A Name Above All Others
Sermon
CALLED TO JERUSALEM: SENT TO THE WORLD
Sermons For Lent And Easter
I. Jesus Christ is Lord!
Deus ascendit! "God has gone up!"
With the ancient cry of the church, we announce the stunningly good news of this day: The risen Christ is now our ascended Lord! One great event has necessarily begotten another. Paul quotes an early Christian hymn, bringing us the good news in something of a narrative poem: "And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:8-10)."
This is the day when Jesus receives still another name. Perhaps we might better call it a title. Jesus, a form of Joshua ("God saves his people"), is the name given to Joseph by the angel who announced to Joseph the coming incarnation of God through Mary, Joseph's betrothed. Christ is the title given Jesus by his followers. It is the Greek form of the Hebrew word Messiah. Messiah is to say Anointed in Hebrew. When the high priest interrogated Jesus, he asked "Are you the Christ (Mark 14:61)?" He is asking "Are you God's anointed, the Messiah?" Early Christians answered with a resounding "Yes!" Thus we speak of Jesus Christ. Christ is not his last name, his family name. It is a statement of faith. Jesus is God's anointed. The holy one of Israel, the Messiah. Jesus is the name given by the angel. Christ is the title given by the church. Today, there is a third name ... or a second title. It is not easy to keep them apart.
This is Ascension Day, and on this day God has given "Him a name that is above every name." Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is also Lord. Just as Easter was his resurrection day, today is Christ's coronation day, the day of Christ's enthronement by God to be "King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, 19:16)!"
This is the day Jesus returns to the glory of the Father from whom he came on that day when the "Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14)," that same day when he "emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a servant, and was born in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:7)." This is the day when a chorus of angels who sang at Christmas strike up a new song as the obedient son returns. One can almost overhear the conversation of him who taught us to dare to call God Father: "Dad, I'm home (Romans 8: 15b-16)!"
II. Which Way Is Up?
But hold on! How can our minds ever grasp what our hearts are already celebrating? Deus Ascendit! God has gone up? When? Where? Which way is up?
We have fixed in our minds the space shuttle photograph of our earth spinning dramatically against the dark background of the infinity of space. In these late decades of the 20th century, we have ourselves blasted off into space and sent probes deep into our universe. No longer can we speak of the threelayered creation of what is "in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:10)," even if we do catch ourselves, now and again thinking in spiritual terms of "things above and things below." Of course, we know what we mean. How does one ever embrace so much as a shadow of the fullness of God in earthly language? It is written: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than ybur ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9)." It is finally a language of the symbols of authority, not a language of geography. Isn't it so?
Much the same has to be said about Luke's account of the ascension. Only Luke gives us a narrative story of the ascension, though all the gospels report it in one fashion or another. With Matthew the ascension is largely assumed. After ~being seen in the Garden on Easter, Jesus later appears to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee, giving the Great Commission.
In John's account, Jesus cautions Mary not to hold him because he had not yet ascended to the Father (John 20:17). Eight days later, he invites Thomas to touch him (John 20:26-27). He must have ascended sometime within those eight days. In Mark 16:9-19, the ascension is reported without specific location or time.
Even Luke's accounts have interesting conflicts. In Luke 24 the ascension takes place at Bethany on the evening of Easter Day. In Acts 1, it occurs 40 days after Easter on Mount Olivet. The geographic inconsistencies can be explained easily enough. Luke was clearly not familiar with the geography of Palestine. Bethany is a village at the crest and edge of the Mount of Olives
- Mount Olivet. Luke could easily have believed them to be the same location.
The time difference may be explained by the purposes of Luke's two books. In Luke's gospel, chapter 24 appears to have been written as a special Easter worship narrative.2 Since Easter and ascension were intimately related in importance and in the "mingled" memories of the first-century community, it was a simple matter for Luke to roll them into the same day, keeping them as individual and separate events, one vindicating the teaching and ministry of the Christ and the other celebrating the enthronement of him who had come from the Father and who in this moment now returns.
