Ascended into Heaven

Andrew Guffey • May 15, 2026

The Feast of the Ascension

Yesterday was the Feast of the Ascension. Although it is one of our principal feasts, the Feast of the Ascension is less recognized, largely because it comes ten days before Pentecost and because it always falls on the Thursday. Luke is the only author of the New Testament to mention the "ascension" as an event, in both the Gospel according to Luke (24:50-53) and the Acts of the Apostles (1:6-11). In these accounts, Jesus stays with the disciples for forty days after he is raised. Forty days after Easter Sunday falls on a Thursday. In Luke's story, Jesus is crucified, raised on the third day, sticks around for forty days, and then ascends into heaven: "When Jesus had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven'" (Acts 1:10-11). What should we make of this?


Of course, Luke is not the only New Testament writer to actually know about the Ascension; he's just the only one who narrates it as an event in the (after)life of Jesus. That Jesus was "exalted" to God's right hand was widely affirmed. Psalm 110 begins, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" The original Psalm probably originated in an environment where God was thought to take the side of the king, but early Christians consistently associated this verse with Jesus's exaltation--that Jesus had been raised to God's "right hand." In other words, Jesus had (re-)entered the divine life. The earliest notice we have of this tradition is Paul (Romans 8:34), but the verse is used also in the Gospels and Acts, Hebrews, 1 Peter, Revelation, and by early Christians after the New Testament (1 Clement, Polycarp, Barnabas, Apocalypse of Peter, etc.) to acknowledge that Jesus was powerfully alive, alive in and with the power of God. And this because or in spite of the fact that he is not with us in the body.


The Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost are one reality, but pondered in different ways. That reality is the living Jesus. Jesus is raised from the dead, destroying death, the first-born of the dead. But Jesus is powerfully alive in God, at God's right hand. And thus, Jesus is and sends life-giving Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul is talking about the resurrection of Jesus he riffs on Genesis: "Thus it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living being'; the last Adam became life-giving spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45). So, what if the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost are not really three separate events, but three ways of looking at the one event of Christ's bursting life?

The poet Malcolm Guite comes close to the mark in his poem "Ascension":


We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As Earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And Heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centered now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.


"We saw him go and yet we were not parted." The clouds "veil him from our sight," but "we ourselves become his clouds of witness"--"his light in us, and ours in him concealed/Which all creation waits to see revealed." Perhaps we ought rather to say, "his life in us...." Although absent in body, Jesus is nearer to us now, more available, more present, more alive and bringing us to life. Although absent in body, "we were not parted." Because the Ascension is not really about an absence. It is about glory. It is about the glory in which all creation sings. It is about the world "filled with the grandeur of God," as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it.


The Ascension is not a quaint story about the time that Jesus left and went away and we're waiting for him to come back. The Ascension is about how Jesus descended to earth without leaving heaven and is ascending to heaven without having left earth. It is about the pull, the gravity of Christ's hold on all things that pulls all creation back to God. It's as if, having gone to the extremity Christ grabbed hold of the edge of all things and is dragging it back into the Divine dance that it had forgotten.


"He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centered now, and sings...


Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,

His life in us, and ours in him...."

Pub Theology 10/27/26 -- 'Tis the season, spooky season!

By Peter Trumbore • October 26, 2026
"From ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!" This very old folk prayer, which has been tied to both Scotland and Cornwall, used to hang on the wall of my childhood home, and it often comes to mind for me at this time of year. A little trivia -- the first known publication of this prayer was in 1926 in a volume titled "The Cornish and West Country Litany," but it is thought to be far older. That it can be traced to regions of the United Kingdom that are quite distant from one another may be a testament to its antiquity. Anyway, we're right up to the climax of what some call "spooky season," the weeks from the end of summer up until Halloween, which this year falls on Saturday. Apparently this idea of "spooky season" is a relatively recent development, becoming popular on the internet as a way to talk about stretching the adult of fun of Halloween from a single day of dress-up shenanigans to something akin to the more well-established holiday season we're now rocketing toward. This is a far cry from what I recall growing up, where more than a few of the local churches in our area very actively sought to discourage observance of Halloween, labeling it a pagan celebration of witchcraft, devilry, and superstition that was incompatible with being a good Christian. Of course that didn't really dissuade anyone. But with the holiday just a few days away, I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to talk about the nature of spooky stuff, ghoulies and ghosties, and other such things. So tell us, what do you love about Halloween? How do you mark it? Does anything give you pause? What do you think about this claim that you can't be a Christian and still participate in or enjoy Halloween? Finally, what do you make of that old Scots and Cornish prayer? What real fears do you think it reflects? And what might a modern version look like? Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday Oct. 27 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 25, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 25, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Copy of Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 18, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 18, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 10/13/26 -- A series of quick hits

