Scripture: Acts 1:9; Psalm 68:18-20; 2 Corinthians 12:2; Luke 1:68-75; Matthew 5:48 Series: 2022
Continuing a series on the Apostles’ Creed, this Gaudete Sunday sermon takes up ‘He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.’ Wilson uses space imagery (moon landing, McDonald Observatory, Webb telescope) to press the question of where the ascended Jesus went, insisting on a bodily, not disembodied, resurrection and ascension grounded in Acts 1:9 and the empty tomb. Heaven is not a place in the cosmos but the Triune God who is the source of all being; by faith, because we are Christ’s body, we already share heaven now while Christ remains present with us, quoting Augustine. Turning to Advent and Zechariah’s song in Luke 1, he argues we can follow Christ without fear in holiness, then applies Wesley’s General Rule (do no harm, do good, attend to the things of God) as the shape of living into the kingdom of heaven now. He warns against denying that kingdom through self-justification and complacency, citing Matthew 5:48’s call to be complete/perfect, and closes by rejoicing in Christ’s coming.
Illustrations: moon-landing, mcdonald-observatory-stargazing, st-andrews-paul-physicist, star-trek-starship-heaven, oil-rig-roughneck-priest, augustine-ascension-sermon
December 11
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty,
You ascended the heights, leading away your captives, receiving tribute from people, even from those who rebel against the Lord God’s dwelling there. Bless the Lord! The God of our salvation supports us day after day! Selah Our God is the God of salvation, and escape from certain death comes through God my Lord. - Psalm 68:18-20
Some of you were alive during the moon landing. Some of you may remember it vividly. Some of you were in school at the time and you remember how they brought in the TVs to show you this phenomenal moment. I mean, a man on the moon! It was literally science fiction. They didn’t find any green little men up there, but it was this astonishing moment, a human from the earth to the moon through space.
That word itself, space, is curious. We use it to describe everything beyond the world. Space is unique and beautiful. My family loves going out to West Texas to look at the stars. We went to the McDonald Observatory earlier this year with the kids for the first time and they loved it: walking around the giant telescopes, seeing pictures from Hubble. We watched as the new James Webb satellite was unfurling earlier this year. I love pictures from space. The ancients never talk about space as such. It was all part of the heavens: the moon, the stars, the sun, the planets, shooting stars, all of these observable phenomena that are really quite astonishing. The moon and the stars fill the scriptures. They matter again and again. When Jesus ascended into heaven as he does at the beginning of the Book of Acts, and as we say it in the creed, where did he go?
Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on the apostles creed, that historic doctrinal statement of the faith. We are going to look at how the creed encapsulate scripture and offers it to us in a way that shows us what has been revealed from God about who God is, how the world is, why we are in need, how Jesus saves us, and what we should do about it.
Today, He ascended into heaven.
I have a friend of mine who’s a professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and he was giving an interview recently and spoke about how Paul the Apostle, was a really wonderful physicist. Paul loved talking about the physical world. Paul talks about the third heaven. He doesn’t talk about the second heaven or the fourth heaven, but the third one, and someone he knows who went to this third heaven and came down.
Second Corinthians 12. “I know a man in Christ who was caught up into the third heaven fourteen years ago.” 2 Corinthians 12:2- CEB
Since there’s been a church, there’s been Christians like arguing and debating about what Paul means. What is the third heaven? Some say that the first heaven is the sky, the second heaven is outer space, and the third heaven is the presence of God beyond that, but I don’t think Paul is super clear on this fact.
And then a similar question, is the third Heaven where Jesus goes when he ascends? Part of the challenge in understanding this is that Jesus’s body ascends, it’s not just a disembodied spirit. Disembodied spirits are not very important in the Bible. Many cultural images of life after death include disembodied spirits, but these are not based on scripture. Resurrected physical bodies are not as important for many Christians and many people who have claimed to be Christians over the years, but they are very important in the Bible. All the resurrection accounts in Matthew, Luke, and John, have Jesus eating fish and doing something material, something concrete. And then at the ascension, Jesus goes up. It’s hard not to have in your mind, when you read this, an image of someone being zoomed away into space as if by an alien spaceship,
Jesus didn’t slowly fade into nothingness. His body was there and then it went up.
“After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Acts of the Apostles 1:9 CEB
It matters that there’s not a tomb of Jesus anymore. The tomb is empty. He is risen in flesh and sinew. If anyone ever claims to have the bones of Jesus, they’re either lying or the faith is a fraud. Like it’s that concrete of a thing. Our belief in resurrection is also that the resurrected body of Jesus is no longer present as it was on earth. Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Where is that?
Heaven is not another planet or solar system. We can’t visit there through a star ship like Star Trek 5. Heaven is not a proper noun. If God is the creator of heaven and earth, of all reality, then God is not just another aspect of reality. The Triune God is the source in whom we live and move and have our being.
To believe that Christ ascended to be with God the Father is an act of Faith.
