TODAY is Ascension Day, and the Collect in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is a biblically-truthful and beautiful expression of the Christian believer’s spiritual union with the ascended Jesus Christ:
‘Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.’
The Collect reflects the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Colossians chapter three, though this passage is not among the set prayer book readings. Paul wrote to the Christians in the strongly pagan city of Colossae in Roman Asia in the 1st century AD:
‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory’ (Colossians 3:1-4 – King James Version).
Christians, according to Paul, are united with the crucified, risen and ascended Christ, who rules the universe from heaven. Their spiritual union with Christ is the reason why they should ‘seek those things which are above’.
It is important to stress that Paul’s command to the Colossian Christians to set their affections on things above is not a pretext to be so heavenly-minded as to be of no earthly use. By ‘things on the earth’, Paul meant the manifestations of sinful human nature.
Flowing from his statement that when Christ returns to the world at his Second Coming, Christians will appear with him in glory, Paul issued this command to the church:
‘Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth’ (Colossians 3:5-8).
So, it is clear that in Colossians worldly things are sinful things. Paul was not teaching that Christians should neglect their duties to their families or their neighbours or their own daily work. Christians are not to be like Mrs Jellyby in Dickens’s Bleak House who cruelly neglected her own family in favour of faraway Borrioboola-Gha.
In Colossians 3:23-24, Paul exhorted his Christian readers to pursue their daily calling with enthusiasm: ‘And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.’
While the Prayer Book Epistle reading for Ascension Day is from Acts 1, the Gospel reading is from the disputed ending of Mark. Some translations of the Bible, such as the New International Version, state that ‘the most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20’. But the King James Bible includes these verses without reservation.
They describe Jesus appearing to his 11 Apostles (down from 12 after the death of Judas Iscariot) soon after his Resurrection. He commanded them:
‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover’ (Mark 16:14-18).
Mark’s Gospel in this version ends with Christ ascending into heaven and the Apostles then going out with the good news of the Lord’s eternal salvation for the world.
‘So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen’ (Mark 16:19-20).
The New Testament could not be clearer that Christian belief in the ascended Christ does not involve withdrawal or disengagement from the world. Rather, the Christian is to avoid sinful behaviour and to engage in practical compassion and evangelism in the world in anticipation of the Lord’s Second Coming. Christians are to be in the world but not of it. Their true home is heaven where the ascended Christ rules the universe in divine glory.
