“If Easter Sunday was the most exciting day of the disciples’ lives, for Jesus it was probably the day of Ascension. He the Creator, who had descended so far and given up so much, was now heading home”. So wrote Philip Yancey in his book, The Jesus I never knew. On this Ascension Day, I want to focus on the meaning of the ascension of Jesus.
I am conscious that that some say, “Can we really believe this kind of thing today? No doubt those who lived before Copernicus could believe that Jesus went up vertically and sat down a few miles above the visible sky. But we live in the 21st century and can no longer believe in a three-decker universe: heaven above, hell below and earth in between.” But this is no reason to dismiss the ascension as a pleasant myth. What we have here is an ‘acted parable’. Jesus through the act of his ascension demonstrated to his disciples that he was going to his Father. How precisely that was achieved, I don’t know. But then we don’t have to understand everything, in order to believe. I don’t know how God became man. All I know is that “the Word became flesh” (John 1.14). A pointer to the reality of this event is the restrained manner in which Luke recorded the incident. He simply stated: “He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1.9). What matters is not the manner of Jesus’ going, but the meaning of his going.
First of all, the ascension marked the end of a chapter, in the sense that it marked the end of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. For 40 wonderfully exhilarating days Jesus kept on appearing to those who loved him (see Acts 1.3). But those days could not go on. The Spirit had to be given and the age of the church had to begin. Yet Jesus could not just fade out. A deliberate withdrawal was called for. The ascension was a necessity, for there had to be an acted declaration of finality. Hence the importance of the “cloud” which took him out of their sight. The cloud marked the end of a chapter in the life of Jesus. As Jesus arrived in this world at a particular moment of time, so too he had to leave at a particular moment of time. Otherwise his disciples would have just hung around waiting for further appearances, rather getting on with Jesus’ call to live for him.
The ascension marked the return of Jesus to heaven, to the place where God is. It is the counterpart of his incarnation. The Lord of glory, who had left his Father, now returns to his Father. This return to his Father was symbolised by the cloud which “took him out of their sight” (Acts 1.9). The cloud symbolized not just separation, but also God’s presence.
The ascension marked the end of a chapter because Jesus had accomplished his mission. As the Letter to Hebrews says: “After achieving forgiveness for human sins, he sat down in heaven at the right-hand side of God” (Hebrews 1.3 GNB). The ascension marked the completion of our salvation, for it pointed to the fact that Jesus had done all that was necessary for our sins to be forgiven.
Secondly, the ascension marked the beginning of a new chapter. For the risen ascended Lord Jesus is now seated at his Father’s right hand” (see Acts 2.23, 33). This phrase “at the right hand of God” occurs 20 times in the New Testament. It brings out the theological significance of the ascension. The phrase was taken from Psalm 110, the most often quoted Psalm in the New Testament. This Psalm was sung at the coronation of Israel’s kings. To speak of the king seated at God’s right hand was another way of saying that he was exercising power delegated to him by God himself. Later the rabbis applied this Psalm to the coming Messiah. Not surprisingly, it was taken up in the early church and applied to Jesus. The ascended Jesus is the one to whom all power and authority have been given.
In other words, the ascension declares that Jesus is Lord. It marks the coronation of Jesus as king of the universe. The right hand of God is a place of authority. In the words of the Christ hymn: “God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend…. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2.9-11). To quote from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Ephesians 1.20-23: “God set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule” (The Message).
Thirdly, the ascension anticipates a final chapter. To the bemused disciples the two angels declared, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1.11). Here we have the promise that one day Jesus will return to wind up all human history. Unfortunately, Christian believing has been distorted by some over-enthusiastic Christians, who have developed all kinds of weird and wonderful predictions about the return of Jesus. The fact is that the manner and timing of Jesus’ return are unknown. What we do know is that, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, Jesus “will come to judge the living and the dead”. Although Jesus came “proclaiming the good news of God” (Mark 1.14), he also spoke about judgment (see, for instance Matthew 18.23-35; 25.31-46). It is the conviction of all the New Testament writers that two possible destines lie before men and women. Paul, for example, speaks of “those who are being saved and those who are being lost” (2 Corinthians 2.15 ). Sadly, not all will be saved. As Stephen Travis wrote:
The need for follows from our belief in God’s love. God “pays us the compliment of treating all our action as significant… If God did not hold us responsible for our actions, our attitudes and decisions, that would mean that ultimately what we do is not significant. Our humanity would diminished.