Up Up and Away - What is Ascension?

I'm showing my age - again. When I think of Ascension, my silly little mind thinks of the Fifth Dimension song, "Up Up and Away in my Beautiful Balloon." Or, with my kids, the movie Up was a big hit.

Up is always a something that fascinates us, probably because gravity keeps us down.

Easter's celebration highlights Jesus' life as divine and human. The miracle of the Ascension is a revelation of Christ's power as God, but it reveals the company of heaven in His humanity.

Forty days after Easter, Christ went up to heaven by His own will and power (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:51 Acts 1). According to Acts, it seems that the Ascension took place on Mount Olivet.

Jesus Himself spoke of His Ascension (John 6:63; 20:17). 

Ascension and You!

Ascension is point in Christ's life where He says goodbye to the physical world as you and I see it. The person, Jesus Christ, in His humanity and divinity assume the power and glory of the eternal God. 

The eternal gift of God in the Ascension is that Jesus in His humanity is everywhere, all-powerful, the sovereign God who is not in heaven, but is the God that is even above the heavens. Being beyond the glory of heaven places the God-man in the authority only reserved for God as the creator.

His Ascension catapults him into the God-man who not only is above all, but more importantly for us poor sinners, is with us in our sinful miserable world that He may suffer with us as God and man. He does not, in His humanity, stay in heaven!

The power and glory of the Ascension is what places Him back into service here on earth in the Word, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper. His Ascension as the personal God-man Jesus is exactly why Lutheran s believe the true body and blood is in the Lord's Supper. His humanity is not in heaven, rather, because He is God, His humanity is where God is and wills to be. God Himself, for our salvation, commits himself to be in the Word, Baptism, and Lord's Supper. 

The Ascension unites heaven on earth. He does not take us to heaven, rather, He brings eternity above all power to earth.

He Ascends so that He might be here in His fullness! Thanks be to God for Jesus' full presence in our lives and the life of the Church. He Ascends that forgiveness flows from water, word, bread, and wine in the same mystery of the Word becomes flesh.