Ascension
Song:
Hail the day that sees him rise
Reading:
Daniel 7: 9-14
Song:
Look ye saints the sight is glorious
Reading:
Ephesians 1: 15-23
I was looking for this hymn and found this version. It is lovely to see people’s faith and ingenuity overcoming adversity at times like this,
Song:
Our eyes have seen the glory
Reading:
Luke 24: 44-53
Song:
Beauty for brokenness
About 50 years ago, I was a pupil in secondary school. In our maths club, our teacher put us in touch with the very latest in technology. He had access to a computer. Computers were the stuff of science fiction at the time, and we knew that they were the future. Everything in the future would be done by computer.
First we had to learn the language, if I remember correctly it was one called Algol. Then we had to decide the problem we wanted solving. After this, we had to write the way to solve the problem in the chosen language. After this, one of us had to learn the code to enter the programme letter by letter onto punched cards. These punched cards were then posted to Leeds to be scanned through the reader, which would then pass the information to the computer. The answer was duly printed on a sheet of paper and posted back to us. It had taken about two weeks to obtain the answer to a problem which most of us could have solved in a few minutes!
When I was at university a few years later, the department computer occupied a moderate sized room, which was kept at a constant temperature and humidity. We still had to speak the language, but now we could simply type the instructions into a teleprinter which produced a length of punched paper tape, which a scanner could read, and the computer gave its answer in another piece of punched paper which our teleprinter could read and type the solution.
In the early 1980s, the government decided that every school should have a computer. For the school where I was working at the time, this meant a Sinclair ZX81! It came complete with a whole 1k of RAM, there was an option of an additional 16k which had to be bought separately.
Over the next 10 years, computers progressed quickly until they became what we now would recognise as a desktop PC. Since about 1990, the machines have become physically smaller, the memories bigger and the processors faster. This means that the operators can make more and bigger mistakes in the same time.
Oneof the science fiction stories which I read in the 1970s told the story of a student on the way to college. At the station, his phone rang, and he had a conversation with his father. One of his friends asked if it was his family talking. When he said it was, the friend responded saying that he had fooled his parents by packing his phone in his trunk. “How ridiculous” I remember thinking. “Imagine the idea of a mobile phone which is so common place that all the students would have one.” How wrong I was. Now many people have more than one, and most of them are also portable computers, can access the internet, and are cameras as well.
Over this time, the telephone has progressed from a fixed instrument, which only a relatively small number of people had, to a much smaller device, which can be carried about by the vast majority. It can take and send pictures anywhere in the world and can effectively replace the need for a library, not to mention a cinema.
In fact, if you have even the most basic mobile phone in your pocket, you are carrying about a more powerful computer than the one which was in the lunar landing module of the Apollo missions.
It would be fair to say that both the computer and the phone have been changed out of all recognition in my lifetime.
My mother was a skilled office worker. She was a comptometer operator, many of you will remember these machines, a mechanical device which could add, subtract and, in the right hands, mutiply and divide. She worked for Sheffield City Council, and later for Johnson and Johnson. When, in the mid 1970s she applied for a passport, the staff obviously did not what this machine was, so she was listed as a computer operator! This was a source of some amusement to her, and the rest of the family.
However, the comptometer bore about as much resemblance to a computer as the ZX81 bears to the modern day computers. Our modern machines are on a different level to thoseof the previous generation. It is fair to say that they have been raised up.
The writer of our reading from Daniel was clearly confronted with a vision that he could not fully understand, but he knew that there was something special here. He was aware that one who looked like a “son of man”, a human, was being given power and authority. He was being raised up to a higher level.
Similarly, Paul, writing to the Ephesians, sees Jesus as having been “Raised up” when he was given this power and dominion.
Traditionally, many have seen the story of the ascension is a physical sense. There are stories and artworks which show Jesus as being physically raised up in altitude. This, of course, is entirely in line with the understanding of the cosmos in the first century. Heaven (The heavens) was physically above the earth. Our modern understanding of the universe does not really fit with this view, but it is still valid to talk of Jesus being raised, of him ascending. He has gone on to a higher level, above (or beyond if you prefer,) the limitations of the earthly life. In the same way as the modern phone has ascended beyond the limitations of the early telephones, or the modern computer has risen above its early predecessors.
At the present time, many of us are not seeing the people we would normally see; we are not going to the places we would normally visit; we cannot do the things we would normally do. Modern technology can make this deprivation seem less,but it cannot remove it completely. Spare a thought for those who do not have access to the technology. We live with the hope that at some point, once it has been decided that it is safe, we will once again be free to resume normal activities, perhaps not all at once, but bit by bit. Once this has achieved, perhaps we will appreciate those things that we have taken for granted in the past. Perhaps it will improve our relationships with people. Perhaps it will take these relationships to a different level. Let us hope so.
In knowing God better, through the understanding provided by Jesus, we too can rise to a higher level, that we may receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in order to know him better. That the eyes of our hearts may be opened so that we may know the hope to which we are called. That we may know the riches of his glorious inheritance, and the great power which is there for those who believe. This power is God;’s power, the same power which resurrected Jesus from the dead, and ascended him into the heavenly realms.
Truly, “now on a higher plane (we) dwell.”
I couldn’t think of being on a higher level without thinking of the chorus of this next song. Although usually a harvest song, I thought that it nicely fits this theme. Look at the video carefully, you may recognise some of the singers.
Song:
Ho reapers in the whitened harvest
I also found this version of the reading:
But they that wait upon the Lord
Prayer:
Almighty God, as we believe your only-begotten son, our Lord Jesus Christ, has ascended into the heavens; so may we also in heart and mind ascend there with him, and continually dwell with him. We thank you that when Jesus returned to glory, he did not leave us comfortless, but sent the Holy Spirit to remain with us forever. Grant that the Spirit may bring us at last to that heavenly home where Christ has gone before to prepare us a place, that we may move to that higher plane, where He, the Holy Spirit and You are worshipped and glorified, now and for ever.
Amen.
Song:
In loving kindness Jesus came
Some of you may lnow a Wesley hymn “Clap your hands you people all”
This is a modern arrangement, inspired by the hymn.
Clap your hands you people all
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