The Church’s Forgotten Festival

Ascension Sunday | May 24, 2020 | Acts 1:1-11 | by Pastor Paul C Sizemore |

(Most of the information that follows below, was first published in the May 2010 issue of THE LUTHERAN WITNESS, St Louis, Missouri, USA; The Rev. Dr. Albert B. Collver).

 

My friends, how important is the annual celebration of our Lord’s Ascension to you, anyway?  Of course, there was a time, let’s say, some 50 or 60 years ago, when most every Lutheran, Catholic or Episcopal church in the United States, would have held a special Ascension Day Service, but it was never on a Sunday, but always on a Thursday, because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. St Luke tells us, 40 days after Easter, making that day of the week, never a Sunday but always a Thursday.

While Ascension Day is not a public holiday here in the United States, or in Canada, or in Australia, for centuries, Ascension Day has been a public holiday in Germany; and is also now a federal holiday in the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Somewhat like our current-day celebration of Palm Sunday and the Sunday of the Passion, Ascension Day may have both a positive aspect and a negative aspect to it.  On the one hand, spiritually speaking, Ascension Day is a very positive day because it was on that day that Jesus received all authority  in heaven and on earth, commemorating our believe that he has saved us from sin, death, and the grave, Ascension Day also marks in the minds of some Christians the time when Jesus, as the “Heavenly Bridegroom” was taken away from his disciples (Mark 2:20).

My friends, if I were to ask you to genuinely reflect upon our Lord’s Ascension today, I cannot help but wonder what sorts of images might come to mind for you!

Would you think of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, like that of a manned-space-rocket lifting-up from off the earth, down there at Cape Canaveral and rising higher and higher into the air, with its ascent high into the sky?

St. Mark’s Gospel never uses the word “ascension,” as such, but simply tells us in Mark 16:19 that our Lord Jesus “was taken up into heaven, where he sat down at the right hand of God!”  St. Luke’s description, on the other hand, gives us a little more vivid details when it tells us in Luke 24:51 that Jesus was “carried up into heaven,” and where he also tells us in Acts 1:9: “He was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight!”

Note that the verbs describing our Lord’s Ascension in these accounts are all being used in their “passive” form.  Therefore, our Lord’s Ascension was not some accomplishment that he was bringing about through his own exertion, but that something, “outside of Jesus,” was acting upon him.  God the Father is taking, elevating, and receiving Jesus to his right hand, because Jesus was thereby receiving all power and authority.

The fact that Jesus was taken from their sight by a cloud is significant, for the cloud indicates the presence of the Lord God Almighty.

Other examples of this are certainly revealed to us in the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures, when the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness. Here, the Bible teaches us that: “The Lord led them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night” (Exodus. 13:21–22).

In Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, the Lord descended upon his tabernacle in a cloud, and He filled His temple in Jerusalem with a cloud. At Jesus’ Transfiguration, St. Matthew tells us that a “bright cloud overshadowed” Moses and Elijah, along with Peter, James, John (Matthew 17:5).

So often, all throughout the Bible, the presence of clouds indicates that God’s people are very distinctly and experientially in the presence of God.  Thus, at Jesus’ Ascension, He is taken up from the disciples’ sight when He enters, into the presence of the Lord God, rightfully to sit on His throne. And yet, make no mistake about it!

Certainly, the story of our Lord’s Ascension does not end here!

While the Christian Church confesses universally that Jesus ascended into heaven, some confusion, misunderstanding, and even divisions have arisen, among believers, as to what Jesus’ ascension into heaven might actually mean for us here on earth!

Some Christians understand the Ascension as a sad day, a day that marks that day when: “The Bridegroom was taken away,” a day that reminds them that He is not present with His people in a physical, or bodily, way.

In this way of thinking, due to people’s misunderstandings of what the Apostles Creed confesses: Their understanding is that Jesus ascension into heaven means that he is confined there and that he will remain there until that great and last day comes when he will come to: “Judge the living and the dead.”

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Reformation era, the fact that Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of God and that He will return in glory on the Last Day was understood to mean that Jesus’ body was located (literally and physically) in heaven, and therefore, now, is no longer accessible to Christians on earth. Therefore, the Church on earth only had her access to Jesus, primarily through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ bodily ascension into heaven and the Words of Institution, “Take eat; this is My body,” created an apparent contradiction in some people’s minds. Until the 16th century, most members of the Christian church simply believed Christ’s words: Namely, that He ascended into heaven and still provided His body and blood for Christians to eat and drink in Holy Communion.

