but to call the accounts contradictory is a bit extreme—and wrong.
In reality, it can be assumed it was several women, but because Mary Magdalene was kind of like the Peter of women, that’s who they mentioned.[20]As noted in the previous chapter, each author had a different audience; some of those audiences would have not known who all the Marys or other women were, but they definitely knew who Mary Magdalene was. It would be like a newspaper saying Pope Francis and Federico Lombardi flew to Germany to visit a church; Federico Lombardi is an important person in the Catholic Church, but most people don’t know who he is—so what you are more likely to read is that Pope Francis flew to Germany to visit a church.
The different accounts are not an example of contradiction; rather, they are an example of different authors.
# # #
The angels just performed the opening act of the most epic rock concert ever—now it’s time for the main act to perform his final set list of teachings before ascending to Heaven—and spoiler alert, his set list includes all of his greatest hits. In John 20:16, Jesus starts with a bang when he says something incredibly telling. He says, “Mary.”
At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much, but let’s look at what’s going on.
Mary is an emotional wreck. Her savior is gone. She can’t make sense of what’s happened. She’s a mess!
Jesus appears to her and she’s so emotional that she doesn’t even know who she’s talking to. She’s in complete denial.
It’s in this denial that it gets interesting.
Mary just devoted years of her life devoted to following this guy and now he’s alive and in the flesh standing right in front of her…and she has no clue that it’s him! That’s a little odd, isn’t it? When odd things happen in the Bible, we should never just shrug and say, “That was weird” and move on. We should look at it curiously and say is there something more going on here?
There’s definitely more going on here. The scene is a mirror image of us.
When we don’t believe, we’re in denial. Jesus is standing right in front of us, but we just think we’re talking to a stranger and we don’t recognize him. We can’t see Jesus until we are ready to accept Jesus. And in that moment, Mary just isn’t ready because she still can’t comprehend any of it.
But with one word, Mary snaps out of it. She can see Jesus and it all makes sense. She knows who he is.
Jesus doesn’t do what some of us might. If I’d just risen from the dead and appeared in front of my wife and she didn’t know me, I wouldn’t say, “Diana.” I’d shake her and say, “Are you kidding me! All these years together and you don’t know who I am? What the heck is wrong with you?” And then I’d storm off and pout.
But Jesus says, “Mary.” And with that word she knows Jesus is alive and standing in front of her.
Jesus could have said any word, but he chose her name. To snap her out of her denial, he told her he knew her name—he knew who she was. It’s an intimate gesture and what it shows is that Jesus knows each of us personally. He knows our name.
But here’s the funny thing about what happens next. Mary and Jesus just had a moment. It’s intimate. It’s personal. It’s time to hug it up. But that doesn’t happen.
The touchy-feely Jesus that’s all over the New Testament is suddenly a little less…touchy.
There are a lot of polar opposites in the post-resurrection—things you’d expect to be happening aren’t happening.
Mary goes for the hug and Jesus hug blocks her. John 20:17 says that Jesus told her not to touch him because he had not ascended to Heaven.
So, let’s get this straight. Jesus—the guy Christians grow up believing we can have a personal relationship with is telling her she can’t hug him? That doesn’t seem too personal.
At face value, it’s not personal at all. Later, Thomas gets to touch Jesus, so why him and not Mary?
The fact that Thomas could touch him but not Mary tells us that when Jesus says not to touch him, it’s not because he can’t be touched.
Mary wants to embrace him because she thinks it’s back to the good old days—chilling in the countryside listening to amazing sermons, feeding thousands, and getting tipsy on the best water-to-wine ever made. But Jesus is telling her that the good old days are gone—she needs to know him differently now. The good old days are really in front of her, but she needs to come to understand what that means.
From that point on, he needed Mary to know that the relationship would be a spiritual one—not a physical one.
There are two Jesus’. Some of us only get to know one. There’s the one we all come to know—the one who did amazing things. One might call him the historical Jesus. And then there’s one we know if we commit our life to him; this is the spiritual Jesus.
Jesus’ refusal to Mary isn’t because she can’t touch him; it’s because she can’t touch him like before.
Everyone wants to see Jesus. If they could just have a bit of proof, they’d believe. But that Jesus isn’t here anymore. The Jesus we can know is the one we know spiritually.
But the one we know spiritually we can know much more intimately than the one who came in the flesh. Before the resurrection, Jesus was the great teacher; what’s happening is the start of the transformation for believers—they are about to go from students to teachers.
