What Goes Up Must Come Down: Acts 1:1-11

This past Thursday was Ascension Day, the day when Jesus returned to heaven 40 days after his resurrection. Next week we celebrate Pentecost, which is a much more exciting and better-known church day. Yet Ascension Day is just as important a day because it reminds us of who Jesus is and who we are. The Heidelberg Catechism talks about Jesus’ return to heaven, asking, “How does Jesus’ ascension to heaven benefit us? The pastor and scholar tell us, “First, he pleads our cause in heaven in the presence of our Father, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:34. Second, we have our own flesh in heaven—a guarantee that Christ our head will take us, his members, to himself in heaven, as John reminds us in John 14:2. Third, he sends his Spirit to us on earth as a further guarantee. By the Spirit’s power we make the goal of our lives, not earthly things, but the things above where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand, as Paul reminds us in Colossians 3:1-4.

Jesus returns to heaven, and as he tells his disciples in Matthew’s account, “all authority in heaven and in earth has been given to him.” Jesus goes to sit at God’s right hand, a place of power and ruling. Jesus is crowned as our king as he returns home to his Father. Before Jesus heads back to heaven, he tells his followers to head back to Jerusalem to wait for the coming of his Spirit. This will be a Spirit of power since Jesus is king now of heaven and earth. This Spirit is going to equip them, and us today, to be Jesus’ witnesses in the world. Jesus gives his disciples their mission: to be witnesses for him as they go out into the world around them. The word for witness in the Greek is “martyres,’ where we get the word martyr in English, someone who is killed for their religious beliefs. Jesus is offering a warning that they may be killed for believing in him. It’s no light call on our lives that Jesus gives us here; our call is to be willing to give our lives and be martyrs, witnesses to the world of our King Jesus

This takes a deep belief and trust in Jesus. This is a trust and commitment to Jesus as our saviour and as our king, the one who commands us to go and be martyrs for him in the world today. This trust and commitment to Jesus as our king doesn’t always come easy for us today. Those of us who are older remember the 1960s and 1970s, a time of unrest, a time when people began to react against the governments and authority; it was a time of the Vietnam War, the Cold War with Russia, the Korean War.

It was a time when people began to focus on the self, on meditation, on spirituality, but especially on personal freedoms; it was the time of the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, and a time when distrust grew of leaders, whether in government or the church. People began to question God and to interpret Scripture according to their own individual understanding of what it should say according to their view of the world and of Jesus. We saw this distrust of authority play out over the past couple of years as we walked through the pandemic.

We live in a time where it is hard to understand what it means to have Jesus as our king, and what the call to full obedience and loyalty this calls for us to have to Jesus means. It means fully accepting Jesus’ call to give us our lives for his mission and purposing and setting aside completely our own wants and desires for his. It means that our identity is found in Jesus and his Body instead of ourselves as individuals. It means we think in terms of being part of, and what’s best for Jesus’ kingdom rather than what we want. It’s about realizing that the one thing we need most is a king that cares more about us than we even care for ourselves, that Jesus as our king will protect and provide for us exactly what we need in order to flourish where we are. As our king, Jesus wants us to follow him, not because we are forced to, but because we’re reflecting his love for us back to him. This is why Jesus tells his followers, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.”

After giving the disciples their mission, Jesus is taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Luke then tells us that the disciples were looking intently up into the sky as a cloud hid Jesus from their sight. St John Chrysostom writes in a homily on this passage, “It seems to me that they had not any clear notion of the nature of the kingdom, for the Spirit had not yet instructed them. Notice that they do not ask when it shall come but, “Will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel,” as if the Kingdom were still something that lay in the past. This question shows that they were still attracted by earthly things, though less than they had been.”

The apostles recognize Jesus is king, but they’re still thinking in terms of the nation of Israel, of national borders and a throne in Jerusalem. The Heidelberg Catechism affirms this, “Christ ascended to heaven, there to show that he is head of his church, and that the Father rules all things through him.” The Catechism focuses on the church first, while Paul in Ephesians 1 emphasizes that Jesus rules over all things first, “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” In Paul’s way of thinking, Jesus is king over all creation, past, present, and future and the church is Jesus’ body placed here to witness to all creation who Jesus is and invite them into the kingdom by accepting Jesus as their saviour and king.

Back to the changes that the 60s and 70s brought to our society, our culture, and the church. It was also a time of great hope, a time when people believed we could solve the world’s problems through science, capitalism, and exporting the North American dream and ways. It was the time of the Peace Corps in the USA and Katimavik in Canada. It was a time of hope when people dreamed of a time when all people would be treated with honour and respect, a time when poverty and injustice would be wiped out, a time of peace and hope and grace. It was the beginnings of going on serve projects in our churches and investing in our youth, helping our youth see that Jesus has equipped them too, that serving Jesus is not limited by our age. Christians began recognizing that the good news of Jesus was at the heart of the change the world needed. Without realizing it, people were dreaming and hoping for the kingdom of heaven to come.

Ascension Day is a day of hope and excitement as Jesus takes his place at the right hand of God and commissions us to share the gospel news. The apostles didn’t understand yet what was exactly going on, but trusted Jesus. I love how the two men dressed in white who suddenly appear talk to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” This isn’t the end of Jesus’ story, but the beginning of the next chapter in the kingdom of heaven. It’s the climax of Jesus’ exaltation, crowned as the king of all creation. Revelation 19: 13 & 16 show us, “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. . .. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Jesus is engaged in a battle with Satan, a battle that Satan has no chance of winning. But Satan can still do a lot of harm, which is why Jesus promises the Holy Spirit as we engage in Jesus’ kingdom of heaven work here on earth as his witnesses to counter the work Satan is engaged in to discredit and twist all the Jesus is doing. We’re called to complete obedience to Jesus’ commands. Jesus is our king, we’re part of his kingdom, this is communal, community ways of thinking. This is about who we are, Jesus’ people and who our allegiance is to, Jesus, and where we get our identity from, Jesus.

This means focusing less on our allegiances to groups or philosophies rooted in this world, and focus on who Jesus, our king, is calling us to be. This total obedience is rooted in love as Jesus’ commands us to first love God with everything we’ve got, to love our neighbour, and to go make disciples, which all flows out of Jesus’ love for the world. This takes trust and faith in Jesus and making Jesus and his will first in our lives since he is our king.