Slideshow image

There was a time when people believed the world was a flat disc. With limited perception and scientific knowledge, the idea that the earth is round must have seemed quite counterintuitive. 

But through careful observation, new tools, and bold imagination, people gradually came to understand that the earth is not flat, but round.

Even so, our everyday sense of space remains simply subjective. When we speak of direction, we do not think in terms of physics, but from our own experience.  Left and right, above and below, front and back; these are all relative to where we stand. For example, if I ask you to point “up,” we will all point in the same direction.  But if I ask someone in Korea to point “up,” they will point in a completely different direction.  And if we imagine someone standing on islands in the southern Indian Ocean, nearly the opposite side of the earth from us, their sense of “up” and “down” would be reversed from ours.

So even something as basic as direction is not as absolute as it seems.  But if we reframe our thinking around the center of the earth, direction becomes clearer.  Instead of up and down, it would either be moving toward the center of the earth or away from it. If we begin to think this way, the idea of heaven also starts to look different.

Where is heaven? 

We say heaven is not a physical place, but where God is.  And yet, we often speak of heaven as “up,” as if it were somewhere in the sky.  This makes intuitive sense. Heaven is beyond our reach, something we long for but cannot grasp like we perceive sky. But this way of thinking heaven as a realm up in the sky can lead to some problems.

First, it can create a kind of dualism. Heaven and earth, spiritual and material, good and bad.  Influenced by this way of thinking, we may begin to see earthly things as somehow less worthy or less holy. As Anglicans, we do not strongly divide heaven from earth.  And yet, this assumption has shaped Christian imagination at various times and places, and it still affects how many people understand their faith.

Second, if we associate heaven simply with what is “above,” we may begin to imagine it as a physical location.  But the Church teaches that heaven is beyond time and space.  It cannot be located within our limited, physical understanding of the universe.

So is heaven only a metaphor?  Or is there something more?

On this Feast of the Ascension, we hear from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus opens the Scriptures and explains how God’s promise has been fulfilled through his death and resurrection.  Then he commissions the disciples as witnesses, and promises them power from on high.  And then, as they watch, he is taken up into heaven. It is a mysterious and almost surreal image. 

Where did he go?  How far did he ascend?  Did he simply disappear into the vast universe? These are questions we cannot really answer. But perhaps we are asking the wrong kind of question. If heaven is not simply “up,” then the Ascension is not about Jesus traveling further to a distant place.  Instead, let’s bring back the shift of coordination as I shared at the beginning. Rather than “up” and “down,” perhaps we can think in terms of “inward” and “outward.” In physical terms, gravity pulls everything toward the center of the earth.  It grounds us. It holds us in place.  But it also keeps us from moving freely away.

When we bring this image into our spiritual lives, we might ask: what is it that pulls us inward? What holds us back from spiritual freedom? It can be anything that makes us turn in on ourselves.  For example, fear can draw us inward.  When we are afraid, we retreat. We hide. We dig deeper into ourselves. Greed can do the same.  When we become obsessed with having more, we tighten our grip.  And in the end, we are sucked into what we are holding onto.

When this inward pull becomes bigger than who we are,  we no longer remain grounded, and we begin to collapse inward.  We become like a black hole, drawing everything toward ourselves, turning others into objects of our needs and desires, and there is no freedom or joy.

But there is also an opposite movement. There are those who, having been freed from the weight of their own ego, begin to move outward.  They pay attention to others.  They notice beauty and goodness beyond themselves.  And when they encounter brokenness, they offer themselves in love so that others may be restored. In doing so, they discover a deeper joy of helping others flourish. Their lives are no longer curved inward but released outward.  And in time, they begin to resemble light—radiating freely, without holding back.

By the same token, Jesus, in his Ascension, does not simply go “up” and leave us behind.  He is not departing to a distant corner of the universe.  Rather, he is entering into the fullness of God’s presence— A presence that is solely oriented to others with unconditional love and mercy. A presence that is no longer bound to one place, but available everywhere.

That is God who Jesus revealed. That is the Messiah who people encountered in Jesus, and that is where Heaven is found among us. And before he is taken from their sight, he gives his disciples a calling: “You are witnesses of these things.” Not by escaping from the world, but by turning outward within it. Not by clinging inward in fear or greed, but by being freed to love without holding back.

This is where Christian life continues. The Ascension is not about Jesus’ absence,  but about a new way his presence fills the world which grows through our participation. It is not about differentiating holiness from worldly matter. It is about how we can enter into holiness in the midst of our ordinary lives. As we loosen what pulls us inward,  step beyond ourselves,  and live as witnesses of his life and love, we are drawn into that movement, a movement free us to radiate with no limitation. 

So perhaps the question is not, “Where did Jesus go?”  but “Where are we being sent?”

And the answer may be this: wherever we are, whenever we turn outward in love, there is heaven, already breaking in.

Fr. James