What is Jesus's Ascension? (And Why Does it Matter?)
Christians throughout history and across the world have set apart the day 10 days before Pentecost to remember and celebrate Jesus’s Ascension.
And if you hear the word “ascension,” and go “huh?” you’re not alone.
In preaching team last week, we discussed our experiences of the Ascension. Some folks on the team have been in the church their whole lives. Others are relatively new to Christianity. But we all agreed that we never grew up learning about what Jesus’s ascension was, much less why it matters. At best, we heard the ascension explained as a sort of Jesus add-on. Like “oh yeah, after Jesus died and rose from the dead, He also ascended.” Profound.
So what actually IS the Ascension?
In Acts chapter 1, the Gentile doctor Luke gives us the play-by-play. After Jesus died and rose from the dead, He appeared to a bunch of people. He ate with them, walked around with them, and shared conversation in ways Luke said proved convincingly to people that He was in fact alive again after having been dead. John’s Gospel records the Risen Jesus actually walking through a wall, appearing to His disciples in the middle of a locked room without using the door.
What’s clear as we read Acts 1 and other accounts of Jesus appearing to people after His resurrection, is that 1) He was for sure the same Jesus the disciples had known and spent time with prior to His death, but 2) He was also somehow changed. Over and over, when Jesus appears to people after His resurrection, people don’t recognize Him. Why is this?
Anglican New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright explains: The Bible envisions reality as composed of a material dimension (Earth) and a spiritual dimension (heaven). All of our lives take place in the material or Earthly dimension. The spiritual dimension—heaven—interlocks with our material Earthly dimension, but we can’t always see it. Most of the time we don’t. During Jesus’s Earthly ministry, He lived entirely within our Earthly dimension with a body just like ours. Following His resurrection, He was still the same Jesus, but His body was now at home in BOTH the Earthly and spiritual dimensions. As my former colleague Chris Woodhull once summarized, this was why “Jesus could walk through walls because He was more real than the door.”
This raised-from-the-dead, same-yet-somehow-changed Jesus appeared to and spent time with His disciples after His death and resurrection. Until one day, when His disciples gathered around Him, and Jesus “was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). It is this moment that often comes to mind when we think of the Ascension: Jesus flipping the switch on His cosmic jet-pack, lifting off the ground like Iron Man or a Blue Origin Rocket, and levitating up into space.
But when the James Webb telescope sent its first images of deep space back to us in 2022, it didn’t show us jet-pack Jesus accelerating through a distant nebula. Because in the ascension, Jesus didn’t go “up.” He moved FULLY into the SPIRITAL dimension of reality. This is why he became hidden from our Earthly view, and will remain so until He comes back at the end of time. When He does, the spiritual or heavenly and material or Earthly parts of reality will fuse and become one. And then, we will see Him face to face. Those who are in Christ will be raised from the dead with same-yet-somehow-changed bodies just like His. Then our world will be made new, the Kingdom of God will be revealed in full, and every tear will be wiped from every eye.
So if that’s what the Ascension IS, then why does it matter? How does Jesus’s Ascension make a difference in our lives and faith today?
The world watched the coronation of King Charles, England’s newest monarch just a few days ago. The service—with all its pomp and circumstance—was a public announcement of a shift in power. Charles was announced as the new monarch of England’s royal line. The baton has now been passed and Charles is now fully authorized to act with all of the powers and privileges of the office of British King (whatever those are).
Jesus’s ascension is LIKE Charles’s coronation, but it’s also quite DIFFERENT.
Like the coronation, Jesus’s ascension is also God’s public announcement to everyone everywhere, that Jesus is the New and enthroned King over all Creation. In this moment the actual power behind Jesus’s promise in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20—that all power and authority in heaven on Earth has been given to Him) is conferred.
But Jesus’s ascension is also importantly different. When Charles was coronated as King of England, my life didn’t change. But because of Jesus’s ascension, my life and your life can now be dramatically different! The spiritual work that makes possible the sending of the Holy Spirit (the gift Christ promises which will be given to the disciples’ 10 days later in Pentecost and which is still given to all of us who believe in Jesus today) was accomplished by the ascension. Because Christ ascended and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God, He can now become the High Priest the Book of Hebrews describes Him as who PRAYS for US right NOW at the right hand of God. And what’s more, in Christ’s ascension, an embodied human being has taken up residence within the Trinity! There is literally one like you and me who is now a part of the eternal community of God. This makes it possible for US to be included in the life of God as well. To be welcomed into God’s family: to share in the inheritance of all the gifts and glory God has conferred on His Son King Jesus. By faith, Christ welcomes US to receive those gifts, His power, and God’s identifying love too.
Because Jesus ascended, the Christian life has been made possible. Jesus can now be WITH us by His spiritual presence in every place and circumstance we experience. And Jesus can now be WITHIN us through His indwelling presence given to us by the Holy Spirit the Ascended Christ pours out, with the Father, on His people on Pentecost.
The Ascension is truly a game-changer for the Christian’s life of faith. May this explanation increase your joy and wonder as you celebrate this glorious day, and the One who’s life, death, resurrection, and now ascension made it all possible!
The image featured with this article is an antique Russian Orthodox icon depicting Jesus’s ascension and painted on a wooden board in 1542.