From the Grave to the Sky

Those of you who follow the liturgical calendar closely might know that today was Ascension Sunday. (Technically, the day of the Ascension of our Lord was Thursday the 21; but because it doesn't actually fall on a Sunday, churches may choose to observe the Ascension on the Sunday instead).

The Ascension never got much press in the church tradition I grew up in. Maybe it seemed a bit too high church, maybe we felt we had our hands full enough with Christmas and Easter (and Mother's Day...). Not sure.

But if salvation is all about what God has done to reconcile humanity to himself and draw us up into the life of divine fellowship, then the Mount of the Ascension is an important landmark on the horizon of that story. Because it's on that sacred peak that we watch our Lord take the resurrected and redeemed flesh of our humanity into heaven, to sit at the right hand of Glory and intercede on our behalf in the Most Holy Place; and there, too, we are offered the assurance that one day he will return to us, coming in the same way we saw him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).

My friend Jon has posted some great thoughts about the meaning of the ascension on his blog here. Well worth reading and meditating on. One of the authors he quotes suggests that in terms of its theological significance, the ascension should get as much emphasis in the church year as Christmas does. Food for thought.

I heard Jon preaching a while back. He was referring to a painting of the ascension and he mentioned how hard it was for him to see it, because sometimes he felt like those apostles on that mountain top, longing for Jesus to stay. Then he said: "I know this might sound cheesy, but I wish he was here."

Now Jon's a very sincere guy; I think if anyone could say something like that without sounding the least bit cheesy, it'd be him. His words haunted my heart for a while, until I finally sat down and tried to turn them into a song. At the time I had this sad/jazzy arrangement for the song "All Heaven Declares" that I was working on, and I thought: what better way to evoke the tension between the already and the not-yet of the Kingdom, than to take a tune normally used to exult in the "already" of Christ's reign, and give it words expressing deep ache over the "not yet" of His return?

Well, it's no turkey dinner with all the trimmings, but I thought I might offer it here as a bit of an Ascension-day present. You can click here to "unwrap" it.

Every blessing as you remember the ascension of our Lord.