And finally, we come to what may be the most jarring verse of all to some readers—especially modern readers who are not reading the original translation and may miss the context. Jesus gives specific instructions to Mary; he says to tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (NIV) [23]
Huh?
First, let’s consider something very important here. Jesus could have just as easily said “our Father” and “our God.” He didn’t.
Let’s hit the rewind button here a second and visit just a few chapters prior: John 5:16-18.
This is one of the first things that gets Jesus in a whirlwind of trouble with Jewish leaders. First, he heals on the Sabbath—a major no-no.[24]Jesus was a good talker; he probably could have gotten away with it by talking his way out, but he has no intention of running away. Instead he uses the phrase “My Father.” That does it! The Jewish leaders are fuming because this phrase puts Jesus as an equal to God.
What Jesus is telling Mary is that he is equal to God…but he doesn’t stop there. He is saying that the man upstairs is now “your Father” and “your God.” Father is a reference to the divine nature of Christ, and God is a reference to his human nature (i.e., God in the Flesh). Christ has now secured our place and through him we can have unity with God.
Some of the Gospels simply reported that Mary and the others saw Jesus and he told them to go tell the disciples; that’s essentially what John says. But John found it to be important to his message to relate what Jesus said to Mary.
John was traditionally the last Gospel written; perhaps in his old age, he had come to realize the importance women had played in Jesus’ ministry and he wanted to portray them fairly. But more important, John wants his readers to know that they can have unity with God—that God doesn’t have to be the mighty killjoy in the sky—that through Christ, we can have a relationship with God that’s like belonging to a family.
There’s going to be many lessons to transform the disciples lives post-resurrection, but the first is about the relationship they now have with God.
Everyone knows the phrase, “You can have a personal relationship with God.” But the nature of people can make that phrase carry less meaning, because Christians sometimes look at other Christians and expect them to have the same personal relationship that they have.
Having a personal relationship isn’t about the other person. It’s about you. Jesus Christ knows your name. He knows your struggles. Your pains. He knows your background. He knows what makes you angry; what makes you sad; what makes you want to give us—and what makes you want to keep going. He knows everything about you.
We all have struggles. Some of us it is addictions. Some of us it is pride. Some it is greed. Whatever it is: Jesus knows our name. He knows all of our weaknesses and he’s returned to dwell inside us—to experience an intimacy with him that we would not know without the resurrection.
But first we have to be like Mary: we have to see him. We can say we know Jesus just like Mary said she knew him. But knowing Jesus and seeing Jesus are two different things. We can go to church and know about Jesus—about his teachings, about what he did, and his theology; we can do all of that without ever really seeing Jesus—without ever really knowing what it means to have a true relationship with Jesus.
To see Jesus is to put all your pains aside and accept that Jesus really does want to dwell in you—he really does love you and he really is there with you. He really does know your name.
[1]Fun fact about Easter Bunnies—people used to believe that they were hermaphrodites (i.e., they could reproduce without having sex). You know who else could do that? The Virgin Mary! Hence, the Easter Bunny was born
[2]1 Peter 3:13-22
[3]Ephesians 4:8-10
[4]See Appendix A for a more complete list of Ascension references.
[5]Even if you don’t have the slightest idea about what it is or means.
[6]The one where my dog was my mother, and he (yes, for an even weird reason my dog mother was a he) told me to become a doctor of medicine specializing in soda…that was a weird dream.
[7]John 20:5
[8]Don’t worry, we’ll stick to Sunday School stories.
[9]Lazarus, for those who need a reminder, came back to life after being dead for four days after Jesus came and woke him up.
[10]Such as a follower of Matthew.
[11]See the Appendix for a more comprehensive list.
[12]Fun fact—City of Angels steals several plot points from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
[13]Meg Ryan isn’t even a Bible name.
[14]613 laws to be exact.
[15]There’s one God; worship him.
[16]They made sense thousands of years ago, but they really have no importance today.
[17]In the words of Seinfeld, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”—it just didn’t happen.
[18]Jesus was pretty radical in thinking with regard to women, but his appearance here doesn’t seem to imply it has anything to do with making a feminist statement.
[19]For added challenge, you can also read them all upside-down.
[20]She’s kind of a rock star.
[21]Apocryphal text written most likely in the third century—so the first conspiracy theory about Jesus’ love-life isn’t documented for 300 years.
[22]Meaning that their truth cannot be verified.
[23]John 20:17.
[24]Sabbaths are for obeying God, not experiencing God.
So, when the gospels record angels at the empty tomb of Christ, it’s important to remember what angels are in the Bible—to put it simply, angels are messengers from God.
