by Steve | May 25, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Randolph Cross
His most recent deployment as a United Methodist military chaplain was officer in charge and chaplain of the mortuary for the theater of operations in the Middle East, located in Kuwait.
In short, his task was to oversee the care of the military war dead.
He also gave his full attention to the spiritual and emotional needs of the staff responsible for the bodies of the heroes who would not be alive to see their families and loved ones.
Surrounded by death on an hourly basis, one of his prayers was for someone—anyone—back home in his annual conference, or anywhere in his beloved United Methodist Church to recognize and support him in that hard work.
He dutifully sent in his annual report for persons on extension ministry. His chair of the board of ordained ministry, his bishop, his district superintendent, and his local church all received that information—but no one responded. He fulfilled his mission, did his work, and served as the hands and voice of Christ in a place of death and pain, but his church never said a word.
‘Why doesn’t my church seem to care?’ This scenario plays out daily in hundreds of locations around the world.
Women and men have answered the call to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church, and have further answered the call to serve as military chaplains, to care as shepherds for military personnel in sometimes very difficult places. Remember that they are sent by United Methodists to represent you, and to offer Christ in powerful and holy ways.
I recently was privileged to travel and meet with our United Methodist chaplains who are assigned to locations in the Pacific. I was overwhelmed by their dedication and their willingness to serve, as well as by their ability to work in a truly ecumenical setting to care for those who stand in defense of our country. And yet they ask, “Why doesn’t my church seem to care?”
Numbers of our chaplains recited similar stories of going home for annual conference, and having people remark that it was probably time for them to come home and do “real” ministry, or of finding either no place to sit, or a place in the back—out of the way, no registration packet, no nametag. Their required annual meeting with the bishop often occurred as a lunch in a room with other extension ministers, or those serving beyond the local church, at which there were times when the bishop was “too busy” with annual conference process to even attend.
They spoke of including in their annual reports items about family illnesses, or struggles or even divorces and no response ever came—except perhaps to remind the divorcing chaplain to follow the procedures laid out by the annual conference for separation or divorce of clergy.
They spoke with pride about representing the United Methodist Church in the military chaplaincy, and they pleaded for the church to send more pastors to take on the mantle of military chaplain.
Yet, the lament was nearly universal—they wished they felt as though their church, in whose name they served, would appear to care at least a small amount about the ministry they were doing, truly extending the ministry of our church and our churches in powerful and excellent ways.
Time for appreciation
Members of the United Methodist Church—it’s time. For our military chaplains, but also for thousands of United Methodist elders and deacons in extension ministries and ministries beyond the local church, it is time for us to show our care in a consistent, supportive, and present manner.
Bishops and superintendents: Find out the names, ministries and settings where members of your conference are appointed and serving, and be in contact with them at least a couple of times per year. Let them know you hold them in prayer, and that you are interested in their lives and ministry. When they come home on leave or for other reasons, find ways to introduce them to your districts, or gather clergy to meet with them.
Annual conferences: Make room, and even find a place of honor for these important partners in our ministry. They feel like fish out of water already, so help them feel more at home, recognize them on the floor of conference and make sure they have access to the journals and other items of news and information from your conference.
Local churches: Adopt a chaplain from your conference, in a similar way to adopting a missionary. Get to know them and their families, and where they are deployed, and pray for them regularly, and most importantly—communicate with them through letters, e-mails, cards and any other way you can connect, and keep that “connection” solid and functional.
The clergy who serve in extension ministry and ministry beyond the local church are gifts of God to us and to our church as a whole. Take the time to appreciate their worth and their work, and let’s keep the connectional church of United Methodists strong. They deserve it, and need it—and so do you.
Randolph Cross is assistant general secretary for supervision and accountability, division of ordained ministry, United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.
by Steve | May 25, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Andrew C. Thompson
Does the United Methodist Church have a future?
Pastors and laypeople anxiously ask that question as they look at troubling signs of the church’s decline in the United States. The UM Church is growing in other parts of the world, but statistics on the American church suggest that we have real problems that need addressing. Whether it’s the drop in numbers of young adult clergy or the steady falloff in total church membership over the past few decades, evidence of a shrinking denomination is interpreted by most people as a sign that we need to do some serious self-evaluation to find out what is wrong and how we can address the church’s ills.
Some people point out that no denomination is an end in itself.
