There is no body of Christ without the Ascension, no answer to prayer without the Ascension, and no guarantee of “truly I am with you always” without the Ascension.
The Ascension of Our Lord should be in the regular rotation of our churches’ standard services. It is the culmination of all we celebrate through Passiontide and Easter. Christ is translated to a degree of honor in which He fills all things (Ephesians 1:23), in which all things come together and hold together in Him (Colossians 1:17), in a historic moment witnessed as God in the flesh goes up – up to fill heaven and earth as intercessor (Hebrews 4:14, 9:24), up to fill heaven and earth as king in a position of authority “far above” all other powers (Ephesians 1:20-21).
I serve in a geographical circuit of churches that marks the Ascension as a special service in the evening (since it falls on a weekday), and we invite all the local congregations to the same Thursday service, rotating annually who hosts. Covid kiboshed this for a few years, but thanks be to God, we rebooted it this year, because this is not just a special, occasional one-off. The Ascension is the heart and soul of Christianity. I once heard a seminary professor say to a class (with maybe just a touch of exaggeration, but not much!) that in the Eastern churches the Ascension was the highest of all high holy days. Why is it relegated to an afterthought in the West? If you do not do a Thursday service yourself, then find one and go receive the Word of God in Christ as a listener, and scramble to incorporate the Ascension into your Sunday preaching on either side of the celebration before you organize your own service next year. But I encourage you in the future to commit to celebrating Ascension with your hearers, annually, and to consider how best to deliver the Christ under the texts assigned for the day.
The Three-Year Lectionary offers the choice of Luke’s Ascension narrative, both at the end of his gospel (Luke 24:44-53) and the beginning of Acts (Acts 1:1-11), and the second part of Paul’s unending Ephesians 1 sentence (1:15-23). While there are multiple emphases to tempt your consideration through all of the pericopes (for example, the risen Jesus teaching the disciples and opening their minds to understand the Scriptures in Luke 24:45 and Acts 1:3, His commissioning of the disciples in Luke 24:47 and Acts 1:8, the sending of the Holy Spirit in Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4-5, 8, and the return of Christ in Acts 1:11), the focus of your sermon should be Christ’s actual ascension into Heaven and His session at the right hand of God. These are the credal confessions of the Church catholic, and a well-crafted teaching sermon can reinforce that confession without being overtly pedantic or highbrow. A sermon in this direction is truly hermeneutic: It is delivering the “what does this mean” of the Ascension as opposed to talking merely about the article of faith. This is important, because what it means, it means for your hearer, on behalf of your hearer. Jesus is God-for-us, and His Ascension is no different. He ascended into Heaven for you, just as He suffered, died, and rose for you. God “seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places” for you, just as He raised Him from the dead for you (Ephesians 1:20).
This means that you as a preacher have to get the gospel of the Ascension. How is it good news for you, for your hearer, and for the world? The good news is Christ as God blesses His disciples (Luke 24:51-53) and delivers promises to His disciples (and, therefore, His Church) of being baptized by the Holy Spirit, of being clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:5, 8). The ongoing good news, and the specific good news to deliver to your hearer in an Ascension sermon, is framed well in Paul’s explanation in Ephesians 1: God’s people have hope... riches of His glorious inheritance... the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe (Ephesians 1:18-19). In Jesus’ Ascension, He has been given as head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23).
He ascended into Heaven for you, just as He suffered, died, and rose for you.
This means there are a host of preaching possibilities for Ascension. I have heard an evangelism focus a bunch, playing off the apostles’ perspective at Acts 1:10-11. In other words, get your eyes out of the sky and get to work doing the work Jesus has laid out for you! I tend to not go this direction as a primary focus, however, as it risks missing the Christ at the center (at least that has been my experience as a hearer). On the other hand, I love going the direction of Christ’s universal presence (fills heaven and earth; also refer to the promise of Christ at Matthew 28:20) and the particular presence of Jesus Christ for the Church and every believer (wonderful sacramental possibilities here). Power, authority, and kingship represented at the Ascension is rooted in the ushering in of Christ and His Kingdom at His death (Matthew 26:29, Mark 14:25, and John 19:30). This theme has an obvious cross of Christ gospel hook to exploit. Christ sanctifying humanity by ruling heaven and earth in His human nature means you are not just a king’s kid or a priest’s plaything while down below. You are a kingdom of priests, a royal priesthood, because that is your human nature seated at the right hand of God, your hand on the steering wheel with His (this is the necessary and essential foundation of any “response talk” for what the Ascension means for me in the day-to-day, whether evangelistic or human care, vocational or missional).
