Good News in a Pandemic: 6. Ascension Day

Charles Haddon Spurgeon explains why, however sad we may feel, this day (perhaps more than any other) reminds us that we now have reason for great joy!!

Our Lord is risen from the dead; 

Our Jesus is gone up on high; 

The powers of hell are captive led— 

Dragged to the portals of the sky. 

I have known that one thought of our Lord’s exaltation lift me up from the borders of despair, in a dread hour, long since past, when reason almost reeled after great calamities had overtaken me. I recovered my balance and my peace of mind, in a single moment, by the recollection of that one text, “Wherefore God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name.”

So long as He lives and reigns, all is well. Men may rave at me as they will, but what does it matter so long as He is exalted?  I want you, dear friends, to feel like that concerning your ascended Lord. Go home [During the pandemic we would amend to Stay Home!], and worship Him, and be filled with great joy.  

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 5. Angels (Robbie Williams)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 5 - 'Angels' - (Robbie Williams)  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Great melody and sort of other-worldly.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

Angels have their uses but they're a poor substitute for their Boss.  Death is a big deal and needs the Boss.

Line that's most like a Christian Song

And I know I'll always be blessed with love

Line that's least like a Christian song:

I'm loving angels instead

A Quote from (singer) Robbie Williams:

Sometimes I feel like I'm sailing on a sunken dream.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

Nothing against angels, but this song is like requesting the funeral director's window cleaner instead of the director themselves - how about loving God instead?

A better Christian alternative:

[Hail the day that sees him rise]

Highest heaven its Lord recieves

Yet he loves the earth he leaves

Though returning to his throne

Still he calls us all his own.

Happy Ascension Day!

I suppose it is understandable that there is a very limited celebration of Ascension.  Our minds are so earthbound that the thought of God joining us down here (Christmas) gives us a buzz that one of us (Jesus) joining the Godhead's throne up there doesn't give.

Given our earthliness it is typical that one of the old English customs that survives from Ascension Day (though often carried out on another date these days) is the beating of the bounds.  By this custom the margins of each parish were marked and noted.  Though in time blessings from above were also invocated it seems very weird that the movement of the Son of God from earth to heaven should be accompanied by the earth people marking out their plots of earth.

Anyway the clue is in the ascending, the significance of which is not where heaven is but that Christ is no longer on earth in the flesh.  Humanity has another home.  Instead of beating the bounds, Jesus has broken the bounds for us.

Thursdays with Jesus

A common tradition for Maundy Thursday in several parts of the world is to visit seven or fourteen churches on a pilgrimage, perhaps with fasting.

Even more (and increasingly) common is the practice of foot-washing.  This follows the mandate of our Lord to Love one another and his washing of his disciples' feet (recorded in John chapter 13).

In our Church we share Communion, our best symbolic expression of fellowship-love.

The day called Thursday has two Christian celebrations.  Some years of course it might be Christmas Day too but never mind that.  These two are about as opposite as can be imagined and every bit the equal of Good Friday and Easter Day in contrast.

This first Thursday - Maundy - is about intimacy; and the ominous shadow of descending into death.  The other Thursday is Ascension Day.  It is about parting; and about glorious ascension into heaven.

Yet things are, typically, not what they seem.

The ascension is about greater intimacy.  In heaven the glorified Christ intercedes for us. In the young Michael Bruce's memorable lines,

Though now ascended up on high,
he bends on earth a brother's eye;
partaker of the human name,
he knows the frailty of our frame.

Our fellow-sufferer yet retains
a fellow feeling of our pains;
and still remembers in the skies
his tears, his agonies and cries.

In every pang that rends the heart
the Man of Sorrows had a part;
he sympathises with our grief,
and to the sufferer sends relief.

The gift of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of Jesus's ascension, makes the intimacy of Maundy look decidedly minor - for God inhabits us now!  Those feet are part of His temple, not just his cleaning schedule.

At the top

As Prime Minister David Cameron prepares for the new Parliament we celebrate Ascension Day.

Mr Cameron, it turns out, won a far more complete victory than even he expected.  He secured a majority.

Jesus did not.  He won an absolute victory.  He left sin and death and hell and Satan in his wake.  I'm glad I follow Jesus.

Mr Cameron has indicated that he will not last longer than the next five years (maybe that was before he knew he was going to win?).

Jesus has not.  To the contrary he has begun his heavenly session which is destined never to be diminished, though it includes another visit to earth as reigning king.  I'm glad I follow Jesus.

Mr Cameron expressed his wish to promote the unity of the United Kingdom (in th face of it politically starting to fall apart).

Jesus did too.  Except that he prayed and promised that his people would be perfectly united and for ever with him and within the fellowship with God.  And that all creation will be reconciled and brought to oneness in him too.  I'm glad I follow Jesus.

Ascension

Today  - Ascension Day - the Queen continued her Diamond Jubilee tour.  She was in one of the places I know best and where I was married - Liverpool.  She was also, as it happens, in Albert Dock which is less expected.  This, by courtesy of the amphibious tourist bus/boat.  She may have loved it, she may have just done it.  The Queen's privilege is not to have to reveal such things!

Ascension Day.  Whenever the Queen leaves one of her palaces and attends to the ordinary places of her realms there seems just a little taste of Christmas about it.  We remember how the King of Glory left his throne for a manger, his home for an itinerant ministry, his worshippers for us wanderers.

Yet while the Queen visits us she never becomes a commoner.  When, following her gruelling tour dates, she retires to her palace she is the same Royal Personage that she was before she left.

On Ascension Day we record - we celebrate - that the Man from Nazareth ascended into the Godhead's glory as one of us. As Caroline Noel's poem describes what He did with His name Jesus:

Bore it up triumphant with its human light,

Through all ranks of creatures, to the central height;

To the throne of Godhead, to the Father's breast,

Filled it with the glory of that perfect rest.