WORSHIP NOTES
Volume 19, No. 4 (April 2024)
May 9 is Ascension Day this year this year (40 days after Easter). Following are some rich quotes dealing with this critical event that is too often neglected in our yearly worship celebrations.
And He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them. While He blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:50-53)
And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11)
Luke carefully ends his Gospel where he began – with a scene of worship. He tells us that as soon as Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples worshipped him. The saving events of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension compelled one response—worship. (Christopher Cocksworth, Holy, Holy, Holy: Worshipping the Trinitarian God, 13-14)
Jesus brought us through death and into the place of healing and communion. He passed through the veil and into the Father’s presence, in our name and on our behalf. He came to us as the representative of God’s intentions of love toward us. He returned to his Father, bearing us in His heart, having taken our sins onto His back on the cross, and thus representing us to God. The ascension brings our humanity out of the sewers of sin and into the Father’s house, the place of union and communion. This is the essence of priesthood. (Gerrit S. Dawson, Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Chris’s Continuing Incarnation, 119)
His ascension sums up what prayer actually is. A human being goes through the thin veil into the very presence of God, there to be welcomed, to worship, to love, to intercede. As so often in Christian theology, the best definition is not an abstract formula but a human being, indeed the human being, Jesus. That is why we pray to the Father through Jesus the Son. He is quite literally, the Way. That is what the ascension is all about. (N. T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church, 85)
- See, the Conqueror rides in triumph;
He’s the King in royal state,
riding upward in His chariot,
to His heav’nly palace gate.
Hear the choirs of angel voices
joyful alleluias sing,
as the gates on high are lifted
to receive their heavenly King.
- Who is this that comes in glory,
with the shouts of jubilee?
Lord of battles, God of armies,
He has gained the victory.
He who on the cross did suffer,
He who from the grave arose,
He has vanquished sin and Satan,
He by death has spoiled His foes.
- He has raised our human nature
all the way to God’s right hand;
there we sit in heav’nly places,
there with Him in glory stand:
Jesus reigns, adored by angels;
man with God is on the throne;
mighty Lord, in Your ascension
we by faith behold our own.
- Then one day, with his appearing
we from out our graves will spring,
with our youth renewed like eagles,
flocking round our heavenly King,
Caught up on the clouds of heaven,
we will meet Him in the air,
rise to realms where He is reigning,
and will reign forever there.Text: Christopher Wordsworth 1862. (May be sung to tune of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” or “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”)
By describing his ascension as a return to his pre-incarnate glory in the presence of the Father (John 17:4-5), Jesus shows that the ascension is the Father’s public affirmation and acceptance of his eternal divine Son. (Michael A. Farley, “Jesus’ Ascension and Christian Worship,” 2)
Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of the Father not only as king but also as high priest. The whole book of Hebrews centers on this great reality. As the priest in the order of Melchizedek, Jesus fulfills and surpasses all of the functions of the Aaronic priesthood (Heb 7–10). He has gone into the heavenly tabernacle with His own blood as the final and ultimate priest bearing the final and ultimate sacrifice of His own life. Because the Father receives His death and His life on our behalf, Jesus’ ascension signifies that we, too, have access to the Father in heaven (Heb 10:19-25), and from that privileged position, Jesus leads us in every act of worship. He is ultimate liturgist (Heb 8:2), preacher (Heb 2:12a; Rom 10:14), singer (Heb 2:12b), intercessor (Heb 7:25; Rom 8:34), and table host (Heb 13:9b-10; 1 Cor 10:16). As James Torrance has written, our worship is “the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father,” for our worship is mediated and perfected by the incarnate Son of God who continually offers perfect worship to the Father for us and with us. (Michael A. Farley, “Jesus’ Ascension and Christian Worship,” 2-3)
The ascension is the foundation of the Bible’s theology of worship. Jesus’ ascension means that he is not only the God and King whom we worship but also the human high priest who leads worship for us and in us through the presence and power of his Spirit. In worship, we experience the union of heaven and earth made tangible and explicit in the concrete actions of worship through which Jesus promises to serve us. (Michael A. Farley, “Jesus’ Ascension and Christian Worship,” 3)
“The Ascension of Christ doesn’t mean absence; it means sovereignty, exercised through the Spirit.” – N.T. Wright, “The Easter Vocation”