Ascension of Jesus

The Lion King tells the story of a king's ascent. From the moment the movie begins, Simba is branded as the heir to the throne. He is designated to the office at the start of the movie by the baboon Rafiki, who lifts up Simba before the animals of the kingdom as they bow before him. He is the future king.

The rest of the story describes Simba's exile and his homecoming to Pride Rock. When Simba returns to Pride Rock, he must battle for the throne, which has been seized by his uncle Scar. Simba conquers Scar and the hyenas, but even though he has been designated, appointed, and even conquered, the forces of darkness, his work remains incomplete.

At the end of the movie, immediately after the battle, an important scene occurs that is sometimes overlooked. The camera suddenly shifts to Rafiki, bringing the story full circle. Rafiki takes his staff and points Simba to Pride Rock. An old era has ended; a new one is about to begin. In order for Simba to claim his kingdom and be installed as the king, he must ascend Pride Rock, the rightful place of the ruler, to ritually demonstrate he has conquered.

Simba dramatically ascends the rock and roars. When he does, the other lions acknowledge his victory, dominion, and authority. Though Simba has been designated as the king from the start of the movie, though he has conquered in battle, he still is not installed as king until he ascends Pride Rock.

In a better way, Jesus is designated as king and Lord from the beginning of the Gospels and from all creation really. But Jesus had to be installed as king; he had to be enthroned; he had to be recognized as king; he had to ascend to the right hand of the father, sit on the throne, and receive from God the Father all dominion and authority. The Ascension is about the triumph of Jesus the king.

Henry Drummond wrote:

Ascension … what if it didn't happen? Suppose Jesus had not gone away. Suppose he were here on earth NOW. Suppose he were still in the Holy Land--Jerusalem.

Every ship that started for the East would be crowded with Christian pilgrims. Every train flying through Europe would be thronged with people going to see Jesus.

Supposing YOU are in one of those ships. The port when you arrive after the long voyage is blocked with vessels of every flag. With much difficulty you land and join one of the long trains starting for Jerusalem. As far as the eye can reach the caravans move over the desert in an endless stream. As you approach the Holy City you see a dark mass stretching for (miles and miles) between you and its glittering spires. You've come to see Jesus, but you will NEVER see him.

In an interview shortly before his death, Dallas Willard, a philosophy professor who wrote widely on spiritual formation in the church, was asked about the challenges facing the church. Dr. Willard spent much of his life addressing the problem of why the church isn't raising up more people who look and act like Jesus. At the end of that two hour interview, Willard was asked this pointed question: "When you look at how off track the church is, do you ever just throw up your hands in despair?"

Willard smiled and said, "Never."

"But how can you not?" the interviewer asked.

"Because," he said, "I know Christ is the head of his church and he knows what he's doing."

Chuck Swindoll writes:

One of my most unforgettable moments happened when I was about ten years old. My father served our country during World War II in a plant in our hometown, building all sorts of interesting equipment for the massive tanks, fighter planes, and bombers that defended us in lands far away. Dad worked too long and too hard. As a result he suffered a physical breakdown. And on its heels came an emotional trauma that puzzled everyone, including the doctors.

I was convinced in my heart that my dad was going to die. He may have had such thoughts too, because one night he called me into his room for a somber father-son talk …. I remember leaning hard against his bed, listening carefully to a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. I thought I was hearing him for the last time. He gave me counsel on life—how I should live, how I should conduct myself as his son. The counsel wasn't long, and then I left and went across the hall to the room that I shared with my older brother. All alone, I lay across my bed and sobbed, convinced that I would never see my dad alive again.

That scene still haunts me. Even though my dad recovered to live … I still remember the night he talked to me. Something very significant is wrapped up in our final words. Consider the night in Jerusalem when the Lord and his disciples gathered for … what we call "The Last Supper." Less than twelve hours after [that meal], Jesus was nailed to a cross; a few hours later, he was dead. Jesus understood the significance of those moments and the importance of his last counsel. And so he gave them exactly what they would need to carry them through the rest of their days.

Pastor Craig Brian Larson writes:

The first summer that my wife and I were dating, she worked as a temp at a bank. In the first two weeks that she had the job, she quickly noticed some extremely unprofessional behavior among the team of four people that she worked with and their supervisor. The supervisor, who was a generation older, was very friendly with the younger staff, taking long coffee breaks with them. College-aged staff would sit on her desk to chat and gossip.

The supervisor and her team were so friendly that the group's behavior toward one other new member of the team was a stark contrast. This person, a woman in her 30s who had come on staff just a week before my wife, was shunned. If she walked up and tried to join the conversation during a coffee break, the conversation ended. The group, including the supervisor, made jokes about her behind her back and laughed at the way she dressed. They rolled their eyes and winked at each other when she was present. It was obvious that this middle management worker was perceived as an unnecessary intrusion.

