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Looking up content for: Lord’s Day 18
For worship planning ideas on Lord’s Day 18 and 19, please link to our ministry partner at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and specifically to this page where you will find ideas for constructing a service around the themes of this Lord’s Day:
(posted
on 11/28/2005)
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider
- Lord’s Day 17 dispensed with the huge topic of Jesus’ resurrection in remarkably short order. Maybe that is why, following on that, Lord’s Day 18 is so striking. Because here the topic of the ascension is brought forward and yet this subject receives no less than four substantial questions and answers. Why might it be that the ascension got more attention in the Catechism than did Easter?
- The reason reflects questions that were very much hot-button issues in the Reformation era when the Catechism was composed. Of particular interest to theologians back then were questions related to the dual nature of Jesus. Lord’s Day 18, and more particularly Q&A 48, reflect a view that has come to be known as the extra Calvinisticum in which it is asserted that Jesus’ divine nature was in no way bounded by or affected by his human nature. John Calvin believed that the only way to preserve the true divinity of Jesus was to insist that Jesus could be both limited physically to just one location at a time (the same as all human beings) AND he could simultaneously (in his divine nature) be everywhere at once.
- In terms of the ascension, this view helped to keep a living connection with Jesus despite his physical absence from this earth. The human nature of Jesus’ resurrected body is, for now, at the right hand of the Father. But because his divine side had never been bounded by his human side, Jesus does remain present to us in this sense. But the Catechism is also clear in insisting that both Jesus’ divine side and his human side are never separated from each other but are properly always together within the unity of Jesus (even if, for now, we experience Jesus through only his divine side/nature).
- The larger debate on all this may not make for great sermon material. Pastorally, however, the genesis of this particular discussion is vital. We need to be able to tell people that Jesus is truly present to us even despite our beliefs that he is no longer physically on this earth. If we allow the Holy Spirit to have a robust role in connecting us vitally and really to our ascended Lord, perhaps some of this more technical discussion on the two natures of Christ Jesus could be set aside.
- In terms of preaching on Lord’s Day 18, it may be that Q&A 49 is the key. Because it is here that the theology of the ascension is unpacked and explained. There is rich pastoral comfort to be derived from the idea that Jesus is our advocate with the Father (that’s why we pray “For Jesus’ sake” or “In Jesus’ name”). There is also a fine example in Jesus that there is no inconsistency between having a body of flesh and being in heaven—heaven will be an “earthy” place, not some wispy dimension of pure spirit. Finally, the gift of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit were made possible by Jesus’ having gone ahead of us into heaven.
- In a sense, the ascension of Jesus ties in very tightly with all things having to do with prayer. Every prayer we utter as Christians is made possible by Jesus’ intercession for us and through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling even now within us.
Possible Biblical Texts
Acts 1:1-11: The actual narrative of Jesus’ ascension provides a natural way to access the themes of Lord’s Day 18. It may be fruitful to pair this passage with Colossians 3:1-4 because together these passages help to bring out the dual focus of the Christian life. On the one hand, the angels in Acts 1 tell the disciples not to stare into the heavens but to get ready to receive the power they would need to do work right here on earth. On the other hand, however, you get Colossians 3 where the Apostle Paul counsels his readers to set their minds ON heavenly things, not earthly ones. Between these two perspectives we see that whereas we draw our inspiration and vision from “things above where Christ is seated,” we carry out those tasks right here on earth. It is our lives and our work here on earth that become the focus of the very prayers we offer up to our ascended Lord in the power of his Holy Spirit.
Matthew 28:11-20: Matthew does not give us an account of Jesus’ actual ascent into heaven but he does give us the famous parting words from our Lord. In a way, Jesus’ promise never to leave the disciples mirrors the pastoral comfort in Lord’s Day 18 that never are we apart from Jesus.
