Celebrating Ascension Day

Are you celebrating "Ascension Day"? Maybe we all should celebrate today. From Jared Wilson:

Today is Ascension Day, traditionally marked on the 40th day after Easter Sunday. The doctrine of Christ’s ascension has many implications. Here are just five.

1. Jesus is really alive.

The reality of Christ’s ascension, inextricable from the resurrection event, tells us that he did not raise from the dead only later to die again like Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, Eutychus, or Tabitha. Jesus’ body will not be found because he took its glorified tangibility to heaven.

2. Heaven is thicker than earth.

We tend to think of heaven as the ethereal place of disembodied spirits. And in a way it is. But Elijah is there. And Enoch. And so is the risen, glorified, incarnate Christ. Jesus is there, taking up material space. He is touchable, present. Clearly, heaven is not less real than earth but more. It is a thicker reality than our four-dimensional space, more vibrant, more colorful, more real.

3. God’s plan for human dominion of earth is being realized.

The first Adam and his helper Eve were charged with filling the earth and subduing it. They screwed it up. But God’s plans cannot be thwarted. Man will reflect God’s glory in dominion over creation. In the Incarnation, then, God sends his only Son to right the course, reverse the curse, and begin the restoration of all things. The second Adam does the job, and even in his glorification, the incarnational “miracle of addition” (see below) persists, fulfilling God’s plan for man to reflect divine glory in dominion over creation. The God-Man, who is the radiance of the glory of God, rules over the earth and is even now subduing his enemies. “The ascension means that a human being rules the universe” (Tim Keller). Just as God planned.

Ascension Sunday Thoughts

Some thoughts on Ascension Sunday:

“The Ascension is not really a departure. It is entering into a new more dynamic manner of presence beyond the bounds of ordinary space and time. It is the assurance that Jesus is with us always during the ministry He gives unto the end of the age, and a hope for the age to come.”                           - John Michael Talbot

  Hat Tip:  internetmonk.com

What happens when you downplay or ignore the ascension? The answer is that the church expands to fill the vacuum. If Jesus is more or less identical with the church—if, that is, talk about Jesus can be reduced to talk about his presence within his people rather than his standing over against them and addressing them from elsewhere as their Lord, then we have created a high road to the worst kind of triumphalism. …and the other side of triumphalism is of course despair. If you put all your eggs into the church-equals-Jesus basket, what are you left with when, as Paul says…we ourselves are found to be cracked earthenware vessels?

N.T. Wright • Surprised by Hope, p. 112

Hat Tip:  internetmonk.com

“Ascension Day proclaims that there is no sphere, however secular, in which Christ has no rights – and no sphere in which his followers are absolved from obedience to him. Instead of it being a fairy tale from the pre-space age, Christ’s ascension is the guarantee that he has triumphed over the principalities and powers, so that at his name ‘every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil. 2:10-11).” - Bruce Metzger

The Ascension: WIJD

Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension (40 days after Easter) in the liturgical calendar. Some thoughts from Ted Schroder at Virtue Online

Andrew Purves in The Crucifixion of Ministry takes issue with the theology of WWJD: “What would Jesus do?” He argues that it turns Jesus into a teacher of fixed moral ideas which must be imitated, i.e. a moralist not a Savior. Even with a little help from the Holy Spirit, it sounds like a religion of obedience to moral laws. This is to define Christian activity as something we do in Jesus’ name. But the Gospel is the good news about what Jesus does, not what we do. Our ministry in Jesus’ name derives from and is dependent upon the continuing ministry of Jesus. “The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.” Instead of WWJD we should speak of WIJD – “What is Jesus Doing?” God is acting today through the continuing ministry of Jesus who is present to us through the Holy Spirit. This is the significance of the Ascension.

From VirtueOnline - WIJD? THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ASCENSION:

Hat Tip: Euangelion

BTW, The Crucifixion of Ministry is a great book! I've read it and recommend it.