Reclaiming the Promise of Ascension

GRAHAM REDDING on ascension as a lost heirloom

“Some years ago, I was invited to a retirement home to visit a lady who’d had a severe stroke,” says Graham Redding, senior minister at St. John’s in the City Presbyterian Church in Wellington, New Zealand.

“The woman was totally dependent on others for care. She hadn’t been to church in decades. And she was worried about her future.

“I had a choice,” Redding recalls. “I could present the contractual model of coming to faith in Christ. But that can breed a self-righteous attitude of ‘I’ve asked for forgiveness, I’ve been restored, so I can relax.’ Or, a person weighed down with guilt might ask for forgiveness but still not feel God’s love, which only compounds the failure and guilt.

“I said, ‘We’re going to pray. But first I want to give you an assurance. Christ himself is praying for you even before you pray. We will pray in accordance with the gospel that you have been given new life already. So let’s pray for what Christ has done and continues to do for you. He’s here with you.’ ”

After that prayer, with tears rolling down her cheeks, the woman told Redding that she felt freed.

Offering that perspective of Christ—his vicarious humanity and role as mediator and high priest—is what we should be doing each Sunday, not just on Ascension Day, Redding says.

Connect Christ’s incarnation and ascension

“The Orthodox Church has a wonderfully developed doctrine of incarnation and ascension. For the rest of us, ascension is like a lost family heirloom,” Redding says.  

In Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ in the Reformed Tradition, he urges churches to recover a Trinitarian conception of prayer and worship, which requires appreciating Christ’s vicarious humanity.

“So often we cast the humanity of Jesus in individualistic terms. We say he had to become human to die for us on the cross. For many Christians, the cross is the completion of the Easter story until Christ comes again,” he explains.

The vicarious humanity of Christ is the doctrine that links ascension to incarnation. In Jesus, God became one with us in taking on flesh and blood. That he ascended, bodily, shows that humans matter in heaven as well as on earth. God redeems all of who we are, not just our souls. The assumption of incarnation is completed when our humanity is lifted up into the presence of God. Because the second person of the Trinity stands in our place in the heavenly sanctuary, we can, through worship, be lifted into the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Redding links the incarnation with the doctrine of sanctification. He explains that in the Institutes, John Calvin talked about sanctification before justification. Calvin said our humanity has already been sanctified in Christ.

“This understanding leads us to put a stronger stress on being in union with Christ rather than on following his long-ago example,” Redding says.

Our High Priest perfects our prayers

An anthem he wrote for St. John’s 150th anniversary includes these lines: “For courage to be human, not more religious be, to look for God in others, affirm their dignity. For acts of deep compassion, a people versed in prayer, for union in communion, the life of Christ to share.”

Understanding Christ’s priesthood makes us better versed in prayer. Prayer is far more than a duty or way to talk with God. It’s an eschatological event.

“Prayer is essentially a redemptive activity, in and through which the church participates in the Son’s communion with the Father and in his mission to the world…. To the extent that much prayer today is believed to be a private and individualistic affair, this book maintains that, first and foremost, prayer is a corporate, ecclesial event. It is eucharistic,” Redding writes.

He likes how the 1993 PCUSA Book of Common Worship presents the order of service in four parts: gathering, Word, Eucharist, and sending. Its basic premise is “joined in worship to the One who is the source of its life, the church is empowered to serve God in the world.”

Apply the ascension in weekly worship

Since Redding began weaving ascension concepts into printed and liturgical announcements, sermons, and study groups, St. John’s in the City has analyzed its entire liturgy.

The congregation has come to understand worship as joining in what’s already going on in heaven. “The priesthood of Christ means that we submit our sin-laden prayers to the One who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. That gives us a certain freedom to try new things in worship—because it doesn’t rest on us to get it absolutely right,” Redding says.

Prayers of confession need not itemize every sin, because though we are all born in sin, we have total grace and sanctification in Christ through his vicarious humanity and ascension. That’s why the confession of sin at St. John’s ends with an assurance of pardon, not a prayer for pardon.

Likewise, those who lead intercessory prayer know they don’t have to pray comprehensively or with perfect knowledge of God’s will. “Christ, our worship Leader and ascended High Priest, stands in our place before we’ve started. By the Spirit, the church participates in his life of intercession,” Redding says.

Even the offering is seen as sharing in Christ’s continual self-offering.

Recover the centrality of Communion

After studying communion’s theology and history, the elders at St. John’s decided to experiment with celebrating it monthly instead of quarterly.

They understand that Christ is present, by the Spirit, in the sacrament. The words “lift up your hearts” and “we lift them up to the Lord” remind believers to set hearts and minds on “things above,” where our lives “are now hidden with Christ in God.”

Celebrating the Eucharist more often also reminds St. John’s that we dwell in a world of flesh and blood, of wood and stone. It takes the elders hours to fill tiny cups and set them on oblong trays for passing down rows. When instead they ask worshipers to come forward to stations and dip bread in a chalice, foot traffic snarls.

The church’s narrow aisles and scant liturgical space reflect their ancestors’ focus on Word, not Sacrament. But making communion a central event is worth some inconvenience if it helps worshipers “see that the Christian life is not simply imitating Christ but sharing in his life,” Redding says.  

Useful Resources for Planning Ascension Services

You can use these service plans, sermon and Scripture ideas, songs, prayers, and visual art ideas in several ways. While they would be appropriate for planning an Ascension Sunday or Ascension Day service, they will also help you weave in ascension concepts throughout the church year.

