My daughter and I visited the King Tut exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota in early May. After 90 minutes of looking at ancient hieroglyphics and 3,000 year old artifacts from the tombs of the Pharaohs we came to the final exhibit, an exact replica of the mummy of the boy king, Tutankhamun. (The Egyptians won’t let the real thing out of the country for any reason.) One of the things we learned as we progressed through the exhibit is that as soon as a Pharaoh took power, work began on a burial site. The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with preserving the bodies of their leaders and providing elaborate burial places for them.
Thursday, June 2, is Ascension Day in the church, exactly forty days after Easter and ten days before Pentecost. Ascension Day is all about the body of Jesus. While he lived, Jesus lived a simple life. When he died, Jesus’ body was quickly placed in a borrowed tomb, simply because it was close by and the Sabbath was fast approaching. When the Sabbath was over, the women who came to the tomb discovered that this tomb was borrowed only for a little while. Jesus was raised from the dead, and for forty days he appeared to his disciples in various places: in Jerusalem, on the road to Emmaus, and by the Sea of Galilee. Then he ascended bodily into heaven.
This is what Luke 24:50 says, “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.” There is no place today where people can visit the body of Jesus. People go to Egypt to see the mummified body of King Tut or to Moscow to see the embalmed remains of Lenin, but Jesus “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father” as the Apostles’ Creed says.
Before all this happened, Jesus said in John 14:3 “And when I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” What that verse promises is that all of Jesus’ disciples are headed eventually to heaven to spend eternity with him. The body of the deceased may be embalmed and viewed after death and then laid in a grave with a tombstone that will sit unchanged for centuries, but that body is one day headed for heaven. “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting” says the Apostles’ Creed. This will not be the tired old body that is laid in the grave, but a new and glorious body full of vitality. As it says in Philippians 3:21, “But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.” What a transformation that will be!
In England there is a country cemetery where one tombstone reads, “As you are, I once was; as I am, you will be.” But the wonderful promise of Jesus is that those who believe in him will not end up “a-mouldering in the grave” (“John Brown’s body”) forever, but will one day ascend to be with Jesus forever in glory. As bodies age, sag, and creak, what a wonderful promise to remember.
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