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While one might well suppose from a close reading of the last verses from the gospel according to Luke that Jesus ascended to Heaven within twenty- four hours of rising from the dead before dawn on Resurrection Day, which Christians have long celebrated as Easter morning, the account of the Ascension from the book of Acts, long assumed to be a continuation of Luke’s message, provides for forty days for numerous appearances to the disciples in which, as he did for the two walking to Emmaus, he “opened their minds to understand the scriptur[al]” mandate that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached ….” (Luke 24: 45-47, cf. Acts 1: 1-4) And so Luke-Acts provides for a forty day Easter Season that rises toward the Day of Pentecost promised as the receiving of the Holy Spirit to aid their and our witness of what began in Jerusalem and spread to “earth’s remotest end”— which just might be somewhere in Siberia or, perhaps, West Texas.
