Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/74

Contributor - Henry Van Essen

Title - Ascension and the Space-age!

Topic - Ascension

ASCENSION AND CHRISTMAS

The past winter the furnace. in the house broke down, which made it very unpleasant to be in the house because of the cold. The furnace-repairman was called, came, entered the house, fixed everything, walked out and drove away. And once again you could live in the house.

To a certain extent we may view the Ascension of our Lord in the same manner: not a happening all by itself, but very much connected with Christmas. The Lord Jesus Himself tells us, "I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father" (John 16 :28). And He also tells us, why He did come, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10: 10,). "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent Me, and this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing at all that He has given Me, but raise it up at the last day" (John 6 :38, 39).

It is therefore not so far fetched to use the example of the furnace repairman: Jesus enters into our world, into the place where we belong, to make it once again possible for people to live. When Jesus has accomplished that, He cries out, "It is finished", and returns to His Father.

Christmas and Ascension are for the Lord Jesus and for the Christian Church as two sides of the same coin. Paul puts it that way, "Now, the word ascended implies that he also descended to the lowest level, down to the very earth. He who descended is no other than He who ascended far above all heavens, so that He might fill the universe,, (Eph. 4:9-11, N.E.B.). And when we ask about the work which Jesus did on earth, we read, "He ascended into the heights with captives in his train; He gave gifts to men" (Eph. 4:8, N.E.B.)

The captives are the powers of sin and evil, the gifts the ministry of reconciliation, with God, forgiveness of sins, eternal life.

PROBLEM WITH SPACE

Yet in spite of the above we do find this 'ascending' difficult especially because of the space explorations by men. About 10 years ago one minister at least was ready to scrap the Ascension, asking, "How can you believe in a Cape Canaveral rocket launching of Jesus?", probably expressing the thoughts of many.

But if we think for one moment about the furnace repairman: he comes to the place where the family is living, he enters the room, the space, where the family lives. Now we know that you can learn much about a person from the way he keeps house - and also from the kind of house in which he lives: a tidy person will have the house neat, a warm -friendly home is the work of a warm and friendly person; a queen usually lives in a palace, a clergyman in a parsonage . . ., that is to say, the space, the place, where we live is determined by who we are.

Now all of us live in this creation; that are the space which suits us, as we all have height, width and depth, and time, since we all have a beginning. Space and time are for us the walls of the house in which we live; we are as much unable to think of a n se without walls as we are unable o think of our world without spa e and time. We live, we say, in this time, not before creation, and we live on this earth, in this solar system, in this universe, in our space. In this space and time we belong, we are inseparably tied up with these two.

But the Lord God, the Creator, is totally different in being than man, the creature. And God makes His home in His world. God has, so to speak, His own time. For instance, the second appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ

God will bring to pass in His own good time" (1 Tim. 6 :15 N.E.B.). Also: now is the day of salvation, this is the day of the Lord. God's time is different than the time we know; we often think that it is high time, or the opposite; we speak of an untimely death, all because we only know our time; and according to our time it is usually too early or too late.

The same holds true for where God makes His home and has His throne. God makes room for Himself, that is another kind of room, space, if you will, than that which we know. He does not live in a house built with hands, earth and heaven cannot contain Him. Yet Christians are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And "If a man loves Me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14: 23)'.

God makes room for Himself, where He lives. But that room: that space, is different from our space. God also made His home in the Tabernacle in the Ark; but the Israelites were wrong when they thought that God was enclosed in the Ark so that they could take the Ark-God along, to do battle against the Philistines. God cannot be enclosed, locked up, in the space in which we belong, not in t,'he Ark and not in the sacraments, nor in the universe. God makes room for Himself according to the nature of His own Being.

INCARNATION

When therefore God the Son is sent to us people, He has to enter our world; that means: He has to enter our time and our space, He becomes a human being, He enters (=in) into our flesh (=carnis), He becomes incarnate and so He lives at a certain place and during a certain time, and we still know pretty well where and when He lived in our world.

But, when His work on earth, in our time and space was finished, He left this world and returned to His Father. He left our time and space and returned to His Father's own time and room. This tells us that the Ascension has two points: the point of departure where the Lord leaves our world - this the disciples could witness; and secondly the point of arrival, which lies outside our time and our space. The Ascension of our Lord is therefore a leaving behind of this life, this time, this space, and is not a departure to some hidden corner of this universe. Granted all this is difficult to think, yet the biblical revelation forces all this upon us.

THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD

From now on the Lord Jesus is not any longer with his disciples in our space and time, yet He did promise, "Lo, I am with you all the days of your life", and so He is, living in God's time and in God's space' That is why we cannot see Him, but He is here, in His manner, according to His divine being, or, as the Bible teaches us, through the Holy Spirit. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11 : 1). Faith is to know that Christ is with us, although we cannot see Him in our space and time. But the eye oi faith does see Him. God's time and space intersects with, runs through our time and space.

IT'S SIGNIFICANCE

The significance of the Ascension is that the Lord returned to the Father also as man. That is the difference between the Lord who descends and the Lord who ascends. The Son enters this world and puts on our total existence - He becomes fully man as all other people, but He does not sin, He remains obedient to the Father. He comes to fix, to renew the whole creation, and He does this by taking upon Himself the punishment which was ours, and by remaining obedient to the Father in all things. "For our sake (God) made Him, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Cor. 5 :21).

But when all this has taken place, then the Father raises Him up in a new human existence, an existence on the other side of death; and in the Ascension the -'-on returns to His Father also in His new human existence.

We may put it this way: Christ on earth is Immanuel, in Jesus God was among the people. Following the Ascension the new man is with God. First God came to live with us in our space and time, in order that we might be able to live with Him in His time and His space. Of this we are assured by the Ascension of our Lord.

AT PRESENT

Our Lord is now our advocate by the Father, our representative, He who pleads our case. He peaks on our behalf, He defends us. And He does remain one of us, who Personally knows all the difficulties, weaknesses, and temptations of human life, as He experienced them all. Therefore He knows what we are talking about in our prayers for He is one of us.

And He is interested in us people - He put His life on the line for us, to save creation and creature from total ruin; and with that love He pleads for us. He is and remains the Mediator between God and men.

We do contact Him through prayer. We go to Him, we are united with Christ through prayer. His contact with us is through the. Holy Spirit, who leads us and who never goes contrary to Holy Scripture, but who always approaches us in and with and through these writings. Thus the Lord did not leave us behind like orphans: we may cross the present boundary through and by prayer, He crosses it in and by the Holy Spirit.

WHEN DROPPING THE ASCENSION

All this makes it clear that Ascension is not a strange kind of appendix to the Christian faith. Whoever discards the Ascension, also in fact (whether or not in theory) discards Christmas, and therefore Good Friday and Easter. He who does that, will have left in Jesus of Nazareth a man as all others, but that man cannot be truly called Immanuel, God with us. That man cannot say, "I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father" (John 16 :28). He therefore, who drops the Ascension has no Saviour and Mediator left.

SIMPLE GOSPEL?

You may have thought, "Must all this be so intricated? Is the Gospel not simple? Must we not become child-like?" We live in this time, and our age causes many questions in us people, because of the space travel. It is our task to use our talents to grasp the Gospel as far as is possible. Of course, our intellect is not sufficient at all. God Himself tells us, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Is. 55 : 9). Yet it remains our task to confess in this world the living, risen, ascended Lord, and to do this with open eyes, aware of all that man discovers about himself and his world.

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