The Methodists are only useful as a church body insofar as they are making disciples of Jesus Christ (and not just members of a local United Methodist church!). That’s surely true. So the real question for us is whether the UM Church can still be a part of the larger body of Christ that makes faithful disciples of Jesus—men and women who worship faithfully, experience transformation through grace, and are moved to go into the world as witnesses to the gospel.
If so, the church’s future is clear! And if not, its future is sealed.
As a church rooted in the Wesleyan tradition, the UM Church has a special calling to an evangelistic witness that proclaims God’s transforming grace for all people. Back when Methodism was a movement within the Church of England, John Wesley described this calling as spreading scriptural holiness over the land and reforming the larger church. Today, our church describes that same mission by saying we are called “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Either way, the people called Methodists have always believed that God has a special calling for us to receive and be remolded by his grace so that we can be empowered to go forth and offer it to hurting people in a broken world. It is a calling for each of us as individuals, as well as for all of us collectively.
Our path to the future depends on our willingness to live vigorously into that calling in our own day and age.
Ancient paths
A profound moment happens in the book of Jeremiah when Israel’s enemies are at the gate and the future looks bleak. Any number of strategies have been tried by the kings of Judah to avoid destruction by Babylon and maintain Judah’s independence.
Shifting political alliances, military action, diplomatic negotiation, and the worship of foreign gods—they have all failed and the people are desperate. The word of God given to Jeremiah in the middle of this predicament is surprising, because it literally offers nothing new. Instead, Jeremiah says: “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).
No human scheming will work, God says. There is only one way forward and it is the way of covenant faithfulness with God.
The “ancient paths” are the paths Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob walked, together with their families, as they trusted that God would make of them a great people. They are the ways of Moses and the Hebrews as they followed God through 40 years in the wilderness. They are the ways pursued by Ruth as she sought refuge under the mercy of Israel’s law and by Esther as she risked life and limb to save God’s people. And they are the paths trod by David, who, though he often fell short, always turned back to God in repentance and was called a man after God’s own heart.
As Jeremiah puts it, God’s people shouldn’t just look and ask for the ancient paths of faithfulness; they must also walk in those ways. The renewal of the people of God requires both discernment and a collective commitment to action. The word of God promises that those who respond in faith will be empowered to act in faith. And it calls us toward dedication to a whole way of life.
Reclaiming passion
Recent years have seen a number of books by prominent Methodist pastors and theologians trying to seek out those ancient paths for the United Methodist Church. Some of these books have been centered on specific issues such as doctrine or church unity. Others have looked more broadly at the Methodist identity of the church and the church’s calling in ministry. The names of their authors represent some of the best leaders in the church, people like William H. Willimon, William J. Abraham, Scott J. Jones, William B. Lawrence, Reuben Job, and others.
Together, their efforts have gone a long way toward providing a picture of the UM Church’s future that is hopeful. It’s also a picture that reflects Jeremiah’s prophecy about ancient paths in the sense that their vision is largely Wesleyan. More and more, the best pastors and teachers in the church are imagining how the church’s mission and ministry might reclaim—for our time and place—the original passion of John and Charles Wesley and the early Methodists as they carried the good news down the highways and byways of the British Isles.
Doug Meeks, a United Methodist elder and theologian, asked an annual conference session not long ago, “Why in the world would you want to be a Methodist if you’re not Wesleyan?” That’s a great question! It strikes at the heart of our church’s self-understanding. If the calling on the first Methodists came through the work and ministry of John and Charles Wesley and their companions, then we know that the Holy Spirit raised them up for special purposes. Their sermons, hymns, letters, journals, and ministry remain important because they show us a compelling way to understand the call of Jesus on our lives. They offer us a pattern of discipleship. Take away the Wesleyan character of the church and what is left? Just a big, lumbering Protestant denomination without a clear sense of why it exists.
So it seems clear: Any talk of a future for the United Methodist Church has to be talk of a Wesleyan future.
Understanding my generation
There is one thing that is lacking in recent books on Wesleyan renewal in the church, though: the voice of a younger generation, United Methodists who fall into the Generation X category—men and women born between 1961 and 1981. Like our older counterparts, we too want to find the ancient paths of faithfulness. And like them, we understand those paths to be Wesleyan.
But wait. Why is a Generation X perspective important, anyway? And what makes it different?