The explanation of how He accomplished this was not in the forefront of most people’s minds.

However, as early as the 13th century, an attempt to explain this apparent contradiction arose in the Western Church, that later became known as the Roman Catholic Church.

This new teaching, called transubstantiation, held that the bread and wine on the altar were “changed into” the real body and the real blood of Christ. According to the way medieval scientists understood physics, a conversion of one substance into another did not result in movement; therefore, Christ could remain in heaven and His body could also be present (through God’s own divine act of transubstantiation) on the altar in church.

To many modern people, such an explanation does not make sense. Our difficulty in making sense of this argument does not involve the intelligence of people but rather a different understanding of the physical world. By the 16th century, peoples’ understanding of the physical world had changed to align more with our present day than with the Middle Ages.

After Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, a controversy arose over the Lord’s Supper.

Rome continued to teach what it had since the 13th century: Transubstantiation—that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ without the movement of Christ’s body from heaven to earth.

Lutherans, while rejecting transubstantiation as a theory to explain how Christ could be simultaneously in heaven at the right hand of the Father and on the altar in the Lord’s Supper, never denied that Christ gave His body and blood to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of sins.

Lutherans simply confessed what Jesus said in His words.

However, another new group of Christians, which became known as the Reformed (today, generally comprising Christian denominations that are not Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Lutheran), not only rejected transubstantiation as a theory but also rejected the idea that Christ gives us His true body and true blood to eat and to drink in the Lord’s Supper.

Led by Huldreich Zwingli, John Calvin, and others, these Christians argued that the only way the Church can access Jesus is through His Spirit. This might explain why Protestant Christians, such as the Reformed, in general, focus so much more on the presence of the Holy Spirit in worship, especially in their music, than on the presence of Jesus.

So, while these Christians would confess that Jesus is “spiritually” present in the Lord’s Supper, they would deny that Jesus gives us His true body to eat and His true blood to drink in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion.

Therefore, they end up denying that the very body and blood that was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered on the cross, rose on the third day, and ascended into heaven is present in the Lord’s Supper to eat and to drink.

Reformed Christians reasoned that since Jesus’ body is in heaven it cannot be on the altar to eat and to drink. Zwingli put it this way: “But if Christ is seated there, He cannot be here.”

As a result of the controversy over the Lord’s Supper, Christ’s ascension into heaven took center stage in preaching during the 17th and 18th centuries—for both the Lutherans and the Reformed.

The Reformed Church used Ascension Day to prove why the Lutheran teaching on the Lord’s Supper was incorrect. On the other hand, the Lutheran Church celebrated the Ascension to emphasize that Christ’s ascension to the right hand of the Father gave Him the power and authority to deliver exactly what He has promised—His body and His blood given for you and me to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of sins.

Our Lord’s and Savior’s ascension into heaven marks not the distance of Christ from people but rather His nearness to us. While Christ may not be visible to us in His body, as He was to His disciples during His three-year ministry on earth, He is visible to us in the Sacraments, where He hides Himself behind the bread and the wine, but giving to us, as His words promise, His very body and blood.

In the Lord’s Supper, Christ gives to us the very same body that ascended into heaven and now “sits at the right hand of the Father,” i.e., has all the authority in heaven and on earth. He gives us His body and His blood to strengthen our faith and to preserve us until He returns in glory, when all will see Him face to face.

This Ascension Sunday let us recall what Jesus accomplished for us. When He ascended into heaven, He received all authority in heaven and on earth so that He can draw near to us and deliver to us what He has promised.

Let us recall also how our Lord’s ascension means that Jesus is not very far from any of us, but so close that He puts his very body and blood into our mouths for the forgiveness of our sins. In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus draws as close to us as he was to the Virgin Mary when he dwelled in her womb. His ascension means He can do exactly what He promises. Indeed, the ascension of Christ into heaven marks one of the most important festivals in the church year.

 

Pastor Paul C Sizemore

Trinity Lutheran Church

Daytona Beach, Florida, USA 32117