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Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
Many Christians skip from Easter to Pentecost because they don’t understand why Christ’s ascension matters.
As dean of the chapel at Calvin College, religion professor Laura Smit considers herself a caretaker of Reformed identity. So when she noticed that most faculty statements of faith were about creation, she decided to highlight a neglected theological treasure—the ascension.
She formed an interdisciplinary faculty study group. Profs loved sharing ideas about what it means that Jesus has a body, right now, and how heaven is somehow more real than our cosmos.
In This Story Profile: GRAHAM REDDING |
Students, however, were completely bored with the chapel series Smit planned, Hebrews: Christ as Mediator of God’s Grace.
“I realized that students didn’t think they need any mediator between them and God. They see God as temporal, responsive, and changing with them. God the Father seems so easily accessible that they see no need for a high priest who intercedes for us,” Smit says.
By not fully understanding the ascension, many Christians miss out on deeper experiences of corporate prayer and worship. They also miss out on the full blessings of union with Christ.
Churches used to focus so much on making worship reverent and holy that visitors sometimes felt out of place or unwelcome. Today, Smit notes, churches try so hard to make people feel comfortable that the awe has eroded.
“Cultivate a sense of awe and wonder at our reception in God’s presence. Preach that God is transcendent, Other, a consuming fire,” Smit says. Unless worshipers see that God is radically unlike them, they can’t appreciate the wonder of Christ’s ongoing mediation.
—Jack Van Marion |
Another awe-building strategy is to rethink the meaning of Christ’s resurrection. It’s not just about your salvation.
“When worshipers say ‘Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again,’ are they thinking only of Christ walking out of a tomb? Or do they also see with the eyes of faith Christ exalted at the right hand of the Father, praying on their behalf and advancing his kingdom for the sake of all?” Jack Van Marion asks. He pastors Calvary Christian Reformed Church in Edina, Minnesota, and teaches at the Institute for Worship Studies, Florida campus.
He sometimes opens the worship by welcoming people in the name of Christ and encouraging them to see Jesus as the great Liturgist or High Priest, standing in their midst, welcoming them, and lifting them into the Father’s presence.
 This woodcut of Christ’s ascension is from a book by Martin Luther. Image courtesy of Pitts Theology Library Digital Archive. |
Speaking of Jesus only in the past tense makes people think of him as someone in a book, a historical character who lived 2,000 years ago. This past tense emphasis leads believers to think that Christ’s work ended on the cross. Worship then seems like something we do for God, not something we join God in.
However, as the Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, Revelation, and ancient creeds proclaim, Christ ascended into heaven…and he is still there, enthroned next to the Father. “That’s not just a line of poetry!” Smit says.
Some people wonder how, if Jesus is physically absent from earth, we can know him other than as someone we read about in the Bible. Here again, be clear in how you speak of Jesus. Christ is fully human and fully divine. In his divine nature, he is present to us now.
Be clear as well what you mean by “Christ’s body.” Van Marion notes the Bible offers three meanings. Christ’s glorified, resurrected body is in heaven. The church is his body on earth. Through partaking of bread and wine, his flesh and blood, we experience union with Christ.
Fuzzy thinking about who and where God is produces prayer problems. Christians profess to believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but sometimes worry that it’s “not correct” to pray to Jesus. Actually, it’s fitting to address intercessions to Jesus because he suffered the same pain and temptations that we do. And because Jesus is already in heaven, mediating for us and perfecting our prayers, we don’t have to worry over every word.
Still, Smit pleads, when you lead in public prayer, aim for precision. You don’t have to stick to a single formula (“Father, we pray to you in the name of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit”). After all, the Son and Spirit are fully God and equally worthy of worship. If you want to directly address more than one person of the Trinity, do it clearly, rather than morphing the prayer from Jesus to the Father and so on.
To be astounded by how Christ bridges the gap between divine majesty and “frail creatures of dust," you need to feel okay about looking forward to heaven.
 Christ’s ascension put all things under his lordship and gives us access to heaven. This woodcut is from Visuals for Worship by Elizabeth Steele Halstead. |
Some believers think so much about heaven that they deny what’s good about creation and neglect their call to help transform a fallen world. But it’s not anti-incarnational or escapist to see yourself as a citizen of heaven, which is why Van Marion often reminds worshipers of their citizen status.
