Year A: Easter 7 | Acts 1:6-14
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 17, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page (available for three weeks after the date of streaming).
“…why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” – Acts 1:11[1]
This past Thursday was the Feast of Jesus’ Ascension, a Church celebration formally ranking at the same level as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and All Saints Day. The story is one of the stranger events recorded in the New Testament—somehow, it’s easier to believe the idea of a virgin birth, resurrection, or mystical tongues of fire fluttering over people’s heads than to imagine someone flying off into the sky. Maybe that’s because we have too much exposure to superheroes in the modern Western world, leading us to relate this scene to comic books or fantasy movies. It’s hard to know.
With our current understanding of the Universe, I suspect most modern Christians would prefer if this story had never been included in the Bible. However, as part of what I call the Incarnation Cycle, the Ascension would have held significant meaning for ancient people. To catch any of its message, though, we need to go all the way back “in the beginning.”
I frequently mention the Three Realms of the ancient Cosmos: the Celestial, the home of the divine; the Earthly, the dwelling of humans and animals, and the Underworld; home to the unknown monsters of Chaos.[2] But where did these realms even come from?
In Ancient Near Eastern creation stories, Chaos was the normative state of reality, so the Underworld and fear of the unknown was more or less the foundation of human existence. At some point in the past, the gods appeared and fought back the forces of Chaos, carving out a Celestial realm of Order and peace. Chaos, however, kept trying to reclaim its territory, so rather than being stuck with the annoyance of a constant barrage of border skirmishes, the gods established the Earthly Realm, a distinct layer of reality that blended both Chaos and Order. In this realm the gods set humans, who were tasked with keeping things organized but, due to having been formed from remnants of Chaos’ defeat, weren’t necessarily all that good at it. Those who sought the Divine worked toward peace and harmony, but many of us fell back toward a chaotic state, leading to deceit, selfish competition, and war.
So, according to most cultures of the time, the Earthly Realm was something of a functional accident, at best—basically a blister preventing Chaos from further rubbing up against and irritating or inconveniencing the Divine.
Then came a group of people we call the Hebrews. Their understanding of the Cosmos was a bit different than everyone around them. Yes, they structured the Universe according to the Three Realms, but they understood the Divine to be a preexistent architect of Reality. One day, largely out of a sense of playfulness, the Divine established light and darkness, forming a distinction between itself and the broader universe.[3] The next day, it made a new distinction, this time separating air and water.[4] The day after that, it brought land up from the water.[5] For the following three days, it placed inhabitants into each world it had made: the sun, moon, and stars reflecting the beings of the Celestial Realm, creatures mysterious and unknown roaming the seas while birds took to the air, and finally, all the living things that wander the land, culminating its work with humans, who, having reason, creativity, and the capacity to love, most closely reflected the nature of the Divine itself.
Despite this joyful foundation, humans gradually became enamored with self and Chaos, leading to all the problems we experience in the world today. And as we moved more toward disorder, we forgot the goodness, generosity, and love that underlies Creation. Blaming the Divine for our struggles, we soon began telling stories of impenetrable barriers between the Realms, preventing any movement from the lower toward the upper and even restricting the Divine from the Underworld. With this understanding established, we viewed both Death and the Heavens with fear, seeing our lives as toys for the gods to play with until they eventually became bored and allowed us to fade into the grave.
Then came the Incarnation Cycle.
The Divine, recognizing our confusion and fear, determined to become human, to dwell among us not as a Celestial being but as actual mortal flesh and blood, disrupting any barrier that might separate the Divine from the Earthly Realm. As his life ended, that person, who we call Jesus of Nazareth, being fully mortal, became a native inhabitant of the Underworld, just like everyone else. Thus sharing the fate[6] of humans, the Divine confounded us by passing through the barrier we thought divided it from Death. Once in the Grave, Divinity once again unveils its full self, flooding the darkness with light and revealing the created order underlying even the unknown. As proof of this mastery, they rip the gates of Hell from their hinges, triumphantly leading those trapped by ignorance, fear, and confusion back toward life.