In the book of Acts, Luke sets out to report in detail the first decades of the missionary spread of the church, from the upper rooms of Jerusalem - still cowering in fear - to the very Praetorian Guard in the emperor's palace at Rome. Here, unlike chapter 24 in the first volume, there is a need to spell out in detail the practice and preparation of the body of believers before and after the ascension and until the day of Pentecost.
In further consideration of the time differences in Luke's account, one must recall that the understanding of the gospel and the unfolding of the historic events were matters of gradual growth and insight that continued well beyond the moments themselves. So much had happened so quickly. Ordering the early church's collective memory must certainly have been a unique challenge.
Present-day pilgrims to the Holy Land are fine examples. They visit so many sites and share so many new facts that in short order memories tumble on top of one another, confusing locations in Galilee with sites visited in Judea! Many days of "unpacking" and reflecting are needed to reassemble into more accurate memories all they had learned and experienced. Luke himself attests to that challenge for first century Christians (Luke 1:1-4)! One of the things learned as they reassembled memories was the important sequence of resurrection, instruction, ascension and the wind and fire of Pentecost. Easter and the ascension needed Pentecost just as Good Friday needed Easter.3 With the resurrection and ascension, the responsibility for the mission of God's redemptive initiatives passed from Jesus to his followers, the disciples/apostles and those who would believe because of their witness (John 17:20-26). Ascension Day was the day when the official transfer actually began, a transfer that desperately awaited the empowerment of Pentecost. It was also the day of assigned accountability for the mission. "He will come again ...!" The relationship with Christ had changed dramatically, but it had not ended. He would exercise his lordship over the church and its mission through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Easter needed Pentecost!
III. The Lord Of Life
All that had gone before and all that followed was centered upon God's ongoing and relentless initiatives for our reconciliation with him - that is to say, our salvation.
Jesus came into the world for our salvation. It cannot be more clearly spoken that John has written: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him (John 3:16-17)." Jesus would say of himself: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:1Ob-11)." Again he said: "For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me (John 12:49-50)." Jesus had come to fulfill his Father's mission. He is the Lord of Life.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus prepared the disciples for the continuation of this ministry, for the time when he would no longer be present with them in the same way. He taught them to have confidence in the Spirit's power: "This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict (Luke 21:13-15)." He sent them on crusades.
None can forget the excitement when the 70 returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:17-20)."
IV. The Lord Of The Church
Following the resurrection, it was clear that the teaching parish and the internship were past and soon the mission and its ministry would be in their hands. They had been called by the master to go to Jerusalem with him. Now they were to be sent into the world ... in his name, disciples of the Christ, God's anointed one, the Messiah.
During these all-too-short days between the resurrection and the ascension, the conversations with the risen Lord appeared to suggest that Jesus would return rather soon, and that the mission of Jesus' followers would be relatively brief. One could gain a similar impression from the angels' chiding at the time of the ascension. However, ...
By the time Luke wrote his accounts of the ascension, the followers of Christ, the people of The Way, as they were called in the beginning, were discovering the length and breadth of their mission. Paul had been imprisoned in Rome for a while, he had completed three missionary journeys, and the gospel had spread from the back rooms of Jerusalem to the palace of the Roman emperor. Still, Jesus had not returned.
Carefully and intentionally, with the care Luke reports in the first verses of both the gospel and the history of the acts of the apostles, the church set about to organize itself more carefully, and to build permanent records of the events of Jesus' ministry and of the missionary work of the early church. One simply does not write history if the world is expected to end tomorrow. Clearly the church was settling in to be faithful to the Lord of the church in the long haul.
This was not without its tensions. Was Christ mistaken? Had they misunderstood? The evidence of this struggle is seen throughout the New Testament writings, even in the earliest letters of Paul. This body of material comprises the earliest books of the New Testament.
