Ascension Day

North Star News column
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The day this issue of the North Star News is published is Ascension Day in the Christian Church. Ascension Day comes forty days after Easter Sunday, and thus is always on a Thursday. Acts 1:3 says “After his suffering [Jesus] presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” What happens next is very simple. Jesus bodily ascended into heaven, and the disciples saw him no more. This fact is confessed in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed with the simple statement “he ascended into heaven” and described in fuller detail in Luke 24 and Acts 1.
Ascension Day is a bit like a victory celebration that comes some days after the victory is won. Many of you watched the inspiring Olympic games from Vancouver this winter. Athletes who had trained for years and years in obscure places around the globe came together to test their skills against other athletes. For some of them, especially the skiers, the contest took place on one day out on the mountainside, but the victory ceremony took place a day or even a few days later down in the city. At the victory celebration the gold medal was placed around the neck of the victor as he or she ascended to the top place on the Olympic stand to hear his or her national anthem played and receive the applause of the people.
Jesus lived thirty years of his life in the obscurity of Nazareth with Mary and Joseph and the rest of the family. Then for three years he carried on a public ministry, which began with a contest with the evil one during the wilderness temptation. As he died on the cross, it looked like the forces of evil that had been contending against him all through the three years had won. But three days later he was raised from the dead, the victor over sin, death, and everything that would oppose God’s good and gracious will. Death had been trying to get Jesus from the day King Herod sent his troops to kill all the little boys of Bethlehem, but on Easter Sunday Jesus finally and convincingly defeated it’s power. The contest was over, and Jesus had won.
Ascension Day is the day he celebrated that victory. “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father” as we say in the Apostles’ Creed. When we observe Ascension Day, whether it is on the fortieth day of Easter or the next Sunday, we are joining in the applause for the gold medal winner, Jesus Christ. We are celebrating the victory he has won for us, his people.
In Philippians 2:9 it says, “therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” To that, let us all say “amen” today.