Title: CHRIST’S ASCENSION’S LASTING EFFECTS

Focus: Christ’s ascension is for our good and leads to powerful benefits.

Function: To encourage the people to act upon Christ’s ascension with joy and conviction that Christ’s ascension is for our good.

Text: Luke 24:36-53

I don’t like saying good- byes. There’s always something uncertain or even final about saying goodbyes. When I emigrated in 1972, for example, I embarked on a passenger ship in Rotterdam. All my immediate family members, some aunts and uncles, and some friends came to Rotterdam’s harbor and wished me well. No one at that time knew whether we would see each other again. We hoped so, but no one could know for certain. We joked a bit, chatted a lot, and then we said our goodbyes. They went to their homes in Holland; I went to my cabin on the ship. We all had mixed emotions.

Some other occasions of saying goodbye are filled with raw emotions and sorrow. As a pastor, I have been at many deathbeds where, together with family members, we had to travel the valley of the shadow of death with a loved one. Saying goodbye in those circumstances is painful. For death comes with an earthly finality—a finality that elicits tears, not laughter. Saying good- byes, then, comes with a mixed bag of emotions. I can’t get used to it or like it.

Saying goodbye in this season of Easter with its emphasis today on Jesus’ ascension into heaven should catch our attention. For clearly, first Jesus death and then later his ascension--both call for a goodbye response by his disciples. And the disciples’ response to Jesus’ ascension in particular is striking: there seems to be a deep sense of relief and joy and wonder, mixed with delight in the new situation.

It seems that the disciples realize that Christ’s ascension is for our good and leads to powerful benefits. Why else does the text in Luke’s gospel ends with these words: “Then (the disciples) worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God”? Jesus’ ascension brings joy to the disciples. There’s got to be a story here.

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Note that Luke ends his gospel by connecting us with the disciples on that first day of the week when the women discovered that the tomb of Jesus was empty. So when we begin our reading with verse 36, we find ourselves with the disciples in a safe place with the door locked. When we end our reading of the gospel with vs. 53, we find ourselves in the temple of Jerusalem, together with the disciples worshiping and praising God.

So the first thing we notice is that Luke compresses 40 days of resurrection appearances by Jesus into what seems a one day account of Jesus’ actions after his resurrection. Be careful, then, how you read and understand Luke’s account of Jesus’ ascension as told in his gospel over against Luke’s account of Jesus’ ascension told at the very beginning of the book of Acts. There are more details in the book of Acts then in Luke’s gospel. Yet, Luke mentions the same event. In his gospel, Luke compresses 40 days into what seems a seamless story about Jesus’ resurrection resulting into his ascension.

In the compressed version in his gospel, Luke emphasizes different things than he does in Acts. In his gospel Luke emphasizes the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection. When Jesus shows up on that resurrection Sunday, the disciples are “startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost” so says the text. And Luke takes the time to debunk any notion that may advocate such a view among skeptics of the resurrection from the dead. That’s why we hear Jesus say to his disciples: “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

And as if to reject any further objection, we hear Luke say that Jesus showed his disciples his hands and feet. So strong is the disciples’ impulse to deny the possibility of a physical resurrection of the dead that Jesus asked them for something to eat. They gave him a piece of broiled fish. And Jesus ate it in their presence. Ghosts or spooks do not eat food—only flesh and blood human beings who are alive and well. And that’s what Luke wants us to see about the resurrected Lord Jesus.

Luke also summarizes Jesus’ instructions for his disciples. And we learn that Jesus wants us to see his ministry on earth, including his death, resurrection and ascension, in light of the O.T. scriptures. The key to understanding Jesus is found in the Law of Moses, the writings of the Prophets and the book of Psalms and wisdom sayings. That’s another important emphasis at the end of Luke’s gospel account.

As Luke compresses these 40 days of Jesus’ resurrection appearance into a short account, we notice that Luke also pays attention to the place of Jesus’ ascension. It’s the place outside Jerusalem, near Bethany. When Jesus entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he entered by way of the road near the Mount of Olives. At that time, the people shouted “Hosanna! Hosanna to the King!” And Jesus ended up on a cross and in a tomb.

Now 40 days later, when Jesus is about to leave his disciples and ascend to the throne room of his heavenly Father, he takes the same route. He leaves Jerusalem and goes to the vicinity of Bethany, presumably near the Mount of Olives. There, Jesus blessed his disciples and ascended to heaven for our good.

