Sermon Illustrations on the ascension

If we’re not careful, we might mistake the meaning of Jesus’s ascension. It sounds kind of like a retirement send-off—like Jesus finishes his work and sits down to enjoy the fruits of his labor, but t...

First, what is the ascension? It is not simply Jesus’ return from the earth to heaven. It is a new enthronement for Jesus, bringing a new relationship with us and with the whole world.  …In fact, t...

[The ascension] is easily said and understood that the Lord ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. But they are dead words to the understanding if they are not grasped with the heart....

Frederick Farrar, in examining paintings depicting scenes from the life of Christ, first suggests that the ascension would be better left unpainted. But pondering why artistic renderings of the ascens...

The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended not so much to a place as to an office. He departed from the arena of humiliation and suffering to enter into his g...

The ministry of Jesus does not end with his resurrection. In his ascension he does not abandon his humanity. He is not the ascended Lord apart from everything that has happened between his incarnation...

An ancient legend tells of a well-respected rabbi who would vanish from his synagogue for a few hours each Sabbath. His mysterious absences sparked curiosity among his students, who wondered if their ...

In a sermon delivered at his home church (Church of the Holy Family, Chapel Hill, North Carolina), Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas turns his attention to the topic of glory: Our glory, therefore...

The first distinguishing feature of the biblical psalms is the direct, personal approach to God. There are no intermediaries, human or celestial, no being or beings who facilitate the ascension of pra...

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to reca...

Paul’s term for the return of Jesus is called the parousia. Parousia was used to describe an imperial visit by a king to a city. People would send a delegation outside the city gates to greet the dign...

The apostle Paul said, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on thin...

This vortex of dying and rising—Jesus’ and ours in him—is the paschal mystery. Christians still tell it and taste it, especially when we gather for worship on Sunday. Christ’s Pascha—the word for the...

Orientation is a fascinating word based on the Latin word oriri, meaning “to rise, as in where the sun rises. The sun rises in the east. Early Christians gave great thought and intentionality to what ...

In this excerpt, the French monastic leader Frere Pierre Marie, shares an interpretation of Jesus as the true prodigal son—bringing all of us home with him: He, who is born not from human stock, or ...

Christ descended into Hades so that you and I would not have to. Christ descended to Hades so that we might ascend to heaven. Christ entered the realm of death, the realm of the strong enemy, and came...

This being born again is no longer the active transfer of our will from the realm of inclination into that of obedience. It is, in the sense of the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, t...

The whole history of the Christian life is a series of resurrections. Every time a man bethinks himself that he is not walking in the light, that he has been forgetting himself, and must repent; th...

[Speaking about art] As you climb the stairs of quality, you’ll meet individual works that you’ll need for the rest of your life, works that will thrill you, energize you, lift your soul, soothe you, ...

Jesus’s resurrection opened a door between the fallen, groaning world into which he was born and the renewal of all things. That door was a stone rolled back by the very finger of God from the mouth o...

To partake of the new creation is to see Christ for the first time. And his glory changes us. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image fr...

Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, Each ...

Pastor John Ortberg tells the story of a friend of his (also a pastor named Skip Viau) who was attempting to tell the resurrection story in a children’s sermon. He asked the question, “What were Jesus...

This prayer, written by the great British pastor and poet John Donne, anticipates the new heaven and new earth that we will one day experience with our Lord: Bring us, O Lord, at our last awakening ...

I love that part in The Silver Chair when old age simply vanishes from frail King Caspian, because age is the unavoidable meltdown, stripping even the bravest and most beautiful of their former glor...

In Romans 8:18, Paul describes the future of those who persevere in the faith: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us....

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation: We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. . . . ...

Descents are everywhere. From Hercules and Orpheus venturing into Hades, to Harry Potter following the pipes down into the Chamber of Secrets, to the Sheriff and Joyce Byers frantically searching for ...

We have been having  epiphanies like suns, all this year long. And now, at its close  when the planets  are shining through frost, light runs like music in the bones,  and the heart ke...

The Greek word for Easter, pascha, means “passage.” It evokes so many different passages for us: the Israelites’ passage from slavery to freedom, our own passage from sin to forgiveness, Jesus’ passag...