Of this they were certain: Christ was Lord! Christ had established the church and ordained it by the Holy Spirit's anointing. This church was those whom God called out and set apart in order to declare the "marvelous deeds of him who had called them out of darkness and into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9-10)." They had been warned about gazing into heaven and wondering about the time of the parousia, the second coming of Christ. By the time Luke decided to write, there was a conscious determination to equip the body of believers for the generations to follow, faithful to the ministry that had been transferred by commission on Ascension Day. With the clear expectation of Christ's return and the judgment that could logically follow, another lesson of Ascension Day, the early believers were responsibly organizing their memories and their proclamation. James Dunning said it best: "The mission has a church," that body of believers who were called out, set apart and gathered into the body of Christ to continue his ministry on earth until he comes again.
V. Lord Of The Church Then And Now
Jesus Christ is Lord of the church today as he was then, and the church continues under the mandate of the mission.
Some in our generation, fiercely independent, unimpressed by tradition and suspicious of all organizations and of authority, ask: "Who needs the church?" The answer is clear: "God does!" He fashioned it. He created it with the authority of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and on Ascension Day he transferred to the church the responsiblity of being Christ's body on earth, the very real and present incarnation of the Son and of the Father.
To the contemporary charge that "I can be a Christian without being in church," we have the witness of Thomas' experience and the strong witness to the role of the community of faith in the post-resurrection appearances of the Christ. "Peter, feed my sheep (John 21:15-18)." "Go and make disciples of all nations ... (Matthew 28:16-20)." The church is not the sum total of believers.
The church is the gathering of believers into purposeful community for the work of the active proclamation of the gospel within the believing community and in the arenas of the world - from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. It is a community whose proclamation is its life, its very justification for being.
Diet enthusiasts tell us "You are what you eat." Librarians tell us "You are what you read." Similarly, it could be said that Christians are what they preach. Preaching requires us to become the good news for others as Christ was for us. We must always be ready to give an account of our hope (1 Peter 3:15).
When with the support of the faith community at home David Livingstone was working in Central Africa, H. M. Stanley wrote of him: "If I had been with him any longer, I would have been compelled to be a Christian; yet, he never spoke a word to me about it at all."4
On Ascension Day, the mission of the enthroned Christ is given to the followers of the Christ, the apostles and other believers. Jesus is enthroned as the Lord of heaven, the Lord of earth and the Lord of the church. The life span of this church shall be from Jesus' departure until his return.
The mission is reconciliation. God's goal is the salvation of all, that they may inherit the promises prepared for those who are his children.
Ascension Day establishes the Lordship of Christ, commissions the church and sets our eyes upon our true commonwealth which is in heaven.
When the mission is over, the challenge faithfully met, and the time for rest has come, then we shall have our eyes on the very courts of heaven, as did our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul writes with single mindedness about the mission we all share: "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14)."
VI. The Upward Call
Jesus is the Lord of heaven and heaven is his home. We have learned it well in this life. Home need not be all that much. Yet, when we get there, it is everything. Home is who we are and where we belong. It's that place where we can hang up our hat and kick off our shoes at the end of the day and be at peace with those who share love with us. It is a feeling as well as a location, a relationship and a place of rest and renewal.
Ascension Day is the story of Jesus' homecoming. The threads of homesickness had been woven throughout Jesus' final discourses. So much of what Jesus had said and done affirmed his claim to being his Father's son. "Before Abraham was, I am" he tells his testy listeners in John's gospel. He is transfigured with Moses and Elijah. A voice from heaven speaks at his baptism and at the transfiguration. And finally, the cloud takes him up to heaven, the same cloud upon which he will return.
Ascension Day is the fulfillment, in front of eyewitnesses, of another earlier promise: "In my Father's house there are many rooms ... I go to prepare a place for you (John 14:2)."
