Teaching ‘Ascension’

You’ve just heard about an event the modern church seems to ignore – the Ascension. Perhaps that’s why I bring it up every year because I think it is important.

And yet the events described actually seem quite low key. Jesus spends time teaching the disciples, explaining what has happened and preparing them for the future and then he leaves. You have to sympathise with the early Christians because this was a period when they are overwhelmed with unexplainable happenings. The ascension was just one more to add to jaw-dropping moments like the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And yet despite having to do some major re-shuffling of previously-held beliefs, by the next week when Pentecost happens Peter is able to explain these events in a few sentences. He says; “This Jesus, God raised up.  And every one of us here is a witness to it. Then, raised to the heights at the right hand of God and receiving the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, he poured out the Spirit he had just received.”

There, right from the beginning was one of the basic understandings of the Ascension – Jesus went up to heaven to sit on the throne at the right hand of God. In other words, Jesus took the most honoured place in the court after God.

In most cultures it is the same; to sit at the right hand of the king is reserved for the number two person in the kingdom; the chief advisor or the heir to the throne or a beloved consort. The disciples may have needed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to put it all together but right from that time they believed and claimed that Jesus was Lord – a name they had previously only given to the God they called Yahweh.

These disciples believed that Jesus had won a great victory, a victory over death. They lived their lives from then on as if any minute the new kingdom that Jesus had promised would suddenly appear. And part of that motivation was the knowledge that Jesus was already reigning as king in heaven.

The belief that Jesus was in control, that evil had been defeated, continued to be the core belief of the Christian community for the next few centuries and then religious scholars got talking and some other theories became more popular. One that most of us are familiar with is the idea that Jesus’ main purpose was to die to pay for our sins.

And in the twentieth century the idea of a victorious Jesus came under particular pressure. Christians started rebelling against some of the ways the church had misunderstood Christ as king. They argued that such thinking had led church authorities to believe that they were better than others, that they could boss lesser mortals around, even kill them. Twentieth century Christians used examples like the Crusades, the persecution of different denominations and the wars that had been started in God’s name as reasons to abandon this principle of a victorious church.

Now at no time do I think any past abuse was justified, but I think the problem we have now is that we are embarrassed by Jesus. We hesitate to claim any rights to have a say in what happens in the world. We have shrunk into ourselves and become focussed on our personal relationship with God, focussing on Jesus’ sacrifice to cleanse each one of us from sin.

Now a personal faith is not a bad thing either, but I think by ignoring the victorious nature of Jesus we have lost the enormous confidence that filled the early church. They weren’t stupid, they knew that evil still existed, that they may still suffer and die for their faith, but they didn’t act as if they were afraid. They lived, and died, as if Jesus was in control, not others. They looked to the future as if the promised kingdom of Christ was already there.

Today, the churches claiming the victory point to their money and numbers and buildings as signs of success. And yet, so many seem more like cults than communities of faith. And we, not wanting to be like them, hesitate to claim a victorious Jesus.

But we forget that other group who have claimed the victory of Christ. And that is the oppressed – the slaves, the refugees, the prisoners, the poor, the forgotten. Listen to those spirituals, those folk songs, those country songs. Yes, they lament but they also claim that King Jesus can and will save them. That Jesus, as God’s right-hand man is in control, has already defeated the enemy, therefore all will be well.

I believe it is time we stood up a little straighter as Christians. I believe it is time we developed the confidence to argue for what is right, because if Jesus has the victory, why aren’t things fixed. I believe it is time for us to live as if we believe the message of Ascension – that Jesus conquered death and all that is evil in this world.

Yes, I know there are dangers in claiming a victorious Christ but at a time when we are struggling, I think we need rediscover some confidence. We need the assurance that Jesus is in charge. Because when we seem at our weakest as individuals and as a people, that is the time we need to grasp tightly to an image of Jesus as the king of glory, the ruler of all.

Rev Stephanie Wells