Jesus' Status... and Ours

Why do we bother celebrating Ascension Day, the day that Jesus was lifted up to heaven? It seems to be a fantastic story! What does it have to say to us? We might be surprised if we dig behind the details! If you're curious, you might want to read my sermon.

The Ascension of Jesus is one of those events in the Christian year that most Protestants don’t know anything about. We all know what the Nativity is. That’s Christmas! We all know what Easter is. That’s when Jesus rose from the dead. Some of us even know about Pentecost. That’s when the Holy Spirit filled Jesus’ disciples with the power to spread the gospel. (We’ll celebrate Pentecost in two weeks.) But the Ascension? What in the world is that about? And Luke tells the story twice: once at the end of his gospel (Luke 24:44-53) and once in the beginning of the book of Acts (Acts 1:1-11). He obviously wants to make sure that we don’t miss it.

But this story is hard for many of us to take seriously these days. Maybe that’s why we tend to ignore it. Luke shows us a picture of Jesus being physically lifted up into the clouds to return to God in heaven. But we know that heaven is not physically “up there” in the sky; otherwise satellites and the space shuttle and the Hubble telescope would have seen it! Besides, most of us don’t picture heaven as a literal place, but as an eternal reality that we will experience fully when we die. We believe that heaven exists; but we don’t worry much about its physical location. So why do we even bother with this story? Why not just set the Ascension quietly aside and treat it like crazy old Aunt Myrtle? You all know about Aunt Myrtle. We know that she’s there, but she doesn’t make much sense, and we ignore her as much as possible. The fact is that the Ascension, like crazy old Aunt Myrtle, may have some important things to say to us; so maybe we should take it seriously for at least one day a year. So let’s get past the details of Jesus being physically lifted up, and see what the story wants to tell us.

To begin with, Jesus’ ascension is a reassurance that Jesus’ presence is still with us. If Jesus is with God, then wherever God is, Jesus is there, too. We know that God’s presence is closer than the very air we breathe; and that’s how close Jesus is, too, both in our joys and in our sorrows. We can’t keep Jesus locked in a dusty history book along with Plato and Shakespeare and King Henry VIII. Oh, Jesus is historical; but Jesus is also with us right now and he will always be with us! And the story tells us a second thing that’s just as important: Jesus is God’s right-hand man. Jesus is still in control of things, just as he was in control of the sea and the storms and the loaves and the fishes during his earthly lifetime. Jesus didn’t disappear into religious Never-Never Land at the end of his earthly life. Although his physical presence may be gone, his power is still active in the world around us – and in our own lives. The Apostles’ Creed states this beautifully. Our congregation doesn’t use it during worship very often, but I imagine that many of you know it. It says that “on the third day [Jesus] rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; and from there he will come to judge both the living and the dead.”

But the Ascension not only tells us about Jesus’ status; it tells us something about ourselves, too. It tells us that the eternal life that Jesus has promised us begins right now! Jesus has assured us that because we live in him, when he is alive, we are alive. Jesus’ ascension lifts us right up into the presence of God like a heavenly elevator! When I was a little girl, elevators were all run by human operators. You couldn’t just push a button for the floor that you wanted; someone had to move a lever to make the elevator go up and down. The Penney’s store in downtown Piqua had three stories. I remember the elevator operator, who was a very nice lady who had the mellow voice of a radio announcer. When the door would open on the ground floor, she would announce, “Going up!” and up you would go. Jesus’ ascension is just like that; only it’s Jesus who’s running the elevator. When we live in him, he lifts us up! St. Paul was big on this understanding. He believed that, as Christians, we are spiritually joined with Jesus. That’s why in the gospel of John, Jesus says that he is the vine and we are the branches. In some mysterious sense that we’ll never fully understand, we are a real part of Christ. As we live with Jesus and in Jesus, we come to resemble him more and more completely. We are being transformed into the very image of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now, when we look around us, that may be hard to swallow. Most people don’t look a whole lot like Jesus. Let’s be honest. We don’t look a lot like Jesus! And we don’t act a lot like Jesus, either. In fact, Christians behave pretty much like everybody else. We get hung up on details that really don’t matter, like “what time should worship start on Sunday morning.” We worry over stuff that doesn’t matter in the long run, like “What kind of car should I buy?” Some of us even lose our temper when somebody cuts in front of us in the check-out line at Kroger. But don’t be discouraged about that. We’re all a work in progress. We all have to start somewhere; and moving along our Christian walk is slow work. But we’ll all get there eventually. One day, when our earthly lives are over, we’ll see that elevator door open in front of us with the light of heaven shining out of it. When we step into it, we’ll probably look pretty much like we do now. But when we step off of it, we’ll be the new creations that were started in this world, but will be finished in the next. And it’s all because Jesus ascended into heaven, and because he promises to take us with him! That’s something that I want to celebrate – not just on Ascension Day, but every single day of the year!