There’s an important lesson to be learned about the women Jesus is about to appear to, but before we get to that, we have to understand the angels.
Depending on the gospel account, there was between one to four angels at the tomb; contradictory, right? Not exactly. Remember, the Gospels are four different writers with four different purposes writing for four different audiences. They aren’t contradicting each other; they’re recording different aspects of the same story.
The greater importance isn’t on the detail—how many angels there were—it’s on the meaning of the details. What, if anything, do the angels mean? If angels are Heavenly messengers, then what is it that they are announcing?
First, it’s obvious that their message is that Jesus has resurrected and he is the Messiah. Just as gospels noted that angels were there to announce his birth, they are there to announce his resurrection.
But there’s more. The Gospel of John gives an important detail in 20:11. He says that two angels were sitting.
Impressive, right? It’s not every day you read about two angels sitting on the job. More curious, however, is not what they’re doing, but where they’re doing it—they’re sitting where Jesus body was only a short time ago.
It’s time to get all Old Testament. The Old Testament is notorious for laws—lots and lots of laws.[14]Some laws that make sense[15]and some are a little…odd.[16]But tucked in there with all of those laws is a lot of stuff about a certain Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was built in Moses’ time and they took that bad boy everywhere. It represented God’s covenant with the Israelites and it’s a permanent fixture throughout the Old Testament.
So, what does that have to do with two angels sitting where Jesus was? On top of the Ark were statues of two cherubim—or angels.
What the Gospel of John is painting is a real life Ark of the Covenant. They aren’t just sitting back on the tomb’s recliners—they’re sitting on the stone that held Jesus’ body; John’s record is saying, “Guess what? There’s a new covenant in town.”
# # #
When Apple rolls out a new iPhone, what do they do? They hold a big press conference that’s meant to get their base followers excited and then they’ll go out and tell their friends who will also get excited, and before you know it millions of people have new phones. Every company uses the same strategy—market to your base—your product evangelist.
It makes sense that God would market his new covenant the same way—he’d tell his disciples all about it, so they could go spread the news to the world. But something unusual happens on the way to the podium to make the big announcement—God markets it to the audience you’d most likely suspect: the women.
It would be like Apple going to a third world where there’s absolute zero cellular signal, Wi-Fi, or electricity and saying, “Isn’t this cool?” I’m sure they’d think it was pretty amazing, but what are they supposed to do with it?
Today a woman is just as likely to start a revolution as a man; two thousand years ago? Not so much. So, what is God thinking? What’s he trying to teach us here?
If you are a Bible conspiracy theorist, then it isn’t at all surprising—Jesus was, after all doing the old bait n’ tackle with her; hints and blatant descriptions of Jesus and Mary locking lips are in all the ancient manuscripts. Unfortunately for Biblical conspiracy theorists, the ancient manuscripts come to light too long after Jesus’ life to make them anything but just stories people were telling. The simple fact is there’s nothing in the Gospels to suggest that Jesus was involved in a relationship with Mary in the gospels.[17]
So, if it’s not because he wanted to see his old sweetheart, then why? Was it because he was a card-carrying member of the local feminist movement of Jerusalem, and he wanted to set his boys straight on who he reallyloves? Not likely.[18]
So, what gives? There are 11 confused men who risk an awful lot to follow Jesus. Couldn’t Jesus have done them a solid and let them know all was well? Of course! But he didn’t…and that certainly begs the question why.
On the surface, the best reason is simply because the Marys were the least likely suspects for a crime. If one of the disciples had gotten to the tomb first, then people could have more easily said they stole his body—heck, they didn’t even go to the tomb first and people still say this!
The fact that it was a woman who was the first eyewitness makes it more believable for the mere fact that a woman would not be able to carry out the plot to steal his body—they’d have to roll away a large stone, carry a rather heavy body, and fight off Roman guards. There are plenty of women who could carry off this plot—they’re called women warriors and they’re champions in swordplay; Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones—she might be able to pull it off…but these women? Not so much.
But God rarely teaches us things on the surface. There’s something much deeper and personal about what’s about to happen. The disciples had a much different relationship with Jesus than the women did.
The first lesson Jesus gives post-resurrection is about the relationship we can have with him.
# # #
Before getting too far along, let’s address the elephant in the room. The women appear first in all four of the Gospels…kind of. When you read all the accounts side by side,[19]each gospel tells a slightly different story. Some mention that Jesus appeared in front of several women, others say it was only Mary Magdalene. Some say Mary went to the tomb, saw it was empty, told the others, then went back to the tomb.
