tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7132206171945839649.post6490132455273400456..comments2024-02-13T11:11:28.246+00:00Comments on Bishop Alan’s Blog: Ascending thither not Copping OutBishop Alan Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13879516755776951638noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7132206171945839649.post-24772833650102829622012-05-21T06:47:39.445+01:002012-05-21T06:47:39.445+01:00There are such interesting ragged edges around the...There are such interesting ragged edges around these experiences. The effect is to enable us to run the story through the various threads which, having done as a student in an analytical way, gradually become cumulative in a generally enriching way. As historian it's occasionally frustrating that there's no "camera and tape recorder" thread, but the effect is generally enriching! Steve, your sermon (well that other bloke's) reminds me of one I wonce heard in a Conservative Evangelical church in Cambridge about how the Incarnation was Araldite (if you remember that particular epoxy adhesive). God took the little white tube and the little black tube and produced a little Jesus (who presumably resembled hard snot). Just abut every heresy you can espouse about the Trinity rolled up into one hard lump, in only five minutes!Bishop Alan Wilsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13879516755776951638noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7132206171945839649.post-32578302649174209622012-05-21T02:53:07.542+01:002012-05-21T02:53:07.542+01:00I once heard a sermon (at St Leonard's Church,...I once heard a sermon (at St Leonard's Church, Streatham) where the preacher likened the ascension to a celestial lift mechanic, descending to the bottom of the shaft to repair the lift, and returning to the top of the shaft when the job was done.<br /><br />I was less than impressed.Steve Hayeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11283123400540587033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7132206171945839649.post-6061446307428233732012-05-18T13:42:09.883+01:002012-05-18T13:42:09.883+01:00The thing that struck me as I prepared to preach o...The thing that struck me as I prepared to preach on the Ascension yesterday at our (very small)Ascension Day Eucharist, was the fact that out of five accounts of the last days of Jesus' earthly ministry, only two - Luke and Acts - actually describe the "event" at all (and they were both written by the same author...) <br />We can't know how Mark originally ended his Gospel, but Matthew and John not only don't tell us the Lucan story of Jesus being lifted up, they don't tell us any story at all of how he came to be gone, so to speak. They give us what turn out to be his last words to the disciples, but that is it. Jesus might have just wandered off into the crowd for all they tell us. I suppose John might have known Luke's story and assumed it, but Matthew didn't, and even so, it is surely extraordinary - and deliberate - that something as important as the end of Jesus' earthly ministry isn't described.<br />I wonder what the first Christians actually believed had happened, and at what point the story of Jesus' being lifted up into the sky started to circulate? If you were only to have Matthew's Gospel, what would you think had happened to Jesus, and how would it change our understanding of our faith? I haven't got any answers, but the question fascinated me.<br />It seems to me that the post-resurrection stories, like the nativity stories, have become mashed together across the Gospels (and Acts in this case) and could do with being disentangled from each other so their differences could speak to us more clearly.Annenoreply@blogger.com