Here’s the golden thread that holds together Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension: it’s the effect of amazement, joy, praise and worship. In vs. 41 Luke refers to the joy and amazement of the disciples in response to Jesus’ physical resurrection. And in vs. 52 and 53 Luke points to the disciples’ worship of Jesus, and their great joy when they observed Jesus’ physical departure into heaven. That joy leads them to seek the presence of God in worship and praise at the temple in Jerusalem. Somehow, the disciples now realize that Christ’s physical resurrection and ascension into heaven is for our good and leads to powerful benefits or lasting effects. Let’s explore some of these benefits together.

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First of all, when Jesus ascended physically (that is, as the resurrected, glorified Jesus in the flesh), the disciples realized that now we have an intercessor in heaven. We have Jesus who understands what it is like to live “in the flesh,” that is, to be truly human. He understands human temptation, human suffering, human sorrow, human fear of death, and the anguish of sorrow and grief. Jesus understands, and he therefore functions as our great high priest and intercessor, who pleads our cause before God the Father.

This knowledge that Jesus is our intercessor should spur us on to approach God in prayer fervently and with great confidence. As we seek to bend God’s ear so that he listens and responds to our needs, we have the Lord Jesus pleading on our behalf.

By myself, I would stand condemned before God in his throne room. I could not even enter his presence because of my sins and sinful heart. But because Jesus has physically entered God’s throne room and is seated at the Father’s right hand, I am now covered by Christ’s atoning work, cleansed by Christ’s blood, and justified by Christ’s payment of our sins. A confident approach in prayer before God is a powerful lasting effect or benefit of Jesus’ ascension.

Secondly, Christ’s physical ascent into heaven means that our flesh, our human nature and physicality are in heaven. Before Jesus took on our flesh, no man could enter God’s presence. Our fall into sin so corrupted our existence in the flesh, so corrupted our human nature—that God barred us from his presence. It was only after the eternal Son of God took on our human nature and paid for our sins by dying on the cross and rising from the dead, that we may enter God’s presence again.

Note that in Christ, our sins are forgiven. In Christ, being united with him in his death and resurrection, we have life; we are cleansed; we may have fellowship with God and we are reconciled with God. Before the eternal Son of God took on our flesh, Jesus was logos, Spirit, Word. Then he took on our human nature, our flesh and he lived on earth; after his resurrection he went back to his rightful place as the Son of God. But he went back with our flesh. He is seated in the presence of God. And our flesh is inseparably united with Christ. Our flesh is in heaven. Our humanity is now forever in the presence of God himself.

This astonishing truth means that all who die in Christ, whose bodies turn to dust, will share in the resurrection on the last day. We shall be fully human again, because as Christ is fully human (living before the Father in the flesh), so we too are guaranteed of eternal life in full humanness. We shall have glorified, resurrection bodies.

We shall not float around forever and ever as spirits or ghosts or angels playing harps or singing songs in some ethereal place. No, on the restored creation, we shall be fully human, living in the body. For Jesus’ ascended into heaven having assumed and having sanctified our human nature, our flesh. Thank God for Jesus’ ascension. It’s for our good.

Thirdly, Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead and his bodily ascension into heaven underscore this truth: God values our bodies. Some of us still have this old Greek notion that spirit is more important than matter. In the early days of the Christian church, there were many (they are called “Gnostics”) who claimed that physical or material stuff (such as the human body) is evil, bad, or inferior to the spiritual or the rational things of life. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Christ took on our flesh to redeem it, to restore it, so that we may live fully human lives.

Jesus’ bodily ascension should stir us to pay attention to our bodies—not disdain them. Neither should we obsess about our bodies; rather we should treat them as vehicles or temples or instruments to serve God with. Jesus’ bodily ascension should guide us in treating each other not as sex objects, but as sacred vessels to serve God and each other. The Spirit of God values our bodies, because human beings can only serve God as a unified whole—body and soul.

Jesus’ bodily resurrection and physical ascension should impress upon us that we are not a “piece of meat.” We are not to discard human embryos simply as a bunch of cells or tissues; we are not to disdain our bodies as inferior or disposable or as experiential stuff for human cloning.

We all are physical human beings; we all—from one degree to another—struggle with all kinds of bodily or physical things. We all long for the day when physical perfection and wholeness shall be ours. It will come. For our flesh is in heaven. Jesus has ascended for our good!

One final comment: practicing racism—the emphasis of one particular skin color as better or more desirable over against another—is totally inappropriate for any Christian. For Christ’s physical ascend into heaven means that the humanity of any person is precious in God’s sight. The physical ascension of Jesus negates any superiority of race or skin color.

Yellow, red, black or white—whatever it is--Jesus values your and my humanity. He embraced our flesh in Bethlehem’s stable; he sacrificed it on Golgotha’s cross; he redeemed it in Jerusalem’s tomb; he sanctified it in his ascension, and he treasures our humanity in heaven today. Christ’s ascension is for our good and leads to powerful benefits. It’s cause for great joy.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.