Going to heaven

One effect of lockdown has been to make me much more acutely aware of location.  I am, as I have mostly been for the last couple of months, at home.  Location has been revealed as one of those things which has much more effect on my life than I had ever realised.  Being perpetually in my house makes work and rest more difficult.  It shrinks the world of my experience.  It restricts my access to others.  (And as I write this I am very aware that this is the reality all the time for many people: those justly or unjustly imprisoned, those who are housebound or hospital-bound through illness and disability...)  I am currently unusually conscious of where I am and what that means for me and my life.

As the pastor of a church I'm also particularly conscious of what is not happening: the church is not gathering together for worship.  Given that corporate worship is what the whole of creation is actually for, this is a big deal.  We are seeing each other, digitally, and hearing the word of God through our screens; but it makes the world of difference that we are located in our lounges (actually I get banished to the kitchen for preaching purposes) and not in the same place.  With the greatest respect to those who would love this digital interaction to be a part of our 'new normal' post-Covid, it is not the same thing as a physical gathering.  It must never become the norm, even if we might consider how greater use of technology might be made to ameliorate the cases of those who simply cannot gather.  Location matters.

But today is Ascension Day, and that also has a great deal to do with location.  Where is Jesus?  He has gone 'to heaven'.  That is to say, he has gone to the place of God's immediate presence and power.  Biblically, heaven is the place from which God hears prayer, sends help and judgement, acts and reveals himself.  Each act and intervention of God is a movement from heaven to earth.  The ascension of Christ is a movement from earth to heaven only because it completes an earlier movement from heaven to earth; in that sense, it is the counterpart to the moment of incarnation.

Jesus is in heaven.  But because Jesus' people are united with him, we can also be said to be in heaven - seated in the heavens, our lives hidden in heaven with Christ.  We are in heaven, in terms of our identity, our status, because Jesus is in heaven and we are in Jesus.  (Worth pondering, in terms of location, the regular address to Christians in the NT as those who are 'in Christ' - because this is often paired with a city, e.g., the saints who are in Christ in Philippi.  Both are location terms.  Of course, for the NT being in Christ is a far more significant location than being in Philippi.)

But this is also described in another way.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, which is all about the priestly movement into God's presence, we are urged to take advantage of the blood of Christ shed for us and to enter the sanctuary - not meaning any earthly sanctuary, but the very heavenly sanctuary which is the original of all earthly sanctity.  (And it is not coincidental but important that this is at once linked to the importance of meeting together, for this entry into the sanctuary - accomplished by Christ and received by faith - is symbolised and therefore to some extent experienced when believers come together in worship).

What do we come to when we draw near?  According to Hebrews 12 it is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, the place where Jesus is.  It is heaven.

We are in heaven, because we are in Jesus.  We come to heaven when we pray, when we meditate, particularly when we come together in corporate worship.  We do well to hold on to both perspectives: we are there, static, immovable, because that is the status Jesus has; but in our experience we draw near, we approach, we enter.  Lose sight of the former and anxiety will set in - how can we approach God in his heaven?  Lose sight of the latter and all sense of relationship with God will disappear - just accept salvation and then get on with your life without reference to God.

So this is a striking thing.  Wherever we are located on earth - and as noted above, this is not an entirely insignificant factor; far from it! - we are able to go to heaven.  Going to heaven is not something that happens when you die; it is something that happens when you pray, when you believe, when you worship.  Let's draw near with faith.

Ascended for us

At Christmas, Christ took on our nature.  He stooped from his eternal throne and became one of us.  But not just one amongst others; a second Adam, a whole new humanity.  A new beginning, but all from Adam's seed.  God himself in the womb of Mary.

Throughout his life, Christ lived as the perfect human being.  He did in our nature what we would not do, living in faithfulness to his Father.  He did not do in our nature what we always do; he was without sin.  God the Son walked the real life of a man in a fallen world.

On Good Friday, Christ bore our nature to death.  Not just natural death (does the Bible know anything that could be called natural death?) but judicial death, death under God's wrath.  We could not endure it, but he endured it.  In God the Son, our sinful nature is crucified and ended.

On Easter Sunday, Christ raised up our nature from the grave.  Humanity, on which the death sentence had been pronounced and executed on Friday, is raised on Sunday morning to new life.  Having died to sin once for all, Christ was raised to live henceforth to God.  And in him, our nature was raised from the grave.

On Ascension Day, Christ carried our nature into the very heavens.  The eternal glory which he reclaimed is now the glory of a human being, of humanity.  The fellowship with the Father to which he was restored is now the fellowship of man with God.  There is a man at the centre of God's own throne, and in him we all are exalted to the heavens.

Gone up

I used to think the ascension was mainly about answering the question: so, where did Jesus go, then? It's an apologetic, an explanation for Jesus' absence.

That's certainly not how the book of Acts sees it.  In Acts 1, the story of Jesus' ascension is followed directly by the appointment of Matthias to fill the vacancy on the apostolate left by Judas' betrayal.  Matthias is called to be a witness to the resurrection, but in order to bear that witness he must have been with Jesus throughout his ministry, from the baptism of John right through to the ascension.  That is the content of the apostles' witness, according to Peter's speech in Acts 1: the life and work of Jesus, from his baptism through to his ascension.

I guess you could argue that the rest of the NT drags in a few outliers: the infancy narratives especially in Matthew and Luke's gospels.  In fact, those things present an intriguing parallel.  The appearance of angels precedes the impossible coming of God-with-us, his advent declared in advance; the appearance of angels follows the impossible going of the Son, declaring his return to heaven.  Everything between these two points is the content of the apostolic witness.

The claim being made here is that we can put a thick line around the earthly line of Jesus and say: this is it.  This is the thing to which the prophets looked forward, and this is the thing to which the apostles looked back.  Here is the real thing. Everything within this border: that is God's revelation, God's history within our history.

If Jesus had not gone up, there would have been no completed work.  God would have become a permanent part of human history.  God would be a factor in our existence.  But would he then be the transformation of our history and our existence?  Would there be something to which a band of apostles could bear witness as the turning point of human existence?  The New Testament says no.  The New Testament says that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit followed on Jesus' ascension, because Jesus' ascension no less than his virgin birth is the marker of where revelation is to be found, and the marker of his completed work.

Christianity is a Humanism

When Christ ascended into heaven, taking his seat at the right hand of the Father on high, he put into effect the eternal decree of God.  Jesus Christ was always the person by whom and for whom all things existed.  Now that is revealed in his exaltation.

Seeing Christ on his throne, every philosophical and programmatic humanism appears as nothing more than a lame parody.  Every attempt to make humanity the measure of all things, to begin with human experience, to place humanity at the centre of the epistemic or ontological universe looks foolish.  In truth, humanism as conceived by humanity is doomed to failure, because there is no vacancy for humanity to fill.  The centre and pinnacle of the universe is already occupied - by humanity!  Not humanity in the abstract, to be sure, but this particular human being, Jesus of Nazareth.  Nevertheless, humanity.

The implications are far-reaching and profound.  One that I would stress, because it seems to me it is often missed, is that humanity matters, and all things truly human matter.  A question which I have is this: in the midst of a culture given over to materialism and scientism, might it not be the task of Christians to pick up the genuine concerns of humanism?  In the light of the exaltation of humanity in Christ, can we ever take humanity too seriously?