Ascension Sunday Communion Meditation

May 5, 1991

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The Thursday coming up, the 9th of May, will be the 40th day after Easter, and in the Christian calendar, that’s Ascension Day, the day in between Easter and Pentecost when the resurrected Christ, in the words of the Creed, “ascended into heaven”, to sit at the right hand of the Father.   

There are references to the Ascension in various places in the New Testament, but the only sustained account is found in the opening verses of the Book of Acts, and it’s that account I’d like to read as a starting point for today’s Communion meditation. 

Now I think in all honesty we have to say that in some ways this is a very strange story. It’s a bizarre, unusual, far-out kind of story, using descriptive phrases that frankly sound jarring to modern ears. 

The Christ who was crucified has risen from the dead, has appeared among the disciples.... 

They have seen Him, even touched Him, and now He gathers them to tell them to go to 

Jerusalem, and WAIT, for power to come upon them. Then in a dramatic image, He ascends...goes up, as in a cloud, to heaven while the apostles gaze upward in amazement. 

AND HE’S GONE. That’s the Ascension story. He leaves them, to return to the Father and they never see Him again, physically. WHOOSH! 

What kind of story is this? What kind of language is this? What does it mean, this translation from earth to heaven, from below to above, from the temporal to the eternal, and what value does it have for us who live in a world so far removed from the First Century? What can it say to us who operate under a very different kind of cosmology? Is it simply an archaic carryover from an earlier and now outmoded setting? 

Well, let me suggest we make a mistake if we dismiss the Ascension story as primitive and irrelevant. ISN’T IT ESSENTIALLY THE Bible way of speaking of the unlimitedness of Jesus? It makes the end of his earthly, geographically circumscribed career, and the beginning of his universal, all-inclusive career. 

Before the Ascension, Jesus in a sense belonged to the Jews....After the Ascension, He belonged to the world. 

The Ascension says to us something we celebrate every time we take communion. NO LONGER IS THE LORD RESTRICTED TO A NARROW, CONFINED SEGMENT OF HUMAN LIFE, OR to a particular place, or to a selected few. 

Now He’s available to everybody, everywhere, without limitation. His base of operations is no longer in the center of the Middle East....IT’S IN THE CENTER OF THE CREATED ORDER. 

He’s not gone....He’s turned loose. His INcarnation has become EXTRAcarnation....He’s ubiquitous, omnipresent, universal, and now everyone can experience it. 

ONE of the most astounding things about Jesus is the way people from all walks of life, people of all races, and backgrounds, and educational levels can relate to him immediately, and at a depth level. 

Not everyone can understand Plato, and only a very few can understand Einstein. BUT EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND JESUS....everyone who wants to. 

When He healed that leper on the sabbath, breaking through the common mores of the day, and the Law, and the natural repulsion associated with it, EVERYBODY KNEW WHAT IT MEANT. 

When he told a story about a father’s broken heart, EVERYBODY UNDERSTOOD. When dying in agony on the Cross, He asked God to forgive His enemies, nobody needed a dictionary, or a commentary to know what He meant. 

He speaks to the ages. Whether one is a Jew in the first century, or a tradesman in the Middle Ages, or a North American banker in the 20th Century.... 

Whether one lives in town or country, is rich or poor, is educated or ignorant, that person can understand Jesus, at least on some significant level, because Jesus is translatable into every language known to humanity. 

In Him, space and time are transcended. His reverence has not been dimmed by the passage of years. He’s as pertinent today as 2000 years ago. 

When we hear Him speaking of the Father’s love, and of the pain of separation, and of the need for forgiveness, and of the foolishness of building a house on sand, and of treasure that never rusts, and of home....it strikes a universal chord. 

AND WHEN HE’S LIFTED UP...when He’s exalted before people in all His winsome luster, he somehow continues to have the capacity to reach in and touch the depths of the human heart. 

Sometimes we say, “Oh, I wish I could have lived in Bible times. Wouldn’t that have been magnificent? I wish I could have been there to see Him and to hear Him when He was present in the flesh.” 

Well, it would have been wonderful, no doubt....BUT UNNECESSARY to experience the reality of His presence, and the fullness of His power. 

He can be everywhere now, in a spiritual sense, for He has ascended to the Father....indeed, “sitteth at the right hang of the Father...” in perfect accord with the Father’s perfect will. 

His work of ministry goes on, reaching out in anxious love and care to intercede for us, to pull for us in our daily struggles and temptations, to sustain us in our trials, to feed us when we hunger for spiritual bread. 

As He did that so lovingly for the few while on earth, and demonstrated the profundity of His concern, NOW HE DOES IT FOR THE MANY, FOR ALL, without limitation, and with only the restriction imposed by our unwillingness to let Him in. 

We take these elements this morning as the physical tokens of His spiritual passion for our welfare. 

My body, broken for you....my blood, shed for you.... 

Here is how much He cares. There is no limit now the reach of His undying concern. 

He has ascended to the Father. From heaven to you His nail-pierced hands extend in  compassion. Let Him through these symbols touch you and make you whole.