Well, for one, there’s the age range of Generation X. At the time of this writing, Gen Xers range in age from their late 20s to their late 40s. They are the age group to which the church is increasingly looking for leadership. As pastors, teachers, youth ministers, writers, missionaries, and plain ol’ disciples, their work is vital to a church that needs the energy and vision of younger adults.
But Gen Xers also have a unique perspective to share as well. We came of age in a time when it seemed like the world around us was losing its stability. As the Cold War’s decline sped up the globalization of the market economy and technological change in daily life ramped up to warp speed, Gen X children of the 1970s and 1980s grew up in an environment where fewer and fewer of the old rules applied.
Jeff Gordinier talks about this shared experience in X Saves the World, a humorous and insightful look at the problems and possibilities facing Generation X. “We come from a lost world,” he writes, “and much of what defines us is our ambivalent stuckness between a hunger for the new and an attachment to the old.” Gordinier sees nostalgia for a vanishing world and the increasing pace of change as the reasons behind Generation X’s most universally recognized traits: a strong sense of irony and an unwillingness to be overly idealistic.
“Every generation gets a taste of that conflict, of course,” Gordinier says about adults’ tendency to look back wistfully on the world of their youth, “but the speed of change these days is forcing Gen X into a state of constant diligence.” Having a grounded existence and a strong sense of place used to be taken for granted across the culture. For Gen Xers, though, it was an ever-diminishing reality throughout their childhood and adolescence.
Popular culture became ubiquitous during the childhood of Generation X as the great societal influence. Where once a politician or a pastor or even an author or scholar might have been the revered authority, now it was MTV. Even more, the very media used to disseminate pop culture and facilitate communication quickly came to dominate huge aspects of our lives. (After all, who now thinks anything strange of a family where each member has his or her own bedroom TV, cell phone, laptop computer, and iPod?) We all became individuals—every one of us—but Gen Xers experienced this societal shift during our most formative years. We saw enough of the old world to long for it, but we also came to be tantalized by the promise of the ever-changing new. We were taught at an early age to accept that life always means life out of balance.
In a perceptive look at Generation X spirituality entitled Virtual Faith, Tom Beaudoin points out that Gen Xers “were the first American generation in at least a century to lack a common cause. Previous generations had the Vietnam War, World War II, the Great Depression, and World War I as rallying points.” We might add other great historical moments of the last century to his list: the cultural “revolutions” of the 1960s (rock ‘n’ roll, feminist, sexual), the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the beginning of the Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s, and even the great social movements of the early twentieth century (temperance, women’s suffrage, labor). But if anything, that just makes Generation X’s lack of a unifying cause all the more glaring. As Beaudoin puts it, “Generation X reached adulthood in the absence of a theme, and even with a theme of absence.”
In society at large, we had no common cause. What we had, instead, was the common experience of life as increasingly less concrete, increasingly more detached.
You might think that many of the changes witnessed by Gen X children would lead to a happier life. Technology making life easier and more fun? Greater access to affordable and abundant consumer goods? An adolescence without the looming prospect of a military draft? If earlier generations had seen all that in their crystal balls they might have said it looked like a dream come true. But in fact all the ways that the world was changing created a profound sense of alienation and anxiety. Everyone in the culture was going through the same shifts, of course, but not everyone was going through them when they were eight, twelve, or fifteen years old. Technology makes some aspects of life easier. But it also makes life dramatically more individualized. It shifts us from the concrete to the virtual. Even more, it undermines the stability of real, authentic community. If—as Christians believe—we are literally created to love God and love one another in the community called church, then all those seismic shifts of contemporary life make it more difficult to fulfill the very purpose given to us in Jesus Christ. He calls us to reconciliation, but life today moves toward ever more alienation.
That is Generation X’s experience.
None of it automatically makes Gen Xers more qualified to speak to the church’s future than any other age group. But it does mean that Gen Xers have had a unique firsthand experience with the emergence of the very forces that have unsettled contemporary life. Gen X Christians have a deep hunger for authentic community and the possibility of lifelong growth in grace exactly because our own childhood witnessed the emergence of a world where those things have become more and more difficult to achieve.
Human hunger
Sometimes it seems as if our culture is trying to create a product to meet every possible human hunger. It tries desperately to hold our attention with a constant bombardment of images and products and new ways to feel happy.
But we’ve got a deeper hunger the culture can never satiate.
