Luke 24:50-51

THE ASCENSION

‘And He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.’

Luke 24:50

Witnesses were not necessary to the act of Resurrection, but they were necessary to the act of Ascension. Why? Because, though there were no human witnesses to the act of resurrection, there were many witnesses who saw Him after He had risen from the dead. Suppose there had been no witnesses to the act of Ascension, we might have supposed Him to be still on earth. Who were the privileged ones to see Him go? His own beloved people. The Master did not show Himself at all after His Resurrection to His enemies, but to His own dear friends. In addition to this earthly witness, there were witnesses from the home to which He has gone. Let us thank God that we have such a twofold witness to the Ascension of our Lord.

I. The conduct of our Lord at the time of His Ascension harmonises with all that is written of Him before that time.—“While He blessed them.” That was His work. He was like Himself to the end. Nothing had changed or embittered Him.

II. The Ascension is connected with the carrying out of his own work.— Ephesians 4:8. He ascended that He might fill the whole world with His influence. He has left behind Him the spirit of His life. He has shed forth the power of the Holy Ghost.

III. The Ascension inspired the noblest feelings in the hearts of the Apostles (Luke 24:52).—Worship, i.e., reverence, admiration, transcendent wonder. Religion more than knowledge, faith, awe, hope. How many of us content to live without the enthusiasm of love?

IV. The Ascension of Christ teaches that virtuous sufferings lead to and end in glory.—The end of His suffering the beginning of His glory. Shall it not be so with his saints? Death an ascent into glorious life, rather than a descent into the grave (2 Timothy 2:11).

Illustration

‘In the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, in the half-dome of the apse, may be seen worked in mosaic a figure of majestic size crowned with a halo of glory and with arms uplifted as if to bless. It is the figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, for that Mosque was once a Christian Church. And that is just the picture of Ascension Day. For the service for Ascension Day is an uplifting service. It is the triumph of the Crucified. It lifts our thoughts above the dust and din and tears and blood of this world.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

GIFTS AND GRACES OF THE ASCENDED LORD

What conclusion shall we derive from a survey of the testimony of the New Testament writers to the Ascension? Two things at least seem to be clear.

I. We see that the alleged scantiness of evidence resolves itself into this, that the Church of the Apostles, like the Church of all succeeding ages, had her thoughts fixed on the gifts and graces which flow from her Ascended Lord rather than on the historical moment of His Ascension. The phenomena of Luke’s Gospel may not permit us all to concur in the judgment that ‘the Ascension … did not lie within the proper scope of the Gospels, as seen in their genuine texts’; but at all events we begin to perceive how profound is the observation of Dr. Hort that the ‘true place’ of the Ascension record ‘was at the head of the Acts of the Apostles, as the preparation for the Day of Pentecost, and thus the beginning of the history of the Church.’

II. In the second place, the Ascension is not represented in the New Testament as an evidential marvel, whose purpose is to confound and refute the unbeliever, but as a fact of faith whose inner meaning is gradually revealed to the faithful. A historical fact, indeed, it is; the beliefs of Christians do not rest on myth or legend. But it is a historical fact whose guarantee is found at last in its relation to the whole economy of redemption, and in the response of the Christian heart to its message.

III. The veil which divides earth from heaven is only lifted for the faithful and patient soul.—The evidence for the Ascension may seem insufficient, the need for a Feast of the Ascension but imaginary, because we have lost the piercing insight into the spiritual world which the first disciples had caught from their Master. The Ascension was only witnessed by Christians at the first; still it is only by Christians that it can be greeted with joy, for it is in the end a fact of faith. None the less real for that; the witness of a musician to the harmonies of a great sonata is none the less real because the dull ear of the undisciplined multitude can catch only a medley of sounds. According to the measure of our powers, the same voices may be to us a Babel of confusion or a Pentecost of harmonious rejoicing.

Dean J. H. Bernard.