Ascension Day

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

Philippians 3:20-21 (NRSV)

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus “ascended into heaven” (as we confess in the great creeds of the Church).  This year, Ascension Day is Thursday, May ninth.  The memory of Jesus’ ascension is found only in Luke’s gospel and the book of Acts, both written by the same theologian.  We Christians do not believe that when we say “Christ is risen” and Jesus “ascended into heaven” that we are somehow saying the same thing.  So why does the Ascension matter?

               First, we need to clarify what we are not saying.  We are not saying that Jesus leapt off the mountain and now lives somewhere in outer space, no matter what some simple Christian art might suggest.  We are not saying that now Jesus’ “spirit” lives with God in some non-material place or that now he lives only “in our hearts.”  We are not saying that Christians must believe that the universe is a flat, three-storied structure.  Those suggestions are cartoon caricatures of a mature Christian faith and understanding.

               Now we can address what we do confess about the Ascension of Jesus.  First, we have to think differently about the whole cosmos.  Heaven and earth are not, so to speak, two different floors—the “upstairs” and “downstairs” of the universe.  Instead, the Bible claims that heaven and earth are “two different dimensions of God’s good creation” (N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, page 111) and that these two dimensions interact continuously.

               Second, we proclaim that Jesus is now present in heaven in his fully embodied, resurrected state.  When Jesus ascended, he did not abandon the human existence he took on at birth.  The Incarnation is a permanent state, not a temporary stop on the journey.

               Third, we declare that from the heavenly dimension, the Risen Jesus can connect with any part of the earthly dimension at any time—or with all parts of the earthly dimension at once.  Time and space are different in the heavenly dimension of the cosmos.  Christians who don’t understand this make all sorts of mistakes.  One is the suggestion that Jesus cannot be both “at the right hand of God” and physically present in Holy Communion at the same time.  In fact, it is because Jesus sits on the seat of God’s power that Jesus is present to us in Holy Baptism, in Holy Communion, in the life of the Church, and in the faces of the poor (see Matthew 25:31-45).

               Fourth, therefore, we proclaim that the Ascension is the enthronement of Jesus Christ as Savior, Ruler and Lord of all things.  We don’t really need, for example, the Festival of Christ the King at the end of the church year (a festival invented by a portion of the Church in 1925).  On Ascension Day we celebrate the eternal rule of Jesus.  More than that, as the Church we live out that rule.  N. T. Wright puts it this way.  “The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world, vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always—as Paul puts it in one of his letters—bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed” (Surprised by Hope, page 112).

               The ancient Eucharistic proclamation captures it well: Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again!  Let us live each day in the power of the Risen and Ascended Christ, our Savior, Ruler and Lord!