So intense was this sense of homecoming that for several centuries early Christians celebrated the ascension in Bethlehem5 at the place of Jesus' birth. It was not until about the eighth century C.E. that the festival began to be celebrated on Mount Olivet, even though the location had been known to Christians - at least through Luke's writings - from the beginning.6
Deus ascendit! What has come down must now go up. The ascension is profoundly tied to the whole incarnation message, and Bethlehem was a solid theological statement, which is, finally, of more importance than the questions of either geography or time. (Incidentally, Saint Helena built lovely churches at both locations in the fourth century.) Christmas carols and hymns quite naturally embrace the ascension in one or more stanzas. A hymn of the Venerable Bede (679-735 C.E.) prays:
O Lord, our homeward pathway bend, That our unwearied hearts ascend, Alleluia! Where seated on your Father's throne, You reign as King of kings alone. Alleluia!7
The followers of Jesus are homebound, too. The ancient Ascension Day liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom proclaimed: "Through the mystery of the ascension, we, who seemed unworthy of God's earth, are taken up into heaven ... Our very nature, against which the Cherubim guarded the gates of Paradise, is enthroned today high above all Cherubim."8
The ascension fulfills salvation. He was born like us so we could be like him. Again, a whole host of Christmas carols and hymns repeat the theme. A hymn of Luther says it as well as any: "Forlorn and lowly was your birth that we might rise to heaven from earth. Hallelujah!"9
A new hymn by Jaroslav Vajda catches the excitement, the expectation and the hope of the day for us.
Up through endless ranks of angels
Cries triumphant in his ears,
To his heav'nly throne ascending,
Having vanquished all their fears.
Christ looks down on all his faithful,
Leaving them in happy tears.
To our lives of wanton wandering,
Send your promised Spirit guide;
Through our lives of fear and failure,
With your power and love abide;
Welcome us as you were welcomed,
To an endless Easter-tide.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Oh, to breathe that Spirit's grace!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Oh, to see the Father's face!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Oh, to feel the Son's embrace!10
On this day our Lord Jesus Christ has reascended his throne and his title is King of kings and Lord of lords. On this day the church has received its commission, yet in force in our day. On this day, believers have received a clear vision of their hope. It's Ascension Day! Deus Ascendit!
Amen!
End Notes
1. John P. Meier, The Marginal Jew, (New York, Doubleday, 19?1), p. 175. Meier translates the Aramaic word "Abba" as it appears in Mark 14:36 as "My own dear Father." For this writer to translate it as "Dad" or as "Daddy" as do many others, is probably taking a small bit of liberty. However, the tenacious survival of this word in later translations and Paul's own reference to the Aramaic word (Romans 8:15b-16) supports this word's prime importance because of the familiar family senses of intimacy and affection carried by this word. Thus many commentators for a while have suggested that "Abba," translated as "father," is better understood in our day as "Daddy." Just so the Spirit promised to the followers of our Lord on Ascension Day and fulfilled on Pentecost is the one who "cries out with us, bearing witness with us that we are the children of God."
2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, James L. Mays, Series Editor, (Louisville, John Knox Press, 1990), p. 294.
3. Ibid.
4. William Barclay, The Acts of the Apostles, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1955), p. 3.
5. Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1958), p. 241.
6. Gerhard A. Krodel, Acts, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament, (Minneapolis, Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), p. 63.
7. The Venerable Bede, "A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing," The Lutheran Book of Worship, (Minneapolis, Augsburg Publishing House, 1978), reprinted by permission, Hymn No. 157, Stanza 5, modified by deletion of "alleluias."
8. Weiser, op. cit., p. 240.
9. Martin Luther, "All Praise to You, Eternal Lord," Lutheran Book of Worship, op. cit., Hymn No. 48, Stanza 3.
10. Jaroslav J. Vajda, "Up through Endless Ranks of Angels," Lutheran Book of Worship, op. cit., Hymn No. 159, Stanzas 1, 3, 4. Text copyright (c) Augsburg Publishing House. Reprinted by permission of Augsburg Fortress.
