Acts 1.6-14: Generating Power

So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..." (Acts 1:6-8). You could make a case that 1936 was a year that America received power (or was at least intrigued with power). 

Oh, not power like the Holy Spirit gives, but electric power. Hoover Dam, Fort Peck Dam, and Inwood Power Station were all of interest to artists in 1936. The Union Pacific Railroad Boulder City Branch railroad carried workers and materials from Boulder City to the dam's construction site. Margaret Bourke-White's photograph of the Fort Peck Dam brought to industrial sites the same monumentality as photographs of ancient cities or Gothic cathedrals. Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas created a portrait of a new hydroelectric power plant on the banks of the Harlem River. How almost unimaginable the potential for power was during the years of industrialization and mechinization. 

How much power could be generated with something as common as water. Of course that common water had to be dammed up and carefully monitored and restrained in order to have it make power. 

Margaret Bourke-White. Fort Peck Dam. 1936. Aaron Douglas. Inwood Power Plant, 1936. 

Hoover Dam brochure by Union Pacific Railroad. 1931.

  

Is that like the power given by the Holy Spirit? Would you say that the Holy Spirit gives us power or gives us resources that, if managed, can give us great power? Or, conversely, if ignored or ill-managed can remain dormant?

The promise was that the disciples would receive power. How the power was made and what the disciples would do with it....well, at the point of our Acts text, that story was yet to be told. Maybe it is still yet to be fully told.

Acts 1.6-14: Up - Toward Heaven and Out of Sight

The disciples just stood there. Until one of the men in white pointed out that they were just standing there (Easter 7A, Acts 1:6-14). After it was pointed out that they were just standing there, they left, having watched until they could no longer see Jesus. Their last sight of Jesus might have looked something like this.

Salvador Dali. The Ascension of Christ. 1958. Private Collection.

The artist has offered us a very different point of view of this story. Where we usually look across a landscape to see Jesus hovering above the mountain and the disciples, in Dali's painting, we stand where the disciples stood as they watched Jesus leave them. This is the second time since Jesus' resurrection that his friends and followers have been called to let go of Jesus. The disciples know here how Mary felt on Easter morning when Jesus would not let himself be held onto. By this point in the story Jesus is out of the disciples' reach, though he has promised that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. 

The painting includes references to power, of multiple kinds of power. The composition was inspired by a dream in which Dali saw the nucleus of an atom (modern power), here bearing a pattern similar to that of a sunflower's center. Dali saw the nucleus as unifying heaven and earth - which Christ did in his very person. The figure ascends into the heavenly realm, a crescent shape of blue-white created from the outstretched wings of a dove (a symbol of the Holy Spirit, whose power was promised to the disciples - and us). Gaia, the personification of the Earth, is at the top center of the composition. 

Empowered? Powerless? Earthly power? Heavenly power? Spiritual power? Nuclear power? All of these are contained in the composition which reminds us that the disciples just stood. Looking up. Up toward heaven as Jesus left their sight.

Jesus' feet are important in another Ascension Day text. See which one on Art&Faith Matters' Facebook page. For additional Ascension images on Facebook, click here or here.