The Ascension of our Lord, 2009

Topical

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

Five Reasons to Celebrate

I’ve said it so many times before that I think I’m starting to sound like a skipping CD, but tonight is the great Christian feast, the holy day of holy days, the climax of the Church Calendar, because the Ascension is the climax of Christ’s redemptive work on our behalf. I’ll say it again: if the Ascension didn’t happen, Good Friday and Easter don’t mean anything. I say this over and over because I still don’t think the majority of Christians really get it. The Ascension is only a very minor holiday in most of the Church, and not celebrated at all in wide sections. So once Hallmark starts making Ascension cards, and the department stores start putting out Ascension decorations the day after Easter, we’ll know we’ve finally gotten our message through. But until then I’ll keep harping out my usual tune of how important the Ascension is in the whole scheme of our redemption.

You know, the usual way we talk in the Church about observing the feast days is that we celebrate the feasts, and Ascension is no different. Tonight I think we can identify from Scripture five great reasons to celebrate this very holy day.

The first great reason to celebrate tonight is that the Ascension means that Jesus truly is Lord. This is a truth the Ascension teaches us, but it’s one that so much of the Church doesn’t really believe anymore. They may confess it in the Creed, they may confess it as part of their theology, but they don’t really believe it. They look around at the way things are going in the world, they read all the terrible news in the newspapers, and they conclude that Christ’s reign must be something that will only be accomplished in the future; it can’t be a present reality. But the Scripture is clear on the point. Christ has ascended to take His throne at the right hand of His Father.

So what is He doing up there? Is He just sort of hanging His legs off the edge of eternity twiddling His thumbs, waiting for His Father to let Him reign? No! Jesus said just before He ascended, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” And St. Paul says “He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. (1Cor. 15:25-26). Well, if the last enemy to be destroyed is death, and that happens, as Paul says, at Christ coming again with the resurrection of our bodies, then He is reigning now, and is currently in the process of bringing all things into subjection to Himself. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. He’s not waiting to become Lord. And that’s a real reason to celebrate, because that gives an optimistic view of what’s going on in the world, and an optimistic view of the progress of history. No matter how dark and dreary the world may seem to get, no mater how anti-God, anti-Christ our culture seems to be going, the reality is that Christ really is in charge; He really is in control, and He is bringing history to His appointed end. He rules in the kingdoms of men and gives them to whomever He will. He is reigning to restore all things; He is reigning to destroy all things that impede His perfect rule in this world. That’s the great message of the book of Revelation. Christ is Lord now, and that is the number one reason to celebrate this great event in His life.

Well, the second reason to celebrate the Ascension is that it means He’s coming back. The angel said to the disciples as they watched Jesus ascend and vanish into the clouds that He would come again in the same manner in which He left. Well, why? If He’s reigning now, why does He need to return? The answer is: He will return to bring His kingdom to consummation. In that same passage that I quoted earlier from 1 Corinthians, Paul says when Christ returns, “then is the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father,” after having put an end to all rule and authority and power (1 Cor. 15:23-24). This is the consummation of the Kingdom. This is when all enemies will have been destroyed, including death itself. This is when all things will have been restored, and Christ’ heavenly reign will be here on the earth, because His return will signal the reunion of heaven and earth. That’s the new heavens and the new earth, when all things will be restored and the break between heaven and earth that occurred at the Fall will be healed and rejoined. That’s the hope the Ascension gives us, and that’s a second reason we have to celebrate this Ascension.

The third reason to celebrate the Ascension is that we now have an Advocate with the Father. We have a great High Priest who has once and for all time entered into the true Holy of holies of heaven itself to eternally propitiate – to eternally turn away – the wrath of God from us sinners who so deserve it. This is the aspect of the Ascension that gives me the most comfort. I call this aspect of the Ascension “the Completion of Good Friday.” You see, on the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur – in the old temple, which was all a foreshadowing of the way Christ would make atonement for us, the spotless lamb was slain in the courtyard and offered upon the altar, but the sacrifice wasn’t complete until the High Priest brought some its blood through the veil into the Holy of holies - into the place of God’s visible presence – and sprinkled it before Him upon the mercy-seat, which represented God’s throne. And thus atonement – or reconciliation – was made for the people with their God. So there was the two-fold process of the death of the sacrifice and then the presentation of the sacrifice before God that made atonement. And it’s this two-fold process that the New Testament tells us was fulfilled by the death and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Ascension is the complete of Good Friday in the sense that He had to present His sacrifice to His Father, for the Scripture tells us that, “not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). Again, what is He doing up there? St. John tells us that He is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2). He is eternally propitiating the Father on our behalf by eternally presenting His once offered sacrifice. Why do you think He still bears the wounds in His hands and feet and side?

St. John was given a vision of this aspect of Christ’s heavenly work when he himself was lifted up into the Holy of holies of heaven. “And behold,” he said, upon the throne “stood a Lamb as though it had been slain.” You see, Jesus is eternally presenting Himself as the spotless Lamb who was slain to take away our sins. As our heavenly High Priest He is perpetually bringing before the view of His Father the offering of Himself, which completely turns away His wrath from us so that there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. I love the way Paul puts this in Romans: “Who shall bring a charge again God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us” (Rom. 8:33-34). Christ is eternally interceding for us on the basis of His perfect sacrifice, and that is also a great reason to celebrate.

The fourth reason to celebrate the Ascension is that it means Christ is more present with us now than He ever could have been if He remained on earth, for now He is not only present with us, but in us, by His Spirit. Jesus, the night before He was crucified, told His disciples that He was returning to His Father who had sent Him. And because He said this, naturally the disciples became sorrowful. “Nevertheless,” He said to them, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7). And He told them that when the Helper or the Comfort had come, “on that day,” He said, “you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” It was through the coming of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, that He promised not to leave them as orphans, but that He would come to them (John 14:18). It is the Holy Spirit’s job, so to speak, to unite us with Christ. And so since the Holy Spirit has been poured into the Church we can be assured that Christ is with us now more than He ever was while He still on the earth. He is in us, and we in Him. And again, that’s a great reason to celebrate.

And finally, the fifth reason to celebrate the Ascension is that it means Christ ascended bodily into heaven, which is a guarantee that we too will one day ascend bodily. Christ has paved the way into heaven not only for our spirits, but for our bodies as well. Christ is the first-fruits, if you will, of the reunion of heaven and earth. In his body He has brought a little piece of us back into paradise, so that Paul can say that in a representative sense we have already been raised us up and made to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6). Paul also says that when Christ returns He “will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16-17). You see, Christ’s bodily Resurrection guarantees our own bodily resurrections, and His bodily Ascension guarantees our bodily Ascension, and that is another great reason to celebrate this Holy Feast.

So Brother and sisters in Christ, like the disciples, let us rejoice in the fact that Christ was parted from us and was received up into the heavens. For the Ascension gives us at least these five reasons, and probably many others, to celebrate this, the crowning event in the Lord’s work of redemption on our behalf. +