“Christ is our flesh in heaven. His sovereignty as King applies in all we do and experience, whether we’re ill, feeling overwhelmed, or approaching death. The risen, ascended, glorified Christ in his human nature points to the future, when all Christians will be clothed with resurrected, glorified bodies,” he says.
As Nathan Bierma explains in Bringing Heaven Down to Earth, “The promise of heaven is intended to make us itch for heaven, thirst for it, long for it, to have a holy restlessness as we live…. in two worlds at once, the already and the not yet…. God will one day restore planet earth….with the harmony of shalom, the way things are supposed to be.”
So don’t hold back on prayers, songs, and sermons about how wonderful it will be to join “the joyful assembly” (Hebrews 12:22), see Jesus face to face, and know as we are known.
“Some years ago, I was invited to a retirement home to visit a lady who’d had a severe stroke,” says Graham Redding, senior minister at St. John’s in the City Presbyterian Church in Wellington, New Zealand. “The woman was totally dependent on others for care. She hadn’t been to church in decades. And she was worried about her future.
“I had a choice,” Redding recalls. “I could present the contractual model of coming to faith in Christ. But that can breed a self-righteous attitude of ‘I’ve asked for forgiveness, I’ve been restored, so I can relax.’ Or, a person weighed down with guilt might ask for forgiveness but still not feel God’s love, which only compounds the failure and guilt. “I said, ‘We’re going to pray. But first I want to give you an assurance. Christ himself is praying for you even before you pray. We will pray in accordance with the gospel that you have been given new life already. So let’s pray for what Christ has done and continues to do for you. He’s here with you.’ ” After that prayer, with tears rolling down her cheeks, the woman told Redding that she felt freed. Offering that perspective of Christ—his vicarious humanity and role as mediator and high priest—is what we should be doing each Sunday, not just on Ascension Day, Redding says. Connect Christ’s incarnation and ascension “The Orthodox Church has a wonderfully developed doctrine of incarnation and ascension. For the rest of us, ascension is like a lost family heirloom,” Redding says. In Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ in the Reformed Tradition, he urges churches to recover a Trinitarian conception of prayer and worship, which requires appreciating Christ’s vicarious humanity.
“So often we cast the humanity of Jesus in individualistic terms. We say he had to become human to die for us on the cross. For many Christians, the cross is the completion of the Easter story until Christ comes again,” he explains. The vicarious humanity of Christ is the doctrine that links ascension to incarnation. In Jesus, God became one with us in taking on flesh and blood. That he ascended, bodily, shows that humans matter in heaven as well as on earth. God redeems all of who we are, not just our souls. The assumption of incarnation is completed when our humanity is lifted up into the presence of God. Because the second person of the Trinity stands in our place in the heavenly sanctuary, we can, through worship, be lifted into the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Redding links the incarnation with the doctrine of sanctification. He explains that in the Institutes, John Calvin talked about sanctification before justification. Calvin said our humanity has already been sanctified in Christ. “This understanding leads us to put a stronger stress on being in union with Christ rather than on following his long-ago example,” Redding says. Our High Priest perfects our prayers An anthem he wrote for St. John’s 150th anniversary includes these lines: “For courage to be human, not more religious be, to look for God in others, affirm their dignity. For acts of deep compassion, a people versed in prayer, for union in communion, the life of Christ to share.” Understanding Christ’s priesthood makes us better versed in prayer. Prayer is far more than a duty or way to talk with God. It’s an eschatological event. “Prayer is essentially a redemptive activity, in and through which the church participates in the Son’s communion with the Father and in his mission to the world…. To the extent that much prayer today is believed to be a private and individualistic affair, this book maintains that, first and foremost, prayer is a corporate, ecclesial event. It is eucharistic,” Redding writes. He likes how the 1993 PCUSA Book of Common Worship presents the order of service in four parts: gathering, Word, Eucharist, and sending. Its basic premise is “joined in worship to the One who is the source of its life, the church is empowered to serve God in the world.” Apply the ascension in weekly worship Since Redding began weaving ascension concepts into printed and liturgical announcements, sermons, and study groups, St. John’s in the City has analyzed its entire liturgy.