It’s a hunger given to us by God: to be healed of our broken spirits and alienated lives, and to grow in love with Jesus and the friends he gives us in his church. It is a hunger to find our identities in the community of the baptized, worshiping and living in faithfulness to God.
The vision for tomorrow’s church must feature a church where our very identity as Christian disciples will never be separated from the community God calls us to join—for we know that we can only travel the way of salvation together, brothers and sisters called by Jesus to be his friends and to grow in his grace, even as we share his good news with the world.
Such a church will learn to be in practice what Jesus calls it to be in his teaching: the light of the world, the city on a hill (Matthew 5:14). It will be a church where each of us—“like living stones”—will be shaped together into the spiritual house that serves as the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. It’s a house known as God’s own people, and when it is built as God intends, all those who have been fitted into it will be brought out of darkness and into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2).
Tomorrow’s church can be a disciplined community where the followers of Jesus are maturing in faith as they watch over one another in love. Tomorrow’s church can be a community of worship where God’s people gather to hear the word preached and receive the holy gifts of bread and wine. Tomorrow’s church can be a community of missional urgency where believers respond enthusiastically to the call of the Holy Spirit to go and bear the gospel to the world in joy. Tomorrow’s church can be a holistic community where the fragile creation that God calls good is seen and treasured for the gift that it is. Tomorrow’s church can be a community of redemption where the least and the last and the lost of this world find hospitality and belonging—whether they are the poor of a distant land or the forgotten teenagers and young adults among us.
The time is ripe for the church to hear a vision from our generation. At the same time, that vision is not possible apart from our own formation as Methodist women and men who have been led toward maturity by our elders in the UM Church. So as we all stand at the crossroads together and seek where the good way lies, we too want to find those ancient paths—Wesleyan paths!—that others have sought as they’ve written about the renewal of our church.
The church is at a crossroads. But we firmly believe that God is speaking to us through the words of Jeremiah when he says, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29: 11).
If that’s true, then we have every reason to rejoice!
Andrew C. Thompson is the editor of Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for The United Methodist Church (Abingdon 2011). This essay was excerpted from Generation Rising and is used by permission.
Thompson is writer of the popular “Gen-X Rising” column in the United Methodist Reporter and online at genxring.com. An elder in the Arkansas Annual Conference, he pastored churches in Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina. Beginning in the fall of 2011, he will teach Wesleyan theology at Memphis Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee.
by Steve | May 25, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Stephen Seamands
“Closed Thursday for Ascension Day”—the handwritten sign affixed to the front door of Nolt’s Bulk Food Store took me completely by surprise. My wife, Carol, and I, along with another couple, were enjoying a relaxing day trip about 50 miles from our home. We were in the Southern Fork area of Casey County, Kentucky, where a community of more than 300 “Old Order” Mennonites have lived since 1976. One of more than 20 Mennonite owned businesses, Nolt’s is known for its canned goods, homemade jams, jellies and breads, fresh spices and herbs, and handmade items like soap and hats. That’s why we had stopped at the store and we certainly weren’t disappointed. But who would have guessed anyone here in a rural community in Kentucky would close a store to observe Ascension Day. Most Protestant Christians in North America have never even heard of it.
Commemorating Christ’s ascension to heaven, Ascension Day (also known as the Feast of the Ascension) occurs each year on the Thursday forty days after Easter. Liturgically minded Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican Christians observe it faithfully. For devout Roman Catholics, it’s one of the six holy days of the Christian year where mass is mandatory. In doing research, I discovered that Anabaptist groups such as the Mennonites, also have a long history of observing and holding special worship services on Ascension Day. That’s why there was a sign on Nolt’s front door announcing the store would be closed on Thursday.
No doubt, the New Testament writers would be pleased. They believed the ascension of Christ was extremely important and spoke of it often in their preaching. In fact, the Old Testament verse quoted or alluded to in the New Testament more than any other is a verse directly related to it. When I ask pastors and Christian leaders to name that verse, most of them scratch their heads. In case you are wondering, it’s Psalm 110:1: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” According to New Testament scholar, D.M. Hay, that verse is referred to in the New Testament a total of 23 times.
However, it’s not the Old Testament verse most of us would have chosen, is it? So why do they keep coming back to this particular verse and why does the ascension play such an important part in New Testament teaching and preaching? Actually, there are two major reasons.