Deus ascendit! "God has gone up!"
With the ancient cry of the church, we announce the stunningly good news of this day: The risen Christ is now our ascended Lord! One great event has necessarily begotten another. Paul quotes an early Christian hymn, bringing us the good news in something of a narrative poem: "And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:8-10)."
This is the day when Jesus receives still another name. Perhaps we might better call it a title. Jesus, a form of Joshua ("God saves his people"), is the name given to Joseph by the angel who announced to Joseph the coming incarnation of God through Mary, Joseph's betrothed. Christ is the title given Jesus by his followers. It is the Greek form of the Hebrew word Messiah. Messiah is to say Anointed in Hebrew. When the high priest interrogated Jesus, he asked "Are you the Christ (Mark 14:61)?" He is asking "Are you God's anointed, the Messiah?" Early Christians answered with a resounding "Yes!" Thus we speak of Jesus Christ. Christ is not his last name, his family name. It is a statement of faith. Jesus is God's anointed. The holy one of Israel, the Messiah. Jesus is the name given by the angel. Christ is the title given by the church. Today, there is a third name ... or a second title. It is not easy to keep them apart.
This is Ascension Day, and on this day God has given "Him a name that is above every name." Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is also Lord. Just as Easter was his resurrection day, today is Christ's coronation day, the day of Christ's enthronement by God to be "King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, 19:16)!"
This is the day Jesus returns to the glory of the Father from whom he came on that day when the "Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14)," that same day when he "emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a servant, and was born in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:7)." This is the day when a chorus of angels who sang at Christmas strike up a new song as the obedient son returns. One can almost overhear the conversation of him who taught us to dare to call God Father: "Dad, I'm home (Romans 8: 15b-16)!"
II. Which Way Is Up?
But hold on! How can our minds ever grasp what our hearts are already celebrating? Deus Ascendit! God has gone up? When? Where? Which way is up?
We have fixed in our minds the space shuttle photograph of our earth spinning dramatically against the dark background of the infinity of space. In these late decades of the 20th century, we have ourselves blasted off into space and sent probes deep into our universe. No longer can we speak of the threelayered creation of what is "in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:10)," even if we do catch ourselves, now and again thinking in spiritual terms of "things above and things below." Of course, we know what we mean. How does one ever embrace so much as a shadow of the fullness of God in earthly language? It is written: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than ybur ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9)." It is finally a language of the symbols of authority, not a language of geography. Isn't it so?
Much the same has to be said about Luke's account of the ascension. Only Luke gives us a narrative story of the ascension, though all the gospels report it in one fashion or another. With Matthew the ascension is largely assumed. After ~being seen in the Garden on Easter, Jesus later appears to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee, giving the Great Commission.
In John's account, Jesus cautions Mary not to hold him because he had not yet ascended to the Father (John 20:17). Eight days later, he invites Thomas to touch him (John 20:26-27). He must have ascended sometime within those eight days. In Mark 16:9-19, the ascension is reported without specific location or time.
Even Luke's accounts have interesting conflicts. In Luke 24 the ascension takes place at Bethany on the evening of Easter Day. In Acts 1, it occurs 40 days after Easter on Mount Olivet. The geographic inconsistencies can be explained easily enough. Luke was clearly not familiar with the geography of Palestine. Bethany is a village at the crest and edge of the Mount of Olives
- Mount Olivet. Luke could easily have believed them to be the same location.
The time difference may be explained by the purposes of Luke's two books. In Luke's gospel, chapter 24 appears to have been written as a special Easter worship narrative.2 Since Easter and ascension were intimately related in importance and in the "mingled" memories of the first-century community, it was a simple matter for Luke to roll them into the same day, keeping them as individual and separate events, one vindicating the teaching and ministry of the Christ and the other celebrating the enthronement of him who had come from the Father and who in this moment now returns.