And when Christ goes up to that space beyond space, because we are Christ’s body, we can go with him, as well.
For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.
Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear…Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? 1
Christ’s ascension does not simply give us something to look forward to after we die. Christ takes part of us into heaven. As well, Christ remains here with us through the body of Christ. The kingdom of heaven is here. It has already started. Resurrected life is possible here and now. But it is an act of faith. It is taking a step beyond what is comfortable into a space where we don’t exactly know what the result is going to be. Living into the kingdom of heaven is an act of faith.
Advent
Even as we speak of the ascension, we are in the season of advent. Most of the biblical stories of advent come from Luke 1. Luke gives us the account of the coming of Jesus, starting with this man named Zechariah. Zechariah was a priest. He had duties at the temple. The priestly function in second temple Judaism usually had a rotational system. Kind of like being a roughneck on an oil rig. And you’d have two weeks on, two weeks off. And it’d be pretty intense. I don’t know what is more intense: working on an oil rig or working in the temple, with all the blood from the sacrifices. Then in Luke, an angel comes to Elizabeth, his wife, who is elderly. The angel tells her that she’s going to have a son who is going to be a prophet. Zecheriah, the man of God, does not believe her. Thus, he becomes mute. He cannot speak. But then near the end of chapter one, after John is born, Zechariah not only speaks, he sings.
Blessed be the Lord, The God of Israel; He has come to His people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty Saviour, Born of the house of His servant David. Through His holy prophets He promised of old That He would save us from our enemies, From the hands of all who hate us. He promised to show mercy to our fathers And to remember His holy Covenant. This was the oath He swore to our father Abraham: To set us free from the hands of our enemies, Free to worship Him without fear, Holy and righteous in His sight, All the days of our life.
For us today, we can follow Christ without fear in holiness and righteousness all our days because Christ ascended and is present with God the Father, and yet still present with us here. We can follow him without fear in holiness and righteousness. What does that mean? One tool to help us is called the General Rule. It has three parts. It starts: first, do no harm. That is how we live in holiness and righteousness or justice. Do we believe our actions are causing harm to people? Do we see that? Is it clear? If it is, then we need to assess and change the behavior. If we actually seek Jesus and wish to follow without fear, the onus is on us. If we want to follow with fear, we would be afraid of the consequences of our actions and wish to put our head in the sand. Without fear, we are free. We start with not harming the people around us and being willing to question our actions when they do reach to harm. And this means going down the rabbit hole of the consequences of our actions. If you’re not willing to think about how your choices of diet, of travel, of home impact other people and the world, then you are shutting off Christ’s power in your life. The next step is to do all the good we can. Are we doing all the good we can or only a limited amount of good? Do you live without fear in holiness and righteousness because Christ has ascended and is present with God and is ready to offer justice? Or are you the one offering justice? Next week we’re gonna talk about judgment, but it’s still implicit in the presence of Christ with God, the Father on the right hand side. And justice is not ours, but the Lords. Our position is not to make others suffer or pay, but to do the good we can. That is what holiness can look like. And then finally, to do the things of God: Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked worship. Come to worship together, give to God. I mean, the kingdom of heaven is either here or it’s not.
We each are offered the opportunity to live into Christ’s Kingdom or not. We can reject God’s call on our heart. When we choose to ignore the harm we do, when we choose to blame other people, when we choose to always put ourselves as the victim of a situation and never take accountability for our own actions, we are denying the presence of the kingdom of heaven. When we stop at a threshold of doing good, when we say, “this is enough.” When we say, “God didn’t ask me to be perfect.” I’m sorry to tell you that God does. Matthew 5:48 Be perfect. As your Father in heaven is perfect. Which doesn’t mean Don’t make mistakes, but be complete. Be complete in Christ. You are not complete in yourself. God is calling you to be complete. And so to do all the good you can, which just means taking the time to discern what is all the good you can do. And then to participate in the practices of God, to worship together, to share the table together, to conference together, to speak in a Christian way, in a holy way together. If we do not do that, we are denying the reality of the kingdom of heaven. We don’t have a discernment meeting today. We’re gonna start back up in the new year. If we do not talk together humbly, we’re denying Christ’s presence, the physical location of the presence of God. It’s irrelevant when we choose to deny God by our actions. There is grace for us, my brothers and sisters, but there is also a need. In this season of advent, may we remember the two meanings of Advent: the waiting for the birth and the waiting for the return of Jesus. Today is Gaudete Sunday. The Sunday of rejoicing. The pink candle on the advent wreath. We rejoice in Christ’s coming when we live into his kingdom now. Not push it off, not pretend it doesn’t matter, not think we’ve already passed the test. We have to seek first Christ’s kingdom and all these things will be added. Christ ascended the heights for us. Let us live a heavenly life of love in response,
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, may we remember the presence of your Son, Jesus, in this season. May we wait for his coming by living into the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
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From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop (Sermo de Ascensione Domini, Mai 98, 1-7: PLS 2, 429-495) ↩