First and foremost, they wanted to proclaim something crucially important about Jesus. Not only had he been raised from the dead, he had also been exalted to God’s right hand and enthroned as King. His time of humiliation and death was over, and with the ascension, so too were his resurrection appearances. The ascension therefore signaled a decisive transition. His early ministry is complete; his heavenly ministry has begun. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3).
Psalm 110:1 was understood by devout Jews at the time of Christ to refer not only to Israel’s past Davidic kings, but also to the messiah who was to come. Convinced Jesus was that messiah, the early Christians therefore boldly applied it directly to him. After his earthly ministry, they proclaimed, Messiah Jesus, Son of God and Risen Lord, ascended and returned to his Lord and Father in heaven, who said to him, “Sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies your footstool.”
The New Testament writers therefore keep returning to Psalm 110:1 in order to proclaim the resurrected Christ’s exaltation to the place of honor at God’s right hand and his installation and enthronement as King. As Paul sums it up, God’s power “raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else . . . God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church” (Ephesians 1:20-22).
Celebrating and proclaiming the ascension is therefore crucial if we are to fully and properly exalt Christ. Jesus is not only risen but reigning, not only alive but sovereign, not only central but supreme. Moreover, as theologian Douglas Farrow demonstrates, whenever we fail to proclaim Christ as ascended, enthroned, and exalted, something else—our personal agendas, the world’s agendas, the church’s agendas—moves in to fill the vacuum. Mark it down, when we fail to exalt and enthrone Jesus, something or someone else inevitably assumes the throne.
The early Christians proclaimed the ascension, then, in order to say something crucial about Christ. But they also proclaimed it in order to say something crucial about themselves and the nature of their life in Christ. Having professed faith in Christ and confessed Jesus as Lord, they believed they had been joined to Christ and, as Paul repeatedly declared, were now “in Christ.” The major movements of Christ’s life were now movements they were caught up in too.
Paul spells this out in his letter to the Ephesians. We were “dead because of our sins” (Ephesians 2:5), he says, but we have been made alive through faith in Christ. Then he goes on: “He raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus” (2:6). Not only then has Christ been exalted and seated at the Father’s right hand, but because we are in Christ,
Paul says we are there too! He says the same thing in his letter to the Colossians: “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand” (Colossians 3:1). We have died to this life, Paul insists, and our “real life is hidden with Christ in God” (3:3).
That, then, is the second reason the New Testament writers keep coming back to Psalm 110:1. They believed that not only was Jesus seated on the throne at God’s right hand, but since they were now joined to him, they too were destined and invited to sit with him on the throne (cf. Revelation 3:21).
Unfortunately, there are scores of Christians who have little or no awareness of this. Consequently, they never learn to live in Christ from the seated-on-the-throne position that’s theirs. No doubt we can be “so heavenly minded we’re no earthly good.” But according to the New Testament, if we are to be any earthly good we must be heavenly minded. That’s why focusing upon the fact and the significance of Christ’s ascension is so essential. In his book The Holiest of All, spiritual writer Andrew Murray maintains, “The knowledge of Jesus as having entered heaven for us, and taken us into union with Himself into a heavenly life is what will deliver the Christian from all that is low and feeble, and lift [us] into a life of joy and strength.”
But you may be wondering, what practical implications does Christ’s ascension really have for our lives as Christians? What difference does it really make for us each day? I could mention several, but let me simply focus on one.
Holy of Holies presence
In describing Christ’s ascension, Luke says Jesus was “taken up into a cloud” and he was “rising into heaven” (Acts 1:9-10 NLT). The cloud, most scholars agree, is reminiscent of the cloud, which descended upon the Tabernacle constructed by Moses and the people in the wilderness (Exodus 40:34) and the Temple built by Solomon (1 Kings 8:10-11). With the cloud came the glory—the shekinah—the manifest presence of God. “Thus, to enter it, was to go into the holy of holies, the immediate presence of the Lord,” writes theologian Peter Toon in The Ascension of Our Lord.
Heaven, the dwelling place of God in creation, is also closely associated in scripture with the fullness of the divine presence. Notice how the writer of Hebrews links the two together: “He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence” (Hebrews 9:24). Heaven, then, is that place which is totally pervaded by God’s glory. In Received Up into Glory, K.C. Thompson puts it like this, “What makes heaven Heaven is the immediate and perceptible presence of God.”