In the book of Acts, Luke sets out to report in detail the first decades of the missionary spread of the church, from the upper rooms of Jerusalem - still cowering in fear - to the very Praetorian Guard in the emperor's palace at Rome. Here, unlike chapter 24 in the first volume, there is a need to spell out in detail the practice and preparation of the body of believers before and after the ascension and until the day of Pentecost.
In further consideration of the time differences in Luke's account, one must recall that the understanding of the gospel and the unfolding of the historic events were matters of gradual growth and insight that continued well beyond the moments themselves. So much had happened so quickly. Ordering the early church's collective memory must certainly have been a unique challenge.
Present-day pilgrims to the Holy Land are fine examples. They visit so many sites and share so many new facts that in short order memories tumble on top of one another, confusing locations in Galilee with sites visited in Judea! Many days of "unpacking" and reflecting are needed to reassemble into more accurate memories all they had learned and experienced. Luke himself attests to that challenge for first century Christians (Luke 1:1-4)! One of the things learned as they reassembled memories was the important sequence of resurrection, instruction, ascension and the wind and fire of Pentecost. Easter and the ascension needed Pentecost just as Good Friday needed Easter.3 With the resurrection and ascension, the responsibility for the mission of God's redemptive initiatives passed from Jesus to his followers, the disciples/apostles and those who would believe because of their witness (John 17:20-26). Ascension Day was the day when the official transfer actually began, a transfer that desperately awaited the empowerment of Pentecost. It was also the day of assigned accountability for the mission. "He will come again ...!" The relationship with Christ had changed dramatically, but it had not ended. He would exercise his lordship over the church and its mission through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Easter needed Pentecost!
III. The Lord Of Life
All that had gone before and all that followed was centered upon God's ongoing and relentless initiatives for our reconciliation with him - that is to say, our salvation.
Jesus came into the world for our salvation. It cannot be more clearly spoken that John has written: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him (John 3:16-17)." Jesus would say of himself: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:1Ob-11)." Again he said: "For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me (John 12:49-50)." Jesus had come to fulfill his Father's mission. He is the Lord of Life.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus prepared the disciples for the continuation of this ministry, for the time when he would no longer be present with them in the same way. He taught them to have confidence in the Spirit's power: "This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict (Luke 21:13-15)." He sent them on crusades.
None can forget the excitement when the 70 returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:17-20)."
IV. The Lord Of The Church
Following the resurrection, it was clear that the teaching parish and the internship were past and soon the mission and its ministry would be in their hands. They had been called by the master to go to Jerusalem with him. Now they were to be sent into the world ... in his name, disciples of the Christ, God's anointed one, the Messiah.
During these all-too-short days between the resurrection and the ascension, the conversations with the risen Lord appeared to suggest that Jesus would return rather soon, and that the mission of Jesus' followers would be relatively brief. One could gain a similar impression from the angels' chiding at the time of the ascension. However, ...
By the time Luke wrote his accounts of the ascension, the followers of Christ, the people of The Way, as they were called in the beginning, were discovering the length and breadth of their mission. Paul had been imprisoned in Rome for a while, he had completed three missionary journeys, and the gospel had spread from the back rooms of Jerusalem to the palace of the Roman emperor. Still, Jesus had not returned.
Carefully and intentionally, with the care Luke reports in the first verses of both the gospel and the history of the acts of the apostles, the church set about to organize itself more carefully, and to build permanent records of the events of Jesus' ministry and of the missionary work of the early church. One simply does not write history if the world is expected to end tomorrow. Clearly the church was settling in to be faithful to the Lord of the church in the long haul.
This was not without its tensions. Was Christ mistaken? Had they misunderstood? The evidence of this struggle is seen throughout the New Testament writings, even in the earliest letters of Paul. This body of material comprises the earliest books of the New Testament.