Two weeks into the temp job, my wife walked into the office on Monday morning and was surprised to find a much different scenario. No gossiping, no kidding around, no long coffee breaks. All the workers had their eyes riveted on their work. The previous supervisor had been replaced. The cliquish team addressed the new supervisor with formal, businesslike respect. My wife thought she even saw fear in their eyes.

The new supervisor was not a stranger. It was the 30-something woman who had been shunned and mocked. It turned out the bank had hired her to be the new supervisor from the first day she came on the job three weeks before, but the bank had concealed her true identity so she could observe the work style of the team.

In some ways, this situation resembles the coming of Christ to earth. In his first coming, Jesus Christ revealed his true identity and glory to his true followers, but to those who did not believe, his glory was largely hidden by his humanity. Following his resurrection, Christ ascended to the right hand of God, where he rules all things. One day he is coming again to the earth to establish his glorious kingdom over everything. At that time there will be no mistaking who is in charge.

Ascension Day is the perfect church holiday because the world can't steal it. The culture around us has quite ruined Christmas and Easter. Of course, the world owned Christmas as its festival for the restoration of the sun before the early Christians used it to disguise their celebration of Christ's birth. … But the world has now stolen it for its consumeristic purposes and has seized Easter for the same idolatry. In my teen years I played clarinet in the high school band for the town Christmas parade at which Santa Claus was flown in by helicopter. Later, I heard, they flew the bunny in for Easter. But the world hasn't got the foggiest notion what to do with someone flying out.

To embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.

—N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Church of England) and writer (1948—)

When you try to go to another world, there is incredible danger.

In January of 1967, there was a launch pad test of Apollo 1, which was to be the first flight of a three-man Apollo capsule into Earth's orbit. Somewhere in the capsule's 31 miles of wiring, a wire had been stripped of its insulation. The bare wire happened to be near a cooling line, and there was a violent chemical reaction between the silver in the wire and the ethylene glycol. Within seconds, flames spread across the cabin ceiling. At 6:31 p.m., astronaut Roger Chaffee said, "We've got fire in the cockpit." A few seconds later, the transmission ended with a cry of pain. All three astronauts died.

Two years later, when Apollo 11 got ready to carry human beings to the moon, President Nixon asked William Safire to write a speech entitled, "In Event of Moon Disaster." If anything went wrong on the moon mission, Nixon would read the speech on TV, the radio communications with the moon would be cut off, the astronauts would be left alone to die, and a minister would commend their souls to "the deepest of the deep."

But that's not what happened. On July 20, 1969, with less than 30 seconds of fuel left, the lunar module landed in the Sea of Tranquility, and Commander Neil A. Armstrong stepped off the ladder onto the gray, powdery surface of the moon. It was the first time a human had ever gone to another celestial body.

After their return to earth, the astronauts had parades and dinners held in their honor in Washington D.C. President Nixon gave each astronaut the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What a celebration! The human race had just accomplished its greatest technological achievement of all time.

When Jesus Christ accomplished the greatest act of love and redemption of all time—when he went through the clouds and splashed down on heaven's shores—what a celebration he started! He had done it! Jesus had just completed the most dangerous and most important mission of all time. He had faced every temptation but never gave into sin. He stood up to the intense hatred of people with only truth and love. He could have called legions of angels to rescue him, but he willingly obeyed God and fulfilled his mission of giving up his life as a sacrifice to bring people back to God. He defeated the Devil. He destroyed death. Now he's returned in victory. The Father welcomes Jesus home and seats him at his right hand, the place of highest honor. He gives all authority to Jesus.

Why do we celebrate the Ascension? Because all heaven celebrates the victorious return of the Son, the Lamb who was slain, the Lion who conquered, the one who says in joy and power: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."

As a capstone to his lifelong interest in the central texts of the Christian faith, Jaroslav Pelikan edited (with Valerie Hotchkiss) what could only be called a second magnum opus: Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, a four-volume critical edition with a one-volume historical and theological guide called simply Credo.

Judaism has its shema and Islam its shahadah, but Christians, responding to Jesus' question "Who do you say that I am?" have produced literally thousands of statements of faith across the centuries.

Pelikan's collection includes several hundred of these, among them the Masai Creed. This creed Africanizes Christianity by declaring that Jesus "was always on safari doing good." It also declares that after Jesus had been "tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died, he lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended unto the skies. He is the Lord."

This creed was brought to Pelikan's attention by one of his students, a woman who had been a member of a religious order working in a hospital in East Nigeria. Pelikan commented on his reaction to this text: "And so she brought it to me, and I just got shivers. Just the thought, you know, the hyenas did not touch him, and the act of defiance—God lives even in spite of the hyenas."

Following an Easter service, a woman approached a pastor I know and asked, "So what happened with Jesus after the Resurrection?"

"Well, he ascended into heaven and he's still alive," the pastor said.

"I know he was resurrected, but he's alive?" she said.

"Yes, he's alive."

"Alive? ALIVE?! Why didn't you tell me?!"

For the next two weeks, she telephoned everyone she knew and exclaimed, "Jesus is alive! Did you know he's alive?!"