Ascension Sunday

This Sunday is “Ascension Sunday,” when we celebrate what is probably the most under-emphasized “saving act” of Christ.

If you’ve been around the Church for long, you’ve surely heard of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, Christ’s death and Resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. But the Ascension is essential to how the Church has understood salvation! 

Christ’s ascension into heaven, recounted by Luke twice (Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11) is a strange story but is fundamentally important to our future hope and our current life in Christ. 

On the one hand, the ascension is the “crowning” of Christ as the King people were saying he was. He’s kingdom is not “of” this world, but is all of this world, and heaven besides.

In ascending into heaven, Christ is revealed as the King, our King, whose reign will one day come in its fullness. Until then we pray for it.

It is also a profound affirmation of what God is doing via the incarnation of himself in Christ: all along he has been concerned to save human persons, which means human flesh.

We should never get over the fact that, after the ascension, there is human flesh in heaven! In Christ, and no other, has human flesh been made fit to be in God. This is a deep mystery. But insofar as we are united to Christ, we too will share (and do now in some mysterious way) in his place in and with God. Amazing. 

Lastly, just as the ascension reveals the suitability of human flesh for heaven, it functions as the prelude to Pentecost: the revelation of heaven (i.e., the Holy Spirit) for human flesh.

It’s only after the ascension that the Holy Spirit descends upon the Church, on the one hand creating it as such, and on the other hand revealing its nature: the Temple of God. This is true of individual persons in Christ, and their collection as “living stones.” 

Scripture to consider:

• Luke 24:44-53

• Eph. 2:4-7

  
  

Question for your kids

• What do you think it might have been like to talk to Jesus after he came back from the dead? What would you like to ask him?

• Why do you think the disciples worshiped Jesus after he was taken up into heaven?

Peace,

Danny+