LATEST SERMON; The Ascension of the Lord

Sermon Easter 7, Ascension Day, 17 May

Readings: Acts 1. 1-11; Ephesians 1. 15-23; Luke 24. 44-53

Theme: The Ascension of the Lord

What does it mean for us that the crucified and risen Lord Jesus ascended into heaven? 

There are two principal challenges to us for thinking about the ascension of the Lord Jesus into heaven. The first concerns grasping that the ascension represents a different phase, a different form of presence of the risen Lord Jesus to us. The second is to situate this new form of presence in the context of the scriptural revelation about Jesus and his inauguration of the new kingdom of Israel.

One way to help us understand the first challenge of envisaging how the ascended Lord Jesus is present to us, is to use the analogy of the different states of matter. If we take the example of water, then we know that water exists as solid, liquid and gas. All these states are still essentially water, but the way in which water exists, and so is present to us, differs depending on the particular ambient conditions. In the case of water these ambient conditions are obviously temperature dependent. 

Analogously, the way that Jesus exists and so is present to us differs. His incarnate presence occurs when he lived in Palestine over two thousand years ago. This incarnate presence, of flesh and blood, as we now experience reality as human embodied beings, is transformed in the second phase of his existence; namely, during his resurrected presence to the early disciples in Palestine. At that time, Jesus appears to them in his resurrected form. This resurrected form is still situated within the parameters of the Palestinian world of two thousand years ago and mediated through the Jewish tradition, history and culture within which this resurrected presence appears, and ties Jesus to his first phase of the presence of the incarnation.

At the ascension of the Lord, Jesus’s presence to us enters a new phase. This resurrected presence now departs from the world of Palestine in the first century AD and enters into heaven. This new presence of Jesus in heaven will no longer be tied to the context of Palestine but will now be mediated to the world through being universally present to us through the Holy Spirit filling the world with his presence in all cultures, societies, times and histories. This is the third phase of Jesus’s presence in the body of Christ which is the church in the world. The ambient conditions of the presence of Jesus have now changed from Palestine to the whole world and indeed the whole cosmos.

These three states of presence of Jesus to us are recorded in the scriptures through the revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth as we have it in the New Testament, through his incarnation, resurrection and ascended presence mediated to us in the Spirit filled church, which is his body of Christ, as St Paul tells us.

The second challenge of understanding this new ascended presence of Jesus within the narrative of the scriptures is met by situating it in connection to the feast of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate next Sunday. This context signifies the new presence of the messiah to a universal community.

Following the death and resurrection of Jesus, the apostles came to realize that Jesus is the one, long foretold in the scriptures, who would ‘restore the kingdom of Israel’. This is what the scriptures had revealed would be the role of the messiah. The ascension signifies an unfolding of this revelation of what the messiah will be and do for ‘Israel.’

The prophecy of ‘restoring the kingdom of Israel,’ a symbol of creating a united people under the one true God, will be revealed by this event to be a much larger affair than almost anyone had realized. Almost anyone, because the apostle Paul, whose mission it was to foster the development of this community, from a Jewish-only one to now include the Gentiles, would realize the true extent of what the fulfllment of the Hebrew scriptures by the messiah really meant.

It would mean the creation of a universal community of those under the kingly rule of Jesus. Through this, the Jewish notion of ‘the kingdom of Israel’ will be transformed into that of ‘the kingdom of God.’ The particularity of God’s revelation through the Jewish story and the coming of the messiah to Israel in the incarnate and resurrected Jesus, is now put at the service of the whole world. Through the missionary and theological work of Paul, the particularity of this message to the Jews will be universalized in the proclamation of salvation by the apostolic church.

For this transition from particularity to universality to happen, the presence of Jesus in the flesh, even in his resurrected flesh, is now further transformed. This resurrected presence will from henceforth be mediated by the church through the power of the Spirit to all the world.

This is the meaning of the revelation in scripture of the ascension of Jesus. It is the inauguration of a new form of universal presence of the messiah no longer bound by the limitations of an ethnic nationalist understanding of ‘the kingdom of Israel.’ Jesus rules in the power of the Spirit through the mission he gives to the apostles in his name. This mission to the apostolic church is to form a new kingdom that knows no limits of ethnic identity, national boundaries, and linguistic and cultural traditions, or even spatio-temporal horizons.

The kingdom of God in heaven descends on earth by the power of the Holy Spirit through the mission Jesus gives to the church. At the end of time, these dimensions of ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ will not only overlap, as they already do, but will finally become one. Then ‘God will be all in all.’ This is the moment, using the different states of water analogy, when the three phases of the presence of Jesus will finally come together. At that point, the creation will become the new creation and the “waiting with eager longer for its liberation” will finally be over.

In the meantime, as we await the return of the incarnate, resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus, our role as church is to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us to build the kingdom of God so that when he returns, Jesus will find this kingdom ready for him to hand over to his Father.