By Peter Trumbore • October 13, 2026
Some weeks inspiration hits and we stumble onto a single topic that has enough going for it that our Tuesday evening conversation revolves around it entirely. Some weeks, like this one, we take a different approach. Tonight, rather than chew on one big idea, we've got a couple of interesting, but generally unrelated questions to animate our discussion. We'll take them on one at a time, in no particular order, and see what develops. Nine years ago New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress drew a cartoon with this caption: "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.” Do you experience this tension in your own life, and if so, how do you deal with it? Are you more interested in buying things, or experiencing things? How far will you go to experience something for the first time? What is an example of that? Are you a thrill seeker? An adventure traveler? Something else? Lutheran pastor and writer Nadia Bola-Weber said this: "People don't leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus. People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much, they can't stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn't." What is your take on this? Do you agree with her? Why or why not? Podcaster Joe Rogan: "Jesus was born out of a virgin mother. What's more virgin than a computer? If Jesus does return, you don't think he could return as Artificial Intelligence? AI could absolutely return as Jesus." OK, is he off his rocker, or do you think he might be on to something? If all else fails, what's on your mind this week?  Join us for the conversation this evening, Tuesday Oct. 13 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 11, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 11, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 10/6/26 -- Finding peace, finding God

By Peter Trumbore • October 5, 2026
It escaped my notice, so perhaps it escaped yours as well. Back on August 31, the lauded poet, farmer, essayist, and deeply influential thinker Wendell Berry died at the age of 92, in the place he loved best, his farm in Kentucky. Over the years, several of our conversations have been inspired by or touched on Berry's ideas and writings. While Berry has influenced countless Christians through his poetry and fiction, he described himself as a "bad-weather churchgoer." In the preface to his collection of sabbath day poems titled "This Day," Berry explains it this way: "But I am a bad-weather churchgoer. When the weather is good, sometimes when it is only tolerable, I am drawn to the woods on the local hillsides or along the streams… In such places, on the best of these sabbath days, I experience a lovely freedom from expectations — other people’s and also my own. I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration.." One of the things this quote brings to mind is how important the concept of "place" was in Berry's work and, more importantly, the way he saw the world and how he sought to live in it. Way back in 2017, we talked about the idea of place, with Berry as our guide. "Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are your neighbors in it ..." This is a very small portion of Wendell Berry's "A Poem on Hope". In his poem, "The Want of Peace," reprinted in the illustration above, Berry writes: "I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place." So in our conversation this week we're going to revisit this idea of "place," of finding it, belonging to it, and perhaps losing it. There are many ways we can think about this notion. Where do we find peace? Where do we find God? Where do we find ourselves? Where do we find our people, or our purpose? Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday Oct. 6 starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | October 4, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • October 4, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/29/26 -- There's an app for that

