On Thursday, May 25th, we celebrate the Ascension of Christ into heaven, 40 days after his resurrection. As Bishop N.T. Wright observes, "The idea of the human Jesus now being in heaven, in his thoroughly embodied risen state, comes as a shock to many people, including many Christians... Only when we grasp firmly that the church is not Jesus and Jesus is not the church-when we grasp, in other words, the truth of the ascension, that the one who is indeed present with us by the Spirit is also the Lord who is strangely absent, strangely other, strangely different from us and over against us, the one who tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him-only then are we rescued from both hollow triumphalism and shallow despair.
