Jesus Ascends to Be God with Us
Eric Lemonholm
June 5, 2011
Ascension
Today is a prelude to next week, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Today is Ascension Sunday.
Now, Ascension is nothing but a fancy word that comes from the verb “to ascend”, to “go up.” We could just as well call today Go-Up Sunday, or even Elevator Up Sunday.
There was a time, after Jesus’ Resurrection on Easter Sunday, when the Risen Jesus appeared to his disciples and friends many times.
During those 40 odd days, Jesus spoke with his disciples about the kingdom of God.
He promised that the Holy Spirit will come upon them, and then they would go and share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the world.
That time was essential to ground the disciples in the knowledge of God through God’s word in the Bible and a relationship with Jesus as their risen Lord.
Their Rabbi, their teacher, had become their Lord, their God made flesh.
It took some time for that reality to sink in.
Then Jesus gave them a blessing, and he was gone.
Jesus “was lifted up” and taken into Heaven. That is the Ascension, the Going-Up, of Jesus.
Recently, our confirmands, Jana and Christine, finished their reading of the Gospel of Luke.
They asked about the paradox that, even though Jesus was raised physically, in the flesh – he even ate fish with his friends – yet he could appear and disappear at will, even appearing in the middle of a locked room.
His closest friends could meet him and not recognize him.
With the two disciples at Emmaus, he simply disappears when they do recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
It seems that Jesus is really, physically present, and yet more than physically present.
His resurrection life is not the same as his life before the crucifixion.
The idea of Jesus being arrested and crucified again is absurd: Jesus has conquered death and hell, sin and evil.
Earthly limitations do not seem to apply.
Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven is a continuation or fulfillment of Jesus’ Resurrection.
There was a time when I was in junior high when I had trouble with the idea of Heaven.
I had always been told that Heaven was “up there,” and truly that is how we often think and talk.
We even pray that way sometimes. So often when we pray, we either look up to God or we bow our heads in reverence to God, who is above us.
Before the modern era, people thought that the sun, the moon, and the stars were on hollow spheres that circled the earth. If you went through the spheres, you’d find Heaven, a physical place literally “up there” from here.
But in school I learned that “up there” was the vastness of outer space.
- Our planet is one of eight or so planets that encircle the sun.
- Our sun is on the outer edge of a galaxy filled with about 100 billion suns or stars, and possibly trillions of planets.
- Our galaxy is one of about 100 billion galaxies in the known universe.
- Human telescopes have looked all over the heavens, billions of light years into space, and have yet to spot Heaven.
Clearly, the way to Heaven is not just by going up there, into space.
I remember, in junior high, having doubts about Heaven because of what I learned about our universe. When I heard the story of Jesus’ going up into Heaven, I had my doubts.
It was the kind of situation where a little knowledge can be dangerous.
What helped me out of that time of doubt was a little more knowledge, plus a touch of wisdom.
You see, as I learned more about our universe, I learned a little about what an amazing place it is. There is so much that is beyond our imagination.
One example: we are three-dimensional beings, and we experience a fourth dimension of time.
Physicists think there may be 11 dimensions to our universe—7 of which are all around us, but we humans cannot directly experience them.
That kind of thing blows my mind; it is beyond my imagination.
These days, scientists are returning to faith, because as they learn more about our universe, they begin to see it as an amazing creation of Someone infinitely greater than us.
I remember, as an inquisitive teenager, being amazed at the wonders of God’s creation,
and realizing that, if the world God created is so huge and so amazing,
then God’s dwelling place, Heaven, must be infinitely more beautiful and amazing.
I realized that, if 7 dimensions we cannot see or feel or even comprehend surround us, how much more amazing must Heaven be!
If Heaven is wherever God dwells, and if at the same time God’s Holy Spirit can be in Heaven and everywhere in God’s creation, then, from God’s perspective, Heaven and earth are not separated by any space or time whatsoever.
That’s why our tendency to think of God being “up there” in Heaven and of us being “down here” on earth is not always very helpful.
In terms of God’s majesty and glory and power, God is indeed ‘above’ us, infinitely more than we will ever be.
But if we think of God being way up there somewhere, far away from us,
then it is easy to think that God is far away,
too far to help us in times of need,
too far to notice us,
too far to love.
If we thought that when Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven, he went somewhere infinitely far away, then how would we have communion with Christ at the Lord’s Supper, or in prayer?
My friends, that is not the Christian view of Heaven.
When Jesus went up into Heaven, he was not abandoning his disciples.
He was not leaving them alone.
No, Jesus went to Heaven so that he could be closer than ever to his disciples, to his world.
He left, but he promised his friends the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus was taken up into Heaven, but he promised to send the Spirit to bathe the disciples in his love, power and joy.
Jesus was not going to physically appear in the world in the same way that he did with his friends after he was raised, but he commissioned his disciples to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the world.
And the message Jesus commissioned us to share is so simple, as Jesus says in Luke 24:
Then [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
Repentance, a change of heart, a turning away from sin, and God’s forgiveness of sin in the name of the crucified and risen Jesus—that is the good news.
Christ calls us to feel sorrow for our sin, our separation from God, and God forgives us our sins for Christ’s sake, restoring our relationship with God, joining Heaven and earth.
God raised Jesus Christ and seated him “in the heavenly places,” not so that Christ could be separated from the world, but so that the power of Christ, the Spirit of Christ, could fill all in all, so that Christ could be Lord of creation.
It amazes me to think about it.
Who is seated at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven?
Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, the wandering Rabbi, the crucified one.
Who can receive the power of God, the Holy Spirit working wonders and salvation?
We “who believe,” who trust in God’s love and forgiveness shared with us by Jesus Christ.
Who is the Lord Jesus Christ’s “body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”?
The followers of Jesus, you and me.
Like the disciples, we do not need to stand looking up toward the heavens looking for Jesus. In God’s time, Jesus will return that way.
In the meantime, we are the church, Christ’s body on earth, called to take his message of repentance and forgiveness to all the world.
With Paul, I pray for Christine, Jana, and all of us that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him,so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you,what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe,according to the working of his great power.Amen!
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