glorification – Rev. Tim Ehrhardt

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” (New International Version)

Ascension Day often feels like the weird stepchild in the family of church events in the Christian Year. It’s often overlooked without ever really being missed.

O sure, there are a few congregations that worship on this Thursday, coming 40 days after Easter Sunday. And a few more churches will observe Christ’s ascension this coming Sunday. Yet, most Christians will go about their usual business; thus, in my opinion, for what it’s worth, missing a grand opportunity.

It’s hugely important that Christ is now presently sitting at God’s right hand, offering continual prayers on our behalf to the Father. Ascension Day teaches us, and reminds us, that we have an advocate, a champion who has gone before us and secured deliverance from sin, death, and hell.

On top of it all, Christ’s ascension to heaven means that Jesus is the universal ruler; he commands a kingdom which will never end. Ascension Day proclaims from the heights of the clouds that Jesus is Lord – which means nothing and no one else is. It is because of his ascension that Jesus can authoritatively grant us repentance, forgiveness, and new life.

Speaking of clouds, the reference to a cloud in Christ’s ascension is not a heavenly elevator with a special pass to the umpteenth floor to be with God. The cloud is meant to be a sign of God’s presence – much like the pillar of cloud for the Israelites in the exodus from Egypt; or like the cloud that surrounded Jesus and his disciples on the mount of transfiguration.

Jesus ascending into the cloud is the divine welcome into the Father’s presence. This is a whole lot more than returning to the status quo of things before Christ’s incarnation. No, everything has changed.

The life, ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ makes the ascension possible – and now Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of God. Jesus has permanently impacted the world. The dark forces and the demonic powers of this world have been stripped of their control.

Through humiliation, Christ has been exalted. Jesus gladly bore the shame and rejection that was ours. We now have spiritual freedom and are no longer in bondage to sin, death, and hell.

The stage is set for Pentecost and the giving of the Spirit. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. God’s Spirit is moving in the world to bring a new thing: the birth of the Church and the mystical union of Christ and his Church.

Every good spiritual thing comes through patience and faith; we must wait and trust in God’s good promise. The disciples, of course, saw no need for this waiting thing. They were ready for a restoration of everything immediately.

Unfortunately, their idea of restoration was an old-style sort of kingdom, very hierarchical with themselves in control and calling the shots. These apostles needed to discover what the rule and reign of God was actually all about. It’s not a turning back of the clock to the good old days.

Rather, it’s in doing away with the dark shadows of old ruling oppressions and allowing the divine light of Christ to shine into the world so that hearts are transformed and justice for all is the norm. In other words, all things are being redeemed.

By God’s grace, the Church and all believers will be steadfast in proclaiming good news, teaching the words and ways of Jesus, loving one another, and serving with the model given to us by Christ. The ascension and glorification of Jesus makes this possible.

So, this is a day in which Christian churches and believers are to shake off their collective spiritual A.D.D. (Ascension Deficit Disorder) and stop staring up in the sky, slack-jawed and shoulders hunched. Hopefully, no angels will come along and ask us what we’re doing just standing there.

Jesus will come back when he comes back. You and I aren’t going to know when. Now is the time to get busy with what Jesus just told us to do two minutes ago: Tell everyone about me.

Christians since the time of the ascension have been proclaiming Christ crucified, died, risen, ascended, and coming again. This is a day of joy and celebration for us. Jesus is our ascended and glorified king! The fate of the earth is with the benevolent and mighty Ruler of all. Jesus is Lord!

The great Reformed Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 49, states the following question and answer:

How does Christ’s ascension to heaven benefit us?

First, he is our advocate

in heaven

in the presence of his Father.

Second, we have our own flesh in heaven

as a sure pledge that Christ our head

will also take us, his members,

up to himself.

Third, he sends his Spirit to us on earth

as a corresponding pledge.

By the Spirit’s power

we seek not earthly things

but the things above, where Christ is,

sitting at God’s right hand.

Amen.

Jesus Christ ascended to heaven nearly two-thousand years ago, and since that time much in history has changed; yet, on the other hand, we are still in the situation of the early church: Jesus is still up there, and we are still down here. Because we still await Christ’s return, the original call and practice of the church is still in effect for us.

As far as experiences go, it would be hard to top being one of the original disciples and see Jesus ascend into heaven (Acts 1:1-10). Christ was crucified, dead, and buried. Then, he rose from the grave. For forty days Jesus appeared on and off to his disciples. Then the day came when he ascended. All of those redemptive events of Jesus and those powerful experiences being with the risen Lord, and actually seeing him go to heaven. Now what? How do you top that?