This year, if called to the task, I intend to preach on a kingdom theme. One of the curious things about the Ascension narrative in Acts 1 is how the disciples ask the Lord about the Kingdom in verse 6 saying, “Will You at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” and the Lord does not rebuke them. Notice for a moment that this is different from the several times in the synoptics where the disciples dispute or imagine a politics of the world as they interpret Christ’s Kingdom preaching and their active roles of leadership in it (refer to Peter’s rebuke in Matthew 16, the Matthew 18 Kingdom discourse, especially verses 1-4, and the James and John dispute in Matthew 20), only to have the Lord rebuke, caution, and admonish them. The response of Jesus in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know...,” is, by comparison, rather neutral, simply matter of fact, and further punctuated with the promise of 1:8, “But you will receive power.” Even if you decide not to craft a sermon devoted to unpacking the implications of that observation, I do think it is worth pausing over to get the context of the Ascension as the climax of what Jesus was doing for those forty days since the resurrection. Certainly, we have the 1 Corinthians 15:4-8 apologetic of Christ’s resurrection appearances, but these did not fill up our Lord’s dance card for the entire six weeks. What was He doing? He was teaching the Kingdom (Acts 1:3) and doing so in such a way that the disciples were able to “get it” in ways they were not able to before. And the thing which was different about the teaching that is primary, the thing Paul delivered “as of first importance” (1 Corinthains 15:3-4), is simply this: It was the risen Lord Jesus doing the teaching.
Forty days is (give or take a few) the number of one-hour class sessions I teach in a normal semester for undergraduate and graduate students at university. Those students take not just my single course usually, but a handful of others as well. It is full-time work for those forty days. Can you imagine Jesus leading the seminar? Every class? And for all of it, for each of those forty days, the Kingdom curriculum that shapes you is coming from the very mouth of the Master. These men and women (we are certainly not just talking about the eleven; see Acts 1:14-15) are ready for proclamation, for defense, for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.
Jesus going up is not a departure. It is an enthronement, an installation, the public, cosmic reality of the Kingdom established in His death and resurrection.
So much for what our Lord is doing (and the disciples receiving) during those forty days. Now, why punctuate it with the glory of the Ascension? Why this climax? I think it has something to do with the Kingdom of God, yet again. Jesus going up is not a departure. It is an enthronement, an installation, the public, cosmic reality of the Kingdom established in His death and resurrection. The disciple’s question at Acts 1:6 is not misguided; it is simply incomplete. They cannot see with their eyes the scope and mode of the Kingdom (faith is an ear exercise after all!), so Jesus does not correct their hope. He redirects their horizon. Refusing to collapse it into timelines, borderlines, or political restoration, the Ascension answers their question by exceeding it. The Kingdom is restored not to a state, but to Jesus, the cross king, the empty tomb king, the king who fills heaven and earth, who fills all things for His body. This is a king who does not rule distantly, but for you, as the one who bears humanity into the life of God. Forty days of preparation was sufficient for learning the Kingdom, and the Ascension guarantees it cannot be undone, diminished, or outlived. The question is not whether the Kingdom will come (indeed it does, even without our prayer, but we pray it may come among us also!). The issue is how the reigning Christ delivers it to you.
The Kingdom of Heaven resides in the enthroned Christ Himself. In Christ (that most important prepositional phrase of the Scripture) is where the Kingdom is. This means the Kingdom is not something you or your hearer is waiting to enter. The Kingdom is something that comes to you because the King who fills all things has bound Himself to deliver it; personally, concretely, and even locally. This is the move you need to make as a preacher, lest “kingdom” remain a concept. It is not an abstract! Use your craft, use your hand to place the gift, because the Ascension is located in the reigning and giving Christ. That is where the Kingdom is. To deliver this well, remind your folks that the Kingdom of Heaven is not suspended somewhere above them, waiting for their ascent. It is already in their midst because the ascended Christ is not absent. He is reigning to give. And where He gives Himself, there is His Kingdom.
There is no body of Christ without the Ascension, no answer to prayer without the Ascension, and no guarantee of “truly I am with you always” without the Ascension. But with the Ascension, all promises have become, “Yes,” in Him. Hear the devotional echo of that comfort in the New Living Translation rendering of 2 Corinthians 1:20. Could it be that their translation committee had the climax of the “Pascha” on the mind? Or perhaps the Holy Spirit might even be guiding dynamic equivalency paraphrasers? It reads, “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for His glory.”
Our Lord bless your celebration of His Ascension!
------------------
Additional Resources:
Outside Ourselves-Check out this interview with Sarah Hinlicky Wilson on her book The Forty Facets of the Ascension.