Of this they were certain: Christ was Lord! Christ had established the church and ordained it by the Holy Spirit's anointing. This church was those whom God called out and set apart in order to declare the "marvelous deeds of him who had called them out of darkness and into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9-10)." They had been warned about gazing into heaven and wondering about the time of the parousia, the second coming of Christ. By the time Luke decided to write, there was a conscious determination to equip the body of believers for the generations to follow, faithful to the ministry that had been transferred by commission on Ascension Day. With the clear expectation of Christ's return and the judgment that could logically follow, another lesson of Ascension Day, the early believers were responsibly organizing their memories and their proclamation. James Dunning said it best: "The mission has a church," that body of believers who were called out, set apart and gathered into the body of Christ to continue his ministry on earth until he comes again.
V. Lord Of The Church Then And Now
Jesus Christ is Lord of the church today as he was then, and the church continues under the mandate of the mission.
Some in our generation, fiercely independent, unimpressed by tradition and suspicious of all organizations and of authority, ask: "Who needs the church?" The answer is clear: "God does!" He fashioned it. He created it with the authority of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and on Ascension Day he transferred to the church the responsiblity of being Christ's body on earth, the very real and present incarnation of the Son and of the Father.
To the contemporary charge that "I can be a Christian without being in church," we have the witness of Thomas' experience and the strong witness to the role of the community of faith in the post-resurrection appearances of the Christ. "Peter, feed my sheep (John 21:15-18)." "Go and make disciples of all nations ... (Matthew 28:16-20)." The church is not the sum total of believers.
The church is the gathering of believers into purposeful community for the work of the active proclamation of the gospel within the believing community and in the arenas of the world - from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. It is a community whose proclamation is its life, its very justification for being.
Diet enthusiasts tell us "You are what you eat." Librarians tell us "You are what you read." Similarly, it could be said that Christians are what they preach. Preaching requires us to become the good news for others as Christ was for us. We must always be ready to give an account of our hope (1 Peter 3:15).
When with the support of the faith community at home David Livingstone was working in Central Africa, H. M. Stanley wrote of him: "If I had been with him any longer, I would have been compelled to be a Christian; yet, he never spoke a word to me about it at all."4
On Ascension Day, the mission of the enthroned Christ is given to the followers of the Christ, the apostles and other believers. Jesus is enthroned as the Lord of heaven, the Lord of earth and the Lord of the church. The life span of this church shall be from Jesus' departure until his return.
The mission is reconciliation. God's goal is the salvation of all, that they may inherit the promises prepared for those who are his children.
Ascension Day establishes the Lordship of Christ, commissions the church and sets our eyes upon our true commonwealth which is in heaven.
When the mission is over, the challenge faithfully met, and the time for rest has come, then we shall have our eyes on the very courts of heaven, as did our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul writes with single mindedness about the mission we all share: "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14)."
VI. The Upward Call
Jesus is the Lord of heaven and heaven is his home. We have learned it well in this life. Home need not be all that much. Yet, when we get there, it is everything. Home is who we are and where we belong. It's that place where we can hang up our hat and kick off our shoes at the end of the day and be at peace with those who share love with us. It is a feeling as well as a location, a relationship and a place of rest and renewal.
Ascension Day is the story of Jesus' homecoming. The threads of homesickness had been woven throughout Jesus' final discourses. So much of what Jesus had said and done affirmed his claim to being his Father's son. "Before Abraham was, I am" he tells his testy listeners in John's gospel. He is transfigured with Moses and Elijah. A voice from heaven speaks at his baptism and at the transfiguration. And finally, the cloud takes him up to heaven, the same cloud upon which he will return.
Ascension Day is the fulfillment, in front of eyewitnesses, of another earlier promise: "In my Father's house there are many rooms ... I go to prepare a place for you (John 14:2)."
