Out of This World?

Today – Thursday 26 May 2022 – is Ascension Day. Below is a lightly-edited version of a piece I wrote years back which gets an occasional airing.

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Luke 24:50–53

Christ’s ascension sometimes gets bundled with his resurrection rather than treated as an event in its own right. In fact, as the rhythm of the church’s calendar reminds us, they were separated by forty days. And it stands as significant, with Jesus’ ascension opening up a new era in God’s dealings with the world and with his people in the world.

At the very least, it means Jesus is exalted to the right hand of God, as Peter explains (Acts 2:33–36; 5:31), showing he is less interested in the ‘up-down’ mechanics of the event than he is with the status of his Lord – the ascension confirming him as the king, the fulfilment of God’s centuries-old promises to David.

Beyond this, lose the ascension and we lose the heavenly ministry of Jesus as our High Priest, his very presence with God providing intercession on our behalf, his finished work requiring no repetition or extension of any kind. Lose the ascension and we risk losing the comfort of hope – that one day our weak bodies will be like his glorious body, that the same Jesus who ascended will return as judge and king. And as a human being too – for he did not slip off his humanity to get on with the task of being the exalted Son of God, but has taken it into the very presence of God, wedding us to him for ever, reminding us once again of God’s commitment to restore us and his creation.

Meanwhile, the ascension does not mark the end of his work on earth, but the continuation of it through the church – a mission which can be carried out with confidence because of the position our master now occupies, with all places subject to his rule and all people subject to his oversight – including the places we inhabit and the people we encounter, even today.

As the ascended Lord, he lays claim not just to the church but to all realms of life. And his heavenly location redraws how we think about our ‘location’ – how we live in our earthly ‘spaces’ given the one from whom we take our bearing. Our lives are oriented around the reality of the risen and ascended Christ, his heavenly lordship investing today’s even apparently menial tasks with eternal significance.

On the Ascension (and Being Creatures of the Calendar)

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

It’s become something of a joke that many of us have lost our sense of time through this period. As someone posted on Facebook a few weeks back, ‘for those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay’!

It’s been a reminder of how much we live according to the rhythm of particular calendars. Whether it’s school terms, the football season, summer holidays, or planting the vegetable patch, we are calendar-driven creatures.

As it happens, God made us this way. It’s not long after Noah and his family emerge from the ark that God reaffirms the creational pattern of ‘seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night’ (Genesis 8:22). The Israelite year was punctuated by moments to remember what God had done in saving his people and his ongoing provision for them – Passover, harvest, tabernacles, and so on.

Beyond Christmas and Easter, those of us in free churches don’t tend to pay much attention to Christian festivals. But fellow Christians in other church traditions are far more alert to the changing seasons of the Christian calendar, and they often find their walk with the Lord enriched as a result of reflecting on where we are now in the year.

In any case, all of this is introductory burble to say that tomorrow (Thursday 21 May) is Ascension Day. I wonder if you’ve ever marked it before? We tend to bundle Jesus’ ascension with his resurrection as a single event, but they were separated by nearly six weeks, and Ascension Day is traditionally celebrated on the 40th day after Easter Sunday. (Yes, it’s really 40 days since Easter!)

The early disciples knew this, because they lived through those days. So, Peter is clear on the Day of Pentecost that the climax of what God has done in Jesus is not the resurrection, but Jesus being ‘exalted to the right hand of God’ (Acts 2:33), fulfilling the hopes expressed in Psalm 110 of the Messiah taking his seat at the right hand of the Lord.

If the resurrection affirms that Jesus lives forever, the ascension confirms that he reigns forever. And Jesus’ ascension opens up a new era in God’s dealings with his people and with the world – the era of the giving of the Spirit, the era of Jesus’ ministry as our heavenly High Priest, the era of God’s mission to all nations, the era of hope for what will be when Jesus returns just as he left.

All that is worth marking – and pondering – not least during these times in which we live.

Coming back to where we started, it’s perhaps also a reminder that the church calendar at its best changes the way we experience time and understand reality. It’s all too easy for me to to map my year onto the calendar of the dominant cultural reality, whether that be sports, holidays, or education – important though they are. But part of ‘numbering our days’ in order to ‘gain a heart of wisdom’ (Psalm 90:12) is to live according to a more ultimate reality – one that marks time with the coming of Christ as the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes and his coming again at the renewal of all things.

All of which is to say, Happy Ascension Day!

Out of This World?

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. An earlier version of it first appeared in a book, Whole Life, Whole Bible: 50 Readings on Living in the Light of Scripture, written with LICC colleagues Margaret Killingray and Helen Parry (published by BRF).

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Luke 24:50-53

Christ’s ascension sometimes gets bundled with his resurrection rather than treated as an event in its own right. In fact, as the rhythm of the church’s calendar reminds us, they were separated by forty days. And it stands as significant, with Jesus’ ascension opening up a new era in God’s dealings with the world and with his people in the world.

At the very least, it means Jesus is exalted to the right hand of God, as Peter explains (Acts 2:33-36; 5:31), showing he is less interested in the ‘up-down’ mechanics of the event than he is with the status of his Lord – the ascension confirming him as the king, the fulfilment of God’s centuries-old promises to David.