Colossians 1:15-23: This passage works for lots of theological themes but seldom does the New Testament picture Jesus’ Lordship more colorfully or forcefully than here. Colossians 1 shows us that in Christ Jesus, everything that has ever been (or that will ever be) comes together. At the same time, Paul makes clear that precisely because Jesus is so lordly and lofty, we have been drawn close to God in Christ. The former alienation that existed between God and us has been taken away by the work of Jesus. The very One who is more exalted than we can even imagine uses that exalted status to draw us close. We who are lowly are brought into the presence of God.
Illustration Idea
Illustration Idea #1: In his various books neurologist Oliver Sacks has provided a bevy of clinical vignettes that remind us of how utterly interconnected we are in terms of mind and body. In one such true story, Sacks tells us about a man who had what doctors refer to as a visual agnosia. This man's brain had been damaged very slightly but just enough so that the vision center of his mind was unable to process what his eyes took in. His eyes functioned perfectly, 20/20, but his brain could not assemble this visual data into coherent images. So if he looked at you, he could see your hair, your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and moustache but not your entire face--in his mind it all looked like one of those strange Picasso paintings where everything is jumbled up in a mish-mash of images: here an eye, there an arm; here a nose, there an ear but nothing is connected the way it should be.
Alas, that's how a lot of people see the world just generally. To some the world is just a booming, buzzing confusion with no rhyme or reason, no purpose and no destiny beyond the moment. But that can never be a Christian's take on the world. Forty days after Easter we affirm that the resurrection of Jesus gives us a meaningful framework in which to make connections, in which to make sense of the welter of images, sights, sounds, and information that we soak up in this world. For us the world is not a helter-skelter of chaotic events that adds up to nothing. Jesus as the risen and reigning Lord of heaven and earth tells us that history has a meaning and also a destiny in God's hands.
Our vocation is to live like we know this. Ascension Day more or less gives each one of us an assignment and that is to live like we believe that Christ’s ascension is not only true but is the organizing principle around which we orient our lives, it is the lens through which we see the world and by which we make sense out of that world.
Illustration Idea #2 (for a sermon based on Acts 1:1-11): There is a rich visual irony in Acts l. Consider again the scene: Jesus no sooner ascends into heaven and what is the very first thing that happens? The disciples see angels. Ah, but they have to take their eyes off of the skies to see them! Jesus ascended into heaven all right, but it wasn't in the heavens that the disciples spied angels--the angels were right behind them on this earth! The angels’ presence at the disciples’ backs is clear evidence that what the ascension means is not less concern with earth but more.
It's as though the angels are saying, "We're working for Jesus on this earth--so what are you doing with your heads in the clouds!?" That is the Ascension Day question and it is a question which the church must face again and again as we strive to fulfill Jesus' ardent wish that we be his continuing presence of love and grace right here on this earth.
It's when we lose sight of one or the other that we may find ourselves in trouble. In an anecdote I read some while back, I learned the story of a missionary to China. This man had devoted his life to teaching the gospel and preaching the Word of God to the Chinese people. Upon his retirement from the mission field around the year 1915, he returned to America on board the same ship that was returning former President Theodore Roosevelt from a multi-week hunting safari in Africa. As the ship sailed into New York harbor, huge crowds had gathered to welcome back the popular ex-president, and T.R. loved every moment of it, flashing that broad and famous grin of his as he waved to the adoring crowds from the deck of the ship.
As he observed all this hoopla, the missionary thought to himself, "What a lot of fuss over a man who recently did no more than shoot tigers for the sport of it! Here I'm coming back from a lifetime of the Lord's work in China and there is no one here for me. Who is there even to acknowledge what I did?" Just as he was finding himself becoming more frustrated at this sad homecoming, suddenly a voice whispered into the ear of his heart, "Yes, but just remember, my son, you are not home yet." There. The heavenly and the earthly; the work we do and must do here but the ultimate heavenly context in which we view that work. Both. Together. That's the Ascension Day connection.