This is where we, as Modern American Christians, normally end the story, thinking everything’s wrapped up and, good as it may be, leaving ourselves trapped in Easter—which means we end up missing the point of what the Kingdom of Heaven even is.
The ancient mind, however, still recognized a significant problem—and a substantial barrier. The Divine could come to us; we needn’t fear the grave; the dead might again find life; but humanity remained separated from—and therefore afraid and suspicious of—the Divine, for no mortal could hope to pierce the veil between the Earthly and Celestial Realms, leaving us forever excluded from the Lands of Light.
And that is why the Ascencion is so important, why the ancient world needed to communicate this unusual scene. Just as he opened Death from the inside, Christ, both fully human and fully Divine, physically shatters that last barrier dividing us from God. The Universe is once again whole, every Realm fully under the authority, order, generosity, and love of the Divine who had created it all in the first place. Humans need not fear death, for, alongside Christ, we have a guide and guardian for what’s to come. Nor need we fear the struggles and pains of life, as in time that too shall be changed—leading to life upon life upon Life.
The problem for us now is, how can we relate to the wonder and stunned joy the disciples recognized at the Ascension when we live under a completely different understanding of the Cosmos? Digging six feet under won’t lead us to anything but more dirt. And flying into the sky becomes especially problematic once you run out of atmosphere. So how can the Ascension help us understand or appreciate anything about God in a Realm where gods no longer openly exist?
It comes down to barriers. We still hold them; we still build them; we still fight over them. Borders and walls and armies. Watchtowers, No Man’s Land, and multiplying forms of defense and surveillance. Whether it’s between nations or religions or political parties or social groups, those on the outside are to be hated and feared, while those on the inside struggle to “protect” one another through domination and oppression. Throughout the history of the Church, and especially within Modern American Christianity, people are constantly barring one another from Heaven and condemning others to Hell. We continue to separate ourselves into smaller and smaller units until we’re each isolated inside our paranoid perfection and inane certainty of Divine favor for us alone. We transform ourselves into the very gods our ancestors feared, each toying with other lives as we impose ourselves over a diminutive, utterly pointless little universe of our own design.
Understanding the Incarnation Cycle can break this illusion. Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension are more than just a story; they’re a new concept of Reality. With everything united under the Reign of the Divine, humans are once again free to explore and create and love and share. With the most impenetrable barriers in existence erased, there’s no more need for us, especially as God’s Image, to maintain the earthly ones we’ve erected against one another. We can step past the “already/not yet” nonsense the Church has bought into for so long. Through the Incarnation Cycle, we find that the Kingdom of Heaven isn’t simply “at hand” or “near.” It isn’t just quite beyond our sight or ever-so-slightly outside our grasp. No, it’s here. The Kingdom is present, and God has set it directly in our hands—yours and mine.
No matter your understanding of Reality, the message is the same: the barriers have fallen. So with Cosmic divisions long dissolved, why do we keep clinging to ones even less real? Jesus, who only a few weeks ago reminded us, “I am the Gateway,” has opened everything and everywhere to each and all of us. We, as Christians, stand both within and as part of that gateway, not to prevent passage, but to assist any who might wish to traverse the bridge to whatever Realm from which they may have believed themselves banned. We as individuals are not alone. Nor need anyone remain alone. Reality is laid open under the watchful and loving eye of the Creator, and we, God’s children, are free to play and explore. So the two strangers’ question still applies:
“…why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
when the Divine is already here?
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] Within physical reality, the realms expressed or reflected themselves as the sky, land, and the sea.
[3] This would essentially be the establishment of the Celestial Realm.
[4] People would have understood the Underworld to have come into being on Day 2.
[5] The Earthly Realm is still the last to exist, but it exists because of Divine desire, not as a shield or buffer.
[6] and substance