“He ascended into heaven” the Apostles’ Creed says. That means the risen Jesus has returned to the place of the fullness of God’s presence. When he became incarnate, the eternal Son voluntarily laid that aside (Philippians 2:5-11) and limited himself to an awareness and experience of God’s presence through human faculties and a human consciousness. The ascension means that the period of self-renunciation and self-limitation has come to an end. In his classic work He Ascended Into Heaven, theologian J.G. Davies states that the eternal Son’s “consciousness of absolute unity and communion with the Father, which in varying manners and degrees, most notably shown in the cry of dereliction on the Cross, had been limited by the flesh, was fully restored.”
The fact that he ascended into heaven also means that Jesus is no longer limited by space and time, as he was during his earthly life when he could only be in one place at one time. As New Testament scholar and theologian N.T. Wright points out in Surprised by Hope, in biblical cosmology, heaven and earth are not two locations within the same spatial continuum, rather they are dimensions of God’s creation. And since heaven relates to earth tangentially, the one who is in heaven can be present everywhere at once on earth. The ascension therefore, Wright concludes, “means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth to find him.”
He ascended into heaven—that’s what it meant for Jesus. What then does it mean for those who are in Christ and have been raised up and seated with him in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6)? It means that while we are on earth, through the Holy Spirit we’re “there” in heaven with him. His prayer, “Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am” (John 17:24 NLT ) is fulfilled in part even now. In his devotional book This Day with the Master, biblical scholar and evangelist Dennis Kinlaw concludes, “Through his grace, God has made it possible for me to live in His presence every moment, so that heaven actually begins for me right now in time and space.” Think of it, even now while we’re here we’re also there with him!
What’s more, the ascension means that because Christ is in heaven, he’s here—at all times and in all places—on earth with us. When Jesus commissioned his disciples just before he ascended he told them not to forget that: “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20 italics mine). Recognizing and living according to his promised presence is a tremendous spiritual blessing and asset. Jesus is always with us in actual presence. Because we are with him in heaven and he is with us on earth, that means we can live every moment of our lives in the holy of holies presence of God.
When God told Moses it was time to break camp at Mt. Sinai and go up to Canaan, Moses complained, “You have been telling me, ‘Take these people up to the Promised Land.’ But you haven’t told me whom you will send with me” (Exodus 33:12 NLT). So God gave Moses a wonderful promise: “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14).
Now, however, because Jesus is ascended, that promise is more profoundly true and significant for us than it was for Moses. For he lived under the Old Covenant, where only once a year the high priest was allowed to enter the holy of holies, the very presence of God. But we live under the New Covenant, where Jesus, our great high priest, has opened up a new and living way. Now we have access to the holy of holies; we can live in the very presence of God every moment of every day.
To be sure, we may not be consciously aware of God or have a tangible sense of God’s manifest presence. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are seated in the heavenly realms with Christ and he is always with us. In fact, he’s as near to us right now as he was to John, when the beloved apostle laid his head on his breast during the Last Supper.
So we don’t ever have to wonder where Christ is. We don’t have to beg him to come on the scene. He is present with us even when he seems most absent. No matter how unholy the situation we may seem to be in, we can be confident that he’s with us. We are in the holy of holies with him! In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer sums it up well: “Ransomed men and women need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.”
If only we could seize hold of this truth and reality! We are with Christ and Christ is with us. It would transform our lives, our ministries and our congregations. The Psalmist declares, “I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure…You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16: 8-9, 11).
We must learn, then, like the Psalmist, to “set the Lord always before us” and like Brother Lawrence to “practice the presence of God.” We must learn to pay attention to God and to pray with St. Patrick, “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me.” Yet never forget, the ascension of Christ is the foundation and the guarantee of his constant presence with us. In this event, as Orthodox theologian Patrick Reardon states, “heaven and earth are joined forever.” And because God has so joined them together, nothing can ever put them asunder.
Your church may not hold special services on Ascension Day this year, but we all need to remember, celebrate and give thanks for Christ’s ascension. Because Jesus ascended into heaven, we can ascend there too—not just someday, but today and everyday. Because he ascended, he is always with us and we are with him. So let us lift up our hearts. In his presence is fullness of joy.
Stephen Seamands is Professor of Christian Doctrine at Asbury Theological Seminary. This article is from his forthcoming book, Give Them Christ: Preaching His Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Return, to be published by InterVarsity Press.