The congregation has come to understand worship as joining in what’s already going on in heaven. “The priesthood of Christ means that we submit our sin-laden prayers to the One who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. That gives us a certain freedom to try new things in worship—because it doesn’t rest on us to get it absolutely right,” Redding says. Prayers of confession need not itemize every sin, because though we are all born in sin, we have total grace and sanctification in Christ through his vicarious humanity and ascension. That’s why the confession of sin at St. John’s ends with an assurance of pardon, not a prayer for pardon. Likewise, those who lead intercessory prayer know they don’t have to pray comprehensively or with perfect knowledge of God’s will. “Christ, our worship Leader and ascended High Priest, stands in our place before we’ve started. By the Spirit, the church participates in his life of intercession,” Redding says. Even the offering is seen as sharing in Christ’s continual self-offering. Recover the centrality of Communion After studying communion’s theology and history, the elders at St. John’s decided to experiment with celebrating it monthly instead of quarterly.
They understand that Christ is present, by the Spirit, in the sacrament. The words “lift up your hearts” and “we lift them up to the Lord” remind believers to set hearts and minds on “things above,” where our lives “are now hidden with Christ in God.” Celebrating the Eucharist more often also reminds St. John’s that we dwell in a world of flesh and blood, of wood and stone. It takes the elders hours to fill tiny cups and set them on oblong trays for passing down rows. When instead they ask worshipers to come forward to stations and dip bread in a chalice, foot traffic snarls. The church’s narrow aisles and scant liturgical space reflect their ancestors’ focus on Word, not Sacrament. But making communion a central event is worth some inconvenience if it helps worshipers “see that the Christian life is not simply imitating Christ but sharing in his life,” Redding says. |
Don’t miss the bonus story on resources for Ascension Day services.
Listen to an audio clip of Laura Smit on the ascension and prayer. Sign up for the May 25 Ascension Day conference at Calvin Theological Seminary.
Update: Also see Smit's article "The Incarnation Continues" in Reformed Worship 79 (March, 2006), pp. 4-5.
Study Graham Redding’s book Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ in the Reformed Tradition.
Other helpful books on understanding the ascension include:
- Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology by Douglas Farrow
- Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Connecting This Life to the Next by Nathan Bierma
- Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship by Leonard Vander Zee
- Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation by Gerrit Dawson
Either on your own or with a Bible study group, read and discuss ascension-related passages:
- Christ shares our humanity: Hebrews 2 and 3
- Christ ascended bodily into heaven: Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-53; John 20:17; Acts 1:1-10, 21-22.
- Christ, who is both King and Lamb, is Lord of all: Colossians 1:15-23; Revelation 4 and 5
- Christ represents us to God: Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:23-25, 9:24; 1 John 2:1-2
- Christ is our heavenly High Priest: Hebrews 4:14-10:10
- Christ remains present with us in spirit: John 16; Ephesians 3:14-2
- We are raised with Christ the King: Ephesians 1:15-2:10
View Ascension Day vestments and paraments at Trinity Lutheran Church in Detroit, Michigan. Read about Ascension Day customs around the world.
Browse related stories on the Lord’s Supper, musical theology, sermon resources, and Trinitarian music.
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your council, worship, or arts committee meeting. These questions will get members talking:
- What themes in this story surprised you? Which aspects of Christ’s ascension get little attention in your congregation?
- How would your congregation’s worship and faith life change if you spent more time talking about Christ’s vicarious humanity or role as priest and mediator? How might this doctrine affect worship, the Lord’s Supper, prayer, pastoral care, or how people view salvation, discipleship, or heaven?
- Graham Redding says that in the Middle Ages, the priest, not Christ, was seen as leading worship. Who do you see as leading worship in your church? Is Christ the mediator or object of this worship?
What is the best way you’ve found to celebrate the ascension in worship? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Can you share any visual arts resources, song suggestions, or drama ideas that helped your congregation see the meaning of Christ’s ascension?
- Did you consult with other congregations or pastors to see how they understand and teach the doctrine of ascension—and how this plays out in their worship services?
- If you started observing Ascension Sunday or Ascension Day in a new way, how did you get people interested?
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