In the spiritual life, we move back and forth between moments of genuine inspiration and the sheer routine of our daily mundane lives. Both the uplifting mountain-top experiences and the hard work of walking through the valley are important. The trick is to channel the energy from one into the other. We need to work out rhythms of grace, daily liturgies that connect expectant prayer with the action of being witnesses in the culture.

Prayer and action – both are necessary to the church. And both are closely tied to the risen and ascended Christ. The Ascension of our Lord Jesus is important because it means that Christ is exalted above everything. His glorification translates into our sharing with him in his glory. The Ascension means that Jesus is in charge, by his authority he has given us a task to do, and he has given us the means of carrying-out that job.

Jesus and the disciples, even after our Lord’s forty days with them after the resurrection, were not on the same page together. The disciples were anticipating a restoration of David’s kingdom; in other words, their vision of what was going to take place is that there would be a great apocalypse in which Jesus would beat up all their enemies and set up a political kingdom just like King David of old.

But Jesus has a different agenda. Instead of creating a Jewish-Christian utopia where the disciples would be in charge and in control of the world, Jesus bluntly told them that knowing God’s timetable is not in their pay grade. The disciples were commanded and commissioned to do a job, and that job was not to gawk at the sky and figure-out all the blood moons so that we can anticipate when the end of the world will happen.

Yet, we keep trying to predict the time. Like the original disciples, who wanted to know the times and dates the Father has set by his own authority, we are tired of all the effects of sin in the world and all the people, institutions, and governments that are opposed to Christian ways of thinking and acting. We are anxious for Jesus to return and make everything that is wrong, right again. We deservedly want peace and justice.

But Jesus didn’t go there, and he essentially said to quit thinking about stuff that is none of our business. Instead, our business is being witnesses of Jesus. The angels came along right after Jesus ascended and nicely said to the disciples to stop standing there with their mouths open and understand that Jesus is coming back and there is a job to do – and that job is to be witnesses of Christ’s redemptive events. The power for being witnesses will come from the Holy Spirit; therefore, prayer is a necessary and essential practice (Acts 1:14).

Jesus is Lord over all creation. He is Lord of the church. He is Lord of our families. He is Lord at our workplaces. There is not one square inch of all this earth that Jesus is not Lord. What this means for us, since Christ is Lord of all, since we possess the Holy Spirit, we can and should live our lives devoted to prayer and to being witnesses in this world for Jesus. The kind of prayer that Jesus is looking for from his followers is prayer that expects God’s promises to be fulfilled; prayer that is united in spirit and in purpose; and, prayer that is persistent. That kind of prayer characterized the early believers, and that same kind of prayer is required from Jesus our Lord. Just as a cup of coffee needs a continual warm-up, so our prayers need to be frequent and constantly refreshed so that God’s purposes will be accomplished. And his purposes are that all of creation comes, in a real and practical way, under Christ’s lordship.

Prayer is not all we do. Jesus has also told us to be witnesses. Jesus is Lord, and so all persons must submit to his lordship through obedient action. This task is far from finished. According to The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, we know of 11,646 distinct people groups on this planet. 6,734 of those groups are less than 2% Christian and most of them have no churches, no Bibles, no Christian literature, and no mission agencies seeking to reach them. That, by the way, is in the neighborhood of about 3 ½ billion people. The Center also cites that 1 out of 5 non-Christians in North America do not personally know a single follower of Jesus. What can we do? We can pray. We can witness. We can pray for spiritual power. We can witness by loving our neighbor as ourselves and telling a simple story of Jesus.

Let me give you an example. My wife used to work at a company in which she befriended a Hindu woman from India. She was from the highest caste in India, and looked the part – she literally looked like an Indian Barbie doll. Whenever I saw her I thought I should bow in her presence because she carried herself like a princess. She had never experienced an American Thanksgiving. So, Mary simply invited her to a Thanksgiving dinner out our house with our family. As we typically do each Thanksgiving, we all took turns going around the table and describing what we were thankful to God for. When it came time for this lovely Indian woman to speak she said: “I am thankful to be here and to know you all. It is evident that your God is very personal and precious to you, and I have never known that people could have such love for a God they do not see.” That, my friends, is one way of being a witness – having a large enough ‘inner space’ to invite another person very different from myself into my life to see the unseen God.

Christ’s Ascension means that Jesus is Lord, and I am not! Therefore, we as Christians and as churches are to submit to King Jesus and do what he has commanded us to do. And he has given the church a mission: be witnesses to the risen and ascended Lord. May it be so.