When did Jesus Ascend?

When did Jesus Ascend?

Acts 1:6-11

            How long was Jesus on earth after the resurrection?  The season of Easter lasts from Easter Day to Pentecost—a period of seven weeks.  This is based on the Jewish calendar.  In the first century, the Christian event we call Pentecost coincided with the Jewish celebration of Shavuot, one of the harvest festivals.  It came fifty days after the Sabbath during Passover. 

            We know Jesus was executed on the Friday of Passover week.  The following day would have been Saturday (the Sabbath).  Fifty days later would be a Sunday (you do the math), so Shavuot and Pentecost should always fall on the same day.  They don’t.  The difference is that the Jewish liturgical year follows the lunar calendar while the Christian liturgical year follows the Julian calendar.  Easter and Passover don’t necessarily come at the same time.

            Knowing all this still doesn’t settle the question of when Jesus ascended.  To complicate matters, we have three versions of the ascension.  Matthew (28:16-20) places the ascension in Galilee.  He doesn’t give us any clues as to how long after the resurrection Jesus met his disciples on a mountain there, but we get the idea that there wasn’t much time between the two events.  Matthew moves right from the resurrection story (28:1-10) to the interaction between the Jewish elders and the guards (28:11-15), to the meeting on the Galilean mountain.  It would have taken the disciples a while to get from Jerusalem to Galilee, but certainly not fifty days.  What we know from Matthew’s account is that on some unspecified day, Jesus took his leave of the disciples somewhere in Galilee.

            John doesn’t mention the ascension at all.  It is included in the extended version of Mark’s gospel, but most experts agree that these verses were added by the early church at some later date in order to give the account a more satisfying ending.

            Luke gives us two versions of the ascension.  In his gospel, we read the events of Easter Sunday:  the women at the tomb; The story of the Emmaus disciples; their meeting with the disciples who had remained in Jerusalem; and Jesus’ appearance to them all.  Then Luke says Jesus led them out to Bethany, blessed them, and was taken up from their sight.

            In his second volume, The Acts of the Apostles, Luke paints a very different picture.  At some unspecified time, Jesus took his disciples out of Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives.  There he told them to return to Jerusalem and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit, “not many days from now.”  Jesus was then taken up by a cloud.  The disciples returned to Jerusalem and waited.  While Luke doesn’t say how long they waited, if it was the few days Jesus mentioned at Olivet, it had to be close to Shavuot/Pentecost.

            The Christian liturgical calendar for 2017 indicates that Ascension Day will be celebrated on Wednesday, May 25, and Pentecost on Sunday, June 4, a difference of ten days.  This time period reflects Luke’s timetable in Acts.

            We might be tempted to say, “Well, since there is no agreement by the four evangelists as to when Jesus ascended, perhaps it never happened.  Perhaps this was a made-up story just to remove Jesus from the earth so the disciples could get on with their lives.”

            Perhaps—but the disagreement on details doesn’t negate the event.  Even the fact that Luke can’t agree with himself isn’t necessarily proof of the falseness of the ascension.  Many people witnessed the event even if they didn’t all write it down.  We know there were gospel accounts not written down, as well as written ones which have been lost.  The truth is that something happened, either on the Mount of Olives or on a mountain in Galilee. 

That “something” took the risen Savior out of men’s sight, but not out of their hearts.  Whatever happened, it changed their lives forever.   It continues to change lives today.