So intense was this sense of homecoming that for several centuries early Christians celebrated the ascension in Bethlehem5 at the place of Jesus' birth. It was not until about the eighth century C.E. that the festival began to be celebrated on Mount Olivet, even though the location had been known to Christians - at least through Luke's writings - from the beginning.6
Deus ascendit! What has come down must now go up. The ascension is profoundly tied to the whole incarnation message, and Bethlehem was a solid theological statement, which is, finally, of more importance than the questions of either geography or time. (Incidentally, Saint Helena built lovely churches at both locations in the fourth century.) Christmas carols and hymns quite naturally embrace the ascension in one or more stanzas. A hymn of the Venerable Bede (679-735 C.E.) prays:
O Lord, our homeward pathway bend, That our unwearied hearts ascend, Alleluia! Where seated on your Father's throne, You reign as King of kings alone. Alleluia!7
The followers of Jesus are homebound, too. The ancient Ascension Day liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom proclaimed: "Through the mystery of the ascension, we, who seemed unworthy of God's earth, are taken up into heaven ... Our very nature, against which the Cherubim guarded the gates of Paradise, is enthroned today high above all Cherubim."8
The ascension fulfills salvation. He was born like us so we could be like him. Again, a whole host of Christmas carols and hymns repeat the theme. A hymn of Luther says it as well as any: "Forlorn and lowly was your birth that we might rise to heaven from earth. Hallelujah!"9
A new hymn by Jaroslav Vajda catches the excitement, the expectation and the hope of the day for us.
Up through endless ranks of angels
Cries triumphant in his ears,
To his heav'nly throne ascending,
Having vanquished all their fears.
Christ looks down on all his faithful,
Leaving them in happy tears.
To our lives of wanton wandering,
Send your promised Spirit guide;
Through our lives of fear and failure,
With your power and love abide;
Welcome us as you were welcomed,
To an endless Easter-tide.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Oh, to breathe that Spirit's grace!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Oh, to see the Father's face!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Oh, to feel the Son's embrace!10
On this day our Lord Jesus Christ has reascended his throne and his title is King of kings and Lord of lords. On this day the church has received its commission, yet in force in our day. On this day, believers have received a clear vision of their hope. It's Ascension Day! Deus Ascendit!
Amen!
End Notes
1. John P. Meier, The Marginal Jew, (New York, Doubleday, 19?1), p. 175. Meier translates the Aramaic word "Abba" as it appears in Mark 14:36 as "My own dear Father." For this writer to translate it as "Dad" or as "Daddy" as do many others, is probably taking a small bit of liberty. However, the tenacious survival of this word in later translations and Paul's own reference to the Aramaic word (Romans 8:15b-16) supports this word's prime importance because of the familiar family senses of intimacy and affection carried by this word. Thus many commentators for a while have suggested that "Abba," translated as "father," is better understood in our day as "Daddy." Just so the Spirit promised to the followers of our Lord on Ascension Day and fulfilled on Pentecost is the one who "cries out with us, bearing witness with us that we are the children of God."
2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, James L. Mays, Series Editor, (Louisville, John Knox Press, 1990), p. 294.
3. Ibid.
4. William Barclay, The Acts of the Apostles, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1955), p. 3.
5. Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1958), p. 241.
6. Gerhard A. Krodel, Acts, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament, (Minneapolis, Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), p. 63.
7. The Venerable Bede, "A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing," The Lutheran Book of Worship, (Minneapolis, Augsburg Publishing House, 1978), reprinted by permission, Hymn No. 157, Stanza 5, modified by deletion of "alleluias."
8. Weiser, op. cit., p. 240.
9. Martin Luther, "All Praise to You, Eternal Lord," Lutheran Book of Worship, op. cit., Hymn No. 48, Stanza 3.
10. Jaroslav J. Vajda, "Up through Endless Ranks of Angels," Lutheran Book of Worship, op. cit., Hymn No. 159, Stanzas 1, 3, 4. Text copyright (c) Augsburg Publishing House. Reprinted by permission of Augsburg Fortress.