SERVICE PLANS

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship offers service plans designed around themes of

• The Apostles’ Creed
• Ascension
• Ascension-related passages in Hebrews
• Easter

THE WORD

One way to help people understand that God is loving—but not tame—is to build on the interest sparked by the Narnia books, recent film, and BBC miniseries. Watch online videos of the Narnia education series at Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City. It will help you tease out how Aslan is like and unlike Christ.  

Listen to Calvin College chapel messages on Hebrews: Christ as Mediator of God’s Grace.

Read Ascension Day sermons by Leonard Vander Zee and Ralph Wigboldus. Study how Jack Van Marion explains the ascended Christ’s presence in this communion sermon. Check out thesesermon resources for preaching about ascension concepts.

Use this dramatic reading for Ascension Sunday or Ascension Day.

SONGS

Graham Redding wrote the text to this anthem for the 150th anniversary of St. John’s in the City Presbyterian Church in Wellington, New Zealand. The church was founded by some New Zealand’s earliest pioneers. Redding suggests changing the verse one references (flax, tartan, architectural flair) to symbols that fit your congregation.

Listen to songs recommended by hymn experts Carl P. Daw Jr. and Emily Brink for Ascension and Pentecost.

Good ascension songs in Sing! A New Creation include #154, “God Has Gone Up with Shouts of Joy!” (#154), “You Are Crowned with Many Crowns” (#158), and “Mayenziwe/Your Will Be Done” (#198).

“Christus Paradox” is especially apt for Ascension services. It also works well for Easter, Christ the King Sunday (last one before Advent), and Christmas. “Sometimes a certain anthem just clicks. ‘Christus Paradox' lit a fire. We've sold 35,000 copies of the Dunstan/Fedak version. When you consider that the average church choir has 20 members, that's a lot of copies,” says Bob Batastini, vice president and senior editor of GIA Publications in Chicago, Illinois.

Though the rich text of Sylvia Dunstan's “Christus Paradox,” written in 1991, was first sung to the 17th century hymn tune WESTMINSTER ABBEY, that tune didn't convey the full impact of Dunstan's poetic words. So the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship commissioned Alfred V. Fedak to compose a new tune in the choral music series it jointly publishes with GIA.

Bach’s Choral Evensong for Ascension is another good choir choice.

PRAYERS

Here’s a prayer from the Church of the West Indies:

  May your Spirit make us wise; 
  may your Spirit guide us; 
  may your Spirit renew us; 
  may your Sprit strengthen us 
  so that we will be strong in faith; 
  discerning in proclamation; 
  courageous in witness; 
  persistent in good deeds.

VISUALS

Get banner-making ideas from this Ascension Day print.

License the use of creative, Christian, contemporary art through Eyekons, an online gallery of original art made through the eyes of faith.

Search out public domain images on Wikipedia and in the Pitts Theology Library Digital Image Archive.

Learn More

Listen to an audio clip of Laura Smit on the ascension and prayer. Sign up for the May 25 Ascension Day conference at Calvin Theological Seminary. 

Update: Also see Smit's article "The Incarnation Continues" in Reformed Worship 79 (March, 2006), pp. 4-5.  Also, check out our Ascension Resource Guide. 

Study Graham Redding’s book Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ in the Reformed Tradition.

Other helpful books on understanding the ascension include:

• Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology by Douglas Farrow
• Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Connecting This Life to the Next by Nathan Bierma
• Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship by Leonard Vander Zee
• Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation by Gerrit Dawson

Either on your own or with a Bible study group, read and discuss ascension-related passages:

• Christ shares our humanity: Hebrews 2 and 3
• Christ ascended bodily into heaven: Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-53; John 20:17; Acts 1:1-10, 21-22.
• Christ, who is both King and Lamb, is Lord of all: Colossians 1:15-23; Revelation 4 and 5
• Christ represents us to God: Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:23-25, 9:24; 1 John 2:1-2
• Christ is our heavenly High Priest: Hebrews 4:14-10:10
• Christ remains present with us in spirit: John 16; Ephesians 3:14-2
• We are raised with Christ the King: Ephesians 1:15-2:10

View Ascension Day vestments and paraments at Trinity Lutheran Church in Detroit, Michigan. Read aboutAscension Day customs around the world.

Browse related stories on the Lord’s Supper, musical theology, sermon resources, and Trinitarian music.

Start a Discussion

• What themes in this story surprised you? Which aspects of Christ’s ascension get little attention in your congregation?
• How would your congregation’s worship and faith life change if you spent more time talking about Christ’s vicarious humanity or role as priest and mediator? How might this doctrine affect worship, the Lord’s Supper, prayer, pastoral care, or how people view salvation, discipleship, or heaven?
• Graham Redding says that in the Middle Ages, the priest, not Christ, was seen as leading worship. Who do you see as leading worship in your church? Is Christ the mediator or object of this worship? 

Share Your Wisdom

What is the best way you’ve found to celebrate the ascension in worship? 

• Can you share any visual arts resources, song suggestions, or drama ideas that helped your congregation see the meaning of Christ’s ascension?
• Did you consult with other congregations or pastors to see how they understand and teach the doctrine of ascension—and how this plays out in their worship services?
• If you started observing Ascension Sunday or Ascension Day in a new way, how did you get people interested?