Last Thursday was Ascension Day. I love Ascension Day. There are so many great songs to sing: "Rejoice, the Lord Is King" and "Crown Him with Many Crowns" and "Jesus Shall Reign" and "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" and "Before the Throne of God Above" immediately come to mind. We get to celebrate that Jesus has triumphed! He has completed His ministry on earth and has returned to the His rightful glory in heaven.
[Side rant: I recently saw a statistic that more congregations in my denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, commemorate Mothers' Day than Ascension Day. That seems off to me. Don't get me wrong: celebrating mothers is a wonderful thing (I love you, Mom!), but Mothers' Day is a greeting card holiday, not a church holiday. Plus, celebrating mothers in church can be tricky because so many people hurt due to recently losing their mother or having an ugly relationship with their mother or longing to be a mother but not having children of their own. Meanwhile, Ascension Day is a traditional, distinctively Christian celebration. Look, the ascension is so important that it makes it into the super brief Apostles' Creed: "He ascended into heaven." I get that Ascension Day falls on a Thursday, but can't we at least remember it the following Sunday?]
There's a large group of Christians that are called Pentecostals because of the importance of Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit to their theology and practices. What if other Christian traditions were named after a specific Christian holiday? Now all Christians should really be "Easterists" because Jesus' resurrection on Easter is the center of our beliefs. (I spelled this out a few posts back. Go check out "The Most Important Day" if you haven't already.) But for the sake of the argument let's consider different traditions picking different holidays. I think my Reformed tradition could rightfully be renamed "Ascensionism."
Let me explain. Jesus' ascension is incredibly important to much of Reformed theology. Based on the ascension, we believe that Christ Jesus is King of all things NOW. We don't just look forward to His reign. We believe that He rules over all areas of life at this very moment, even as we look forward to the full coming of Christ's kingdom when He returns at the end of time. As the Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper famously said, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!' " Because we believe that Christ rules over and claims all areas of life, we believe that He calls His followers to serve Him in all areas of life. So we don't just serve God by doing church work like preaching and teaching Sunday school and doing evangelism and singing praise songs. We also serve God by living the way He wants us to live and testifying that He is in control as we work as farmers and doctors and hairdressers and teachers and well drillers and police officers and advertisers and politicians and bankers and gas station attendants and so on and so on. Jesus cares about business and legislation and ecology and art and literature and athletics and chemistry and mathematics and psychology and every area of life. Even now we can sometimes see Him working to bring reform in these areas (often through His people), and eventually He will completely renew them all. Jesus is Lord of all. He is King now. He's at work, and we get to join His work as He uses us. Our world belongs to God. So let's take time to celebrate Jesus' ascension.
Grace and peace,
BMH
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