So, are we really to believe that the Gospel is to be trusted when we have four different books saying four contradictory things? If they got this all messed up, they must have gotten the rest all messed up. That’s certainly a fair point, but to call the accounts contradictory is a bit extreme—and wrong.
In reality, it can be assumed it was several women, but because Mary Magdalene was kind of like the Peter of women, that’s who they mentioned.[20]As noted in the previous chapter, each author had a different audience; some of those audiences would have not known who all the Marys or other women were, but they definitely knew who Mary Magdalene was. It would be like a newspaper saying Pope Francis and Federico Lombardi flew to Germany to visit a church; Federico Lombardi is an important person in the Catholic Church, but most people don’t know who he is—so what you are more likely to read is that Pope Francis flew to Germany to visit a church.
The different accounts are not an example of contradiction; rather, they are an example of different authors.
# # #
The angels just performed the opening act of the most epic rock concert ever—now it’s time for the main act to perform his final set list of teachings before ascending to Heaven—and spoiler alert, his set list includes all of his greatest hits. In John 20:16, Jesus starts with a bang when he says something incredibly telling. He says, “Mary.”
At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much, but let’s look at what’s going on.
Mary is an emotional wreck. Her savior is gone. She can’t make sense of what’s happened. She’s a mess!
Jesus appears to her and she’s so emotional that she doesn’t even know who she’s talking to. She’s in complete denial.
It’s in this denial that it gets interesting.
Mary just devoted years of her life devoted to following this guy and now he’s alive and in the flesh standing right in front of her…and she has no clue that it’s him! That’s a little odd, isn’t it? When odd things happen in the Bible, we should never just shrug and say, “That was weird” and move on. We should look at it curiously and say is there something more going on here?
There’s definitely more going on here. The scene is a mirror image of us.
When we don’t believe, we’re in denial. Jesus is standing right in front of us, but we just think we’re talking to a stranger and we don’t recognize him. We can’t see Jesus until we are ready to accept Jesus. And in that moment, Mary just isn’t ready because she still can’t comprehend any of it.
But with one word, Mary snaps out of it. She can see Jesus and it all makes sense. She knows who he is.
Jesus doesn’t do what some of us might. If I’d just risen from the dead and appeared in front of my wife and she didn’t know me, I wouldn’t say, “Diana.” I’d shake her and say, “Are you kidding me! All these years together and you don’t know who I am? What the heck is wrong with you?” And then I’d storm off and pout.
But Jesus says, “Mary.” And with that word she knows Jesus is alive and standing in front of her.
Jesus could have said any word, but he chose her name. To snap her out of her denial, he told her he knew her name—he knew who she was. It’s an intimate gesture and what it shows is that Jesus knows each of us personally. He knows our name.
But here’s the funny thing about what happens next. Mary and Jesus just had a moment. It’s intimate. It’s personal. It’s time to hug it up. But that doesn’t happen.
The touchy-feely Jesus that’s all over the New Testament is suddenly a little less…touchy.
There are a lot of polar opposites in the post-resurrection—things you’d expect to be happening aren’t happening.
Mary goes for the hug and Jesus hug blocks her. John 20:17 says that Jesus told her not to touch him because he had not ascended to Heaven.
So, let’s get this straight. Jesus—the guy Christians grow up believing we can have a personal relationship with is telling her she can’t hug him? That doesn’t seem too personal.
At face value, it’s not personal at all. Later, Thomas gets to touch Jesus, so why him and not Mary?
The fact that Thomas could touch him but not Mary tells us that when Jesus says not to touch him, it’s not because he can’t be touched.
Mary wants to embrace him because she thinks it’s back to the good old days—chilling in the countryside listening to amazing sermons, feeding thousands, and getting tipsy on the best water-to-wine ever made. But Jesus is telling her that the good old days are gone—she needs to know him differently now. The good old days are really in front of her, but she needs to come to understand what that means.
From that point on, he needed Mary to know that the relationship would be a spiritual one—not a physical one.
There are two Jesus’. Some of us only get to know one. There’s the one we all come to know—the one who did amazing things. One might call him the historical Jesus. And then there’s one we know if we commit our life to him; this is the spiritual Jesus.
Jesus’ refusal to Mary isn’t because she can’t touch him; it’s because she can’t touch him like before.
Everyone wants to see Jesus. If they could just have a bit of proof, they’d believe. But that Jesus isn’t here anymore. The Jesus we can know is the one we know spiritually.
But the one we know spiritually we can know much more intimately than the one who came in the flesh. Before the resurrection, Jesus was the great teacher; what’s happening is the start of the transformation for believers—they are about to go from students to teachers.