Beyond this, lose the ascension and we lose the heavenly ministry of Jesus as our High Priest, his very presence with God providing intercession on our behalf, his finished work requiring no repetition or extension of any kind. Lose the ascension and we risk losing the comfort of hope – that one day our weak bodies will be like his glorious body, that the same Jesus who ascended will return as judge and king. And as a human being too – for he did not slip off his humanity to get on with the task of being the exalted Son of God, but has taken it into the very presence of God, wedding us to him for ever, reminding us once again of God’s commitment to restore us and his creation.

Meanwhile, the ascension does not mark the end of his work on earth, but the continuation of it through the church – a mission which can be carried out with confidence because of the position our master now occupies, with all places subject to his rule and all people subject to his oversight – including the places we inhabit and the people we encounter, even today.

As the ascended Lord, he lays claim not just to the church but to all realms of life. And his heavenly location redraws how we think about our ‘location’ – how we live in our earthly ‘spaces’ given the one from whom we take our bearing. Our lives are oriented around the reality of the risen and ascended Christ, his heavenly lordship investing today’s even apparently menial tasks with eternal significance.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (38/50) – His Ascension to Heaven: Out of This World?

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the thirty-eighth of the fifty emails.

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
Luke 24:50-53

Christ’s ascension sometimes gets bundled with his resurrection rather than treated as an event in its own right. In fact, as the rhythm of the church’s calendar reminds us, they were separated by forty days. That rhythm, itself informed by the biblical story, enables us to see things as they really are – from God’s perspective – with Jesus’ ascension opening up a new era in the history of his dealings with the world and his people in the world.

At the very least, it means Jesus is exalted to the right hand of God, as Peter explains (Acts 2:33-36; 5:31), showing he is less interested in the ‘up-down’ mechanics of the event than he is with the status of his Lord – the ascension confirming him as the king, the fulfilment of God’s promises to David.

Beyond this, lose the ascension and we lose the heavenly ministry of Jesus as our High Priest, his very presence with God providing intercession on our behalf, his finished work requiring no repetition or extension of any kind. Lose the ascension and we risk losing the comfort of hope – that one day our weak bodies will be like his glorious body, that the same Jesus who ascended will return as judge and king. And as a man too – for he did not slip off his humanity to get on with the task of being the exalted Son of God, but has taken it into the very presence of God, wedding us to him forever, reminding us once again of God’s commitment to restore his creation.

Meanwhile, the ascension does not mark the end of his work on earth, but the continuation of it through the church – a mission which can be carried out with confidence because of the position our Master now occupies, with all places subject to his rule and all people subject to his oversight – including the places we inhabit and the people we encounter, even today.

As the ascended Lord, he lays claim not just to the church but to all realms of life. And his heavenly location redraws how we think about our ‘location’, how we live in our earthly spaces given the one from whom we take our bearing, our lives oriented around the reality of the risen and ascended Christ, his heavenly lordship investing today’s even apparently menial tasks with eternal significance.

For further reflection and action:

1. Read and reflect on some of the passages in Hebrews which describe Jesus’ ascension and ministry as the Great High Priest – 1:3; 2:9; 4:14-16; 6:19-20; 7:23-8:2; 10:19-25; 12:2.

2. An old adage suggests that some Christians can be too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use. In keeping with our reflections on Christ’s ascension, how far is it important for us to be heavenly minded precisely to be of earthly use?

3. Try to chat with a fellow Christian this week about the ongoing significance of the ascension for our lives as disciples of Christ.

Michael Scott Horton on Jesus’ Ascension

Michael Scott Horton, ‘Transforming Culture with a Messiah Complex’ (9Marks, November/December, 2007).

Today – 21 May 2009 – is Ascension Day…

Michael Scott Horton has written in several places about the significance of the ascension, including in the above essay from which I freely draw here.

The ascension, recorded by Luke (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11) often gets bound up with the resurrection rather than treated as an event in its own right. In fact, Jesus’ ascension opens up a stage within history that keeps us looking forward to his return.

In ascending, Jesus does not abandon history. On the contrary, arguably he redefines all that has gone before. The time that the church now occupies because of the ascension is defined neither by full presence nor full absence, but by a tension between ‘this age’ and ‘the age to come’.

In such a situation, the church, as the body of Christ, can come to see itself as his visible and earthly replacement – his ‘incarnation’ on earth. In fact, however, Horton discourages such talk of the church being the continuing incarnation of Christ, the active agent of redemption, which completes the work that Christ came to accomplish.

The problem with the language of the church being ‘incarnational’, he holds, is that it risks depriving Christ of his specificity and uniqueness. His person and work becomes a ‘model’ or ‘vision’ for ecclesial action rather than a completed event to which the church bears witness.

Moreover, the substitution of the church for Christ’s incarnation and reconciling work risks distracting our attention from Christ’s parousia. The church needs to acknowledge Christ’s ‘absence’ as well as his presence. And this shapes the way we minister and engage in culture meanwhile, and what we might rightly expect as we do so, looking forward to the time when he returns in glory and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.

Meanwhile, we are called to increase in godliness through the ordinary means of grace in the church. And in our secular vocations we are called to ‘aspire to lead a quite life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside and that you may lack nothing’ (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12).