By Peter Trumbore • September 28, 2026
You're probably aware of this already, but for years now, we've been hearing that Americans in particular are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. Which is different from simply being alone. I think we're all aware that it is perfectly possible crave alone time without feeling lonely, and to feel intense loneliness even when surrounded by people. Sometimes this can be a result of things that are out of our control. But often, it's the choices we make in the name of convenience that lie at the heart of this. Journalist Gabe Bullard's new book, "Against Convenience," argues that our pursuit of ever faster and frictionless experiences comes with invisible costs, and that we unthinkingly accept those as the inevitable price we have to pay to make things easier, Reviewing the book in The Atlantic , writer Julie Beck argues that many of those costs are social. Beck writes: "Once you open your eyes to the tradeoff between convenience and community, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s more convenient to ride a Peloton bike at home alone than to go to a spin class full of other sweaty bodies (whom you might end up chatting with). Zoom meetings make working with distant colleagues much easier, but aren’t very socially nourishing. The gig economy is rife with this bargain. Ubers and Lyfts replace rides given by friends and trips taken on public transit. Delivery replaces meals out at local restaurants and time spent in stores of all kinds." Sometimes, she continues, the whole point of an innovation is that it allows you to do something in isolation that once required interaction with others. Think self-checkout at the grocery store, or the "quiet ride" option that Uber introduced. One of the things we regularly talk about in our conversations is the importance of community. It's why some of us come to church, or, for that matter, Pub Theology. But I think we all also recognize that we engage in this tradeoff of convenience over community all the time, and in all kinds of ways. So that's what we're going to talk about in our discussion this week. Thinking about your life, your-day-to-day, how do you experience this convenience vs. community dynamic? Sure, when we're streaming a new movie in our living room, we're trading that for sitting with a bunch of strangers in an actual theater. Or when we get our meals or groceries or other purchases delivered to our door we get to spare ourselves the hassle of interacting with wait staff and cashiers, or dodging around other shoppers blocking the cereal aisle. But what about the impact of convenience on the relationships we really care about? And what is the impact of avoiding interaction, not just on ourselves, but on society?Finally, how much convenience are you willing to give up in order to build, or rebuild, or sustain community? Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 29, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday | September 27, 2026

By Andrew Guffey • September 27, 2026
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.

Pub Theology 9/22/26 -- What's your plan?

By Peter Trumbore • September 21, 2026
Years ago, when we were newly married, my wife and I used to schedule annual "planning retreats," where we'd leave town for a long weekend to stay in some charming bed and breakfast somewhere (typically coastal New England), enjoy what the local area had to offer, and to make plans for the future. We'd usually dedicate half a day or so of our getaway to thinking about and writing down our goals for the near and longer-term. These were the days before house and kids, when it looked like the future was ours to determine. We both had demanding jobs at the time, and while we weren't rolling in dough, we had enough to give us the luxury of looking ahead rather than worrying about how we were going to manage day to day. So we talked over timelines, savings goals, family priorities, and so on, trying to figure out things like how much we had to put away, and for how long, before we could start looking for a house. When would we be able to afford to have children? What were our career goals? Where did we want to be five years from now, or ten years from now? And it wasn't just brainstorming. We. Made. Plans. We had targets. And objectives. And we tried to stick to those plans over the following year, reviewing and reevaluating at our next annual planning retreat. At some point, though, we stopped doing this. I can't remember the specifics about when or why we abandoned the exercise, but at some point we did. If I had to guess, I think I'd say we realized that life didn't conform to our nearly laid out agenda. Or, as Mike Tyson famously said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Or, in military parlance, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." You may be wondering at this point where we're going with this, and how it relates to our first discussion after our long summer hiatus. Well, it turns out that scripture has a few things to say on the topic of worrying about and planning for the future versus trusting in God's goodness and care. Probably the best known example comes from Matthew's gospel, specifically 6:25-34 where Jesus is telling his followers not to worry about the future: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?" He concludes with this: "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." I hear the objection. You're right, this is Jesus telling us not to worry about the future; he's not telling us to not to plan for it. And, in Luke's gospel (14:28-30), Jesus addresses this directly. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him ..." For me, this poses a bit of a conundrum. Why plan for the future when everything is in God's hands anyway? But if we fail to plan ahead, things can go awry and we'll face the consequences of our own unpreparedness. So where is the balance here? Join us for the conversation this week as we take on the question of planning for the future. Are you a planner, or are you more a seat-of-the-pants kind of decision maker? Do you develop plans for the long-term, or is your focus more on the immediate? For example, if it's my turn to make dinner, I make a meal plan (usually). But I'm not in the five-year-plan business. At least not anymore. How about you. Come out to Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Sept. 22, and share your thoughts with us. Discussion begins at 7pm.