And finally, we come to what may be the most jarring verse of all to some readers—especially modern readers who are not reading the original translation and may miss the context. Jesus gives specific instructions to Mary; he says to tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (NIV) [23]
Huh?
First, let’s consider something very important here. Jesus could have just as easily said “our Father” and “our God.” He didn’t.
Let’s hit the rewind button here a second and visit just a few chapters prior: John 5:16-18.
This is one of the first things that gets Jesus in a whirlwind of trouble with Jewish leaders. First, he heals on the Sabbath—a major no-no.[24]Jesus was a good talker; he probably could have gotten away with it by talking his way out, but he has no intention of running away. Instead he uses the phrase “My Father.” That does it! The Jewish leaders are fuming because this phrase puts Jesus as an equal to God.
What Jesus is telling Mary is that he is equal to God…but he doesn’t stop there. He is saying that the man upstairs is now “your Father” and “your God.” Father is a reference to the divine nature of Christ, and God is a reference to his human nature (i.e., God in the Flesh). Christ has now secured our place and through him we can have unity with God.
Some of the Gospels simply reported that Mary and the others saw Jesus and he told them to go tell the disciples; that’s essentially what John says. But John found it to be important to his message to relate what Jesus said to Mary.
John was traditionally the last Gospel written; perhaps in his old age, he had come to realize the importance women had played in Jesus’ ministry and he wanted to portray them fairly. But more important, John wants his readers to know that they can have unity with God—that God doesn’t have to be the mighty killjoy in the sky—that through Christ, we can have a relationship with God that’s like belonging to a family.
There’s going to be many lessons to transform the disciples lives post-resurrection, but the first is about the relationship they now have with God.
Everyone knows the phrase, “You can have a personal relationship with God.” But the nature of people can make that phrase carry less meaning, because Christians sometimes look at other Christians and expect them to have the same personal relationship that they have.
Having a personal relationship isn’t about the other person. It’s about you. Jesus Christ knows your name. He knows your struggles. Your pains. He knows your background. He knows what makes you angry; what makes you sad; what makes you want to give us—and what makes you want to keep going. He knows everything about you.
We all have struggles. Some of us it is addictions. Some of us it is pride. Some it is greed. Whatever it is: Jesus knows our name. He knows all of our weaknesses and he’s returned to dwell inside us—to experience an intimacy with him that we would not know without the resurrection.
But first we have to be like Mary: we have to see him. We can say we know Jesus just like Mary said she knew him. But knowing Jesus and seeing Jesus are two different things. We can go to church and know about Jesus—about his teachings, about what he did, and his theology; we can do all of that without ever really seeing Jesus—without ever really knowing what it means to have a true relationship with Jesus.
To see Jesus is to put all your pains aside and accept that Jesus really does want to dwell in you—he really does love you and he really is there with you. He really does know your name.
[1]Fun fact about Easter Bunnies—people used to believe that they were hermaphrodites (i.e., they could reproduce without having sex). You know who else could do that? The Virgin Mary! Hence, the Easter Bunny was born
[2]1 Peter 3:13-22
[3]Ephesians 4:8-10
[4]See Appendix A for a more complete list of Ascension references.
[5]Even if you don’t have the slightest idea about what it is or means.
[6]The one where my dog was my mother, and he (yes, for an even weird reason my dog mother was a he) told me to become a doctor of medicine specializing in soda…that was a weird dream.
[7]John 20:5
[8]Don’t worry, we’ll stick to Sunday School stories.
[9]Lazarus, for those who need a reminder, came back to life after being dead for four days after Jesus came and woke him up.
[10]Such as a follower of Matthew.
[11]See the Appendix for a more comprehensive list.
[12]Fun fact—City of Angels steals several plot points from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
[13]Meg Ryan isn’t even a Bible name.
[14]613 laws to be exact.
[15]There’s one God; worship him.
[16]They made sense thousands of years ago, but they really have no importance today.
[17]In the words of Seinfeld, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”—it just didn’t happen.
[18]Jesus was pretty radical in thinking with regard to women, but his appearance here doesn’t seem to imply it has anything to do with making a feminist statement.
[19]For added challenge, you can also read them all upside-down.
[20]She’s kind of a rock star.
[21]Apocryphal text written most likely in the third century—so the first conspiracy theory about Jesus’ love-life isn’t documented for 300 years.
[22]Meaning that their truth cannot be verified.
[23]John 20:17.
[24]Sabbaths are for obeying God, not experiencing God.
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