“You really are a true believer, aren’t you?” Years back, this is what a close friend said to me after hearing me preach for the first time. She meant that I was all in on my faith, that my trust in the biblical accounts of Jesus Christ was unequivocal. She heard no trace of cunning or clever hedging in my words, none of that fudged use of metaphor and simile that sometimes marks the preaching of those who, like me, have been shaped by progressive theologies. I had not offered the kind of account of the resurrection or of Jesus’ miracles that explains them away in order to aid their reception among those of a skeptical or sophisticated mind.
My friend was right. Wherever I have traveled theologically, whatever metaphors I have developed, no matter what scientific and critical influences I have absorbed, I have always come back to a firm place of faith and trust that what the gospels say actually happened. Crucially, that the resurrection happened, and that every extraordinary, world-bending, and reformulating truth of the gospels flows from that. At a deep level, I continue to hold this position.
But then I think about the ascension. Even shortly after my conversion in the 1990s, when my faith was at its fiercest and wild with trust, I had what can only be described as a blockage about the ascension. Trust in the virgin birth? Check. Trust in Jesus’ miracles and teachings? Check. In his death and resurrection? Check.
