The Apostles’ Creed: Ascended Into Heaven
A Sermon by Dr. Robert G. Newman
March 25, 2007
Scripture: Hebrews 4:14-16
In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples he is going away; he will leave them. This upsets them. Where is he going? Why? What will this mean? Jesus tries to comfort them, reassure them he will come again to them, to be with them forever. Indeed, he must leave them exactly in order to be with them forevermore.
Where does Jesus go and how is Jesus with them, and with us now and forever? The Apostles’ Creed gives us the answer. “Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”
One by one, each of these great phrases proclaims our faith. Notice these affirmations focus not on us, but upon the great works God does for us in history so that we may come to believe. Two weeks ago our pastor Bill preached on “descended into hell.” Before we entered the sanctuary for that service, I whispered to Bill, “Now be sure to give’m hell today.” And he did. Last Sunday Bill preached on “the third day he rose again from the dead.” Today its my turn to “give’m heaven.”
One time a little girl about four years old went to pre-school for the first time. In pre-school they were learning to write and she discovered she was left-handed. And she was the only child in her class who was left-handed. Everyone else was right handed, and she began to feel different, all alone, like something was wrong with her because she had to learn to write with her left hand. At home she complained and complained. But then one day she stopped complaining and appeared to be happy with her left hand. Her mother asked her why she was now happy to be left-handed. She explained that God is left-handed too and if left- handedness is good for God, it’s good for her. “How do you know God is left-handed?” her mother asked. “Because when Jesus ascended into heaven, Jesus sits on the right hand of God. God can’t use his right hand and so God must be left handed,” she explained.
Works well for a four year old, but we don’t have to take biblical language too literally. In Jesus’ time, the common worldview included the three-storied universe. Heaven up above, hell down below, earth here in the middle. Today we no longer see our universe that way. God respects and works in and through our human language, culture, worldviews, whatever age we live in. This is good news because God takes our language, our culture and us seriously. What do heaven and hell mean? Not geographical location that changes from age to age as worldviews change. Symbols such as demons, fires of torture, angels and streets of gold, may help on some levels of thinking, but such language needs deeper meaning to help us to hear what God is saying to us. Better to define hell as alienation from God or separation from God and heaven as reunion with God or reconciliation with God.
It’s natural for us humans to think about our lives, where we come from, where we’re going in terms of the physical universe, because Natural Science teaches us to measure and to predict exact locations; to calculate weights, heights, depths, distances, speeds. And Science teaches us to define truth in terms of proof, beyond doubt. But the Bible teaches us a different kind of truth, truth not to be measured, truth not to be proven, but truth experienced in relationships, and relationships, between us humans, and between God and us call for faith, for trust in God’s promises to us. We believe and trust that Jesus descends into hell, to save us from having to go to hell. We believe and trust the resurrected Jesus ascends into heaven to save us to know God and to enjoy God forever.
But we should not seek to describe these truths in literal terms or to prove these truths of our faith, as if such proof would guarantee them and also bring them under control of scientific method. God, who is the creator of all heaven and earth, including us and all of our Science, does not need our proof. God wants our faith and trust, our love and worship, and our service as disciples of Christ.
Our God gives us his truth that liberates us to develop all human culture, including Science, and we misinterpret our Science if we elevate this tool and misuse it, indeed pervert it in order to control who God is and what God does for us.
Our text puts it this way: “Jesus the son of God is our great high priest who goes through the heavens.” This does not refer to intergalactic or space travel. Jesus comes from God; Jesus returns to God; Jesus sits on God’s right hand; Jesus shares who God is, for us. Jesus invites us to trust he is our high priest who represents us to God. And these are truths of how God relates to us, not geo-physical locations or intergalactic calculations.
And Jesus represents our interests because Jesus is one of us. Jesus living here among us knows our honest, naked selves, all our weaknesses, our temptations, and when Jesus goes to hell, Jesus experiences all sin and evil, although he himself has no sin nor evil. Jesus absorbs all our human sin and evil into himself to save us from ourselves. If Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, then God overcomes the reality of all sin and evil in who Jesus is and in what Jesus does. Jesus descends to hell, so we do not have to.
Silly as we are, we sometimes think we can hide our failures, our sins, our true guilty selves from God, as if somehow God won’t know us as we truly are. But we are always naked before God. Our human nature, naked and truthful, sits with God, because Jesus sits with God. Do we hear and welcome this good news?
“Therefore,” our text continues, “let us approach with boldness this throne of grace, that we may receive the mercy and grace God has to give us.” The witty English writer G. K. Chesterton says “ The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” Why do we find it so hard to trust our high priest who invites us, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Probably because Jesus continues, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Is it because Jesus’ yoke sounds so heavy and our fear of this weight overpowers our trust in Jesus promise to be gentle, humble, and give us rest for our souls?
St. Paul the Apostle calls us to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling,” and the fear and trembling part makes us forget that Paul assures us “God is at work within us both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.” Our fears so often trump Jesus’ call to trust. We approach our great high priest if at all, only meekly, limply when God invites us to go boldly. God reaches out to us with an open, clear channel for communication, whereas we use a creaky, battered, out of range cell phones with almost dead batteries.
What if we go boldly to this throne of grace where Jesus our great high priest holds his arms wide open to whoever we are and what if we claim for ourselves his promises of mercy and grace, for whatever ails us? What is it that ails you?
Let me tell you what ails me. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to forgive seventy times seven. Jesus tells me to turn my other cheek. These are not my ideals, my dreams, these are Jesus’ own words to teach us his new commandment that we love one another. I have enough trouble loving myself, sometimes, loving members of my family, loving neighbors next door; and Jesus tells me to love my enemies. And in this age of terrorism this must include even suicide bombers, for whom I can conjure up no understanding whatsoever.
And so I know I need this great high priest exactly because I have little or no knowledge on my own. I have little confidence in myself, no clear vision of the answer to this human dilemma. But when our text invites me to go boldly to my great high priest, now I realize I can only trust my Lord and welcome his promise to heal and save us from what otherwise appears to be such a dead end street.
I pick carefully what movies to see. Let me recommend the movie “Amazing Grace,” now playing in local theatres. Because in this historical drama we see one example of how a man struggled with this same kind of huge need for an answer to human suffering and evil. William Wilberforce was a young English gentleman who suffered deep in his soul as few others did because of the traffic in human slavery. He got himself elected to Parliament and year after year he would introduce a bill to abolish the slave trade across the British Empire. His peers laughed and booed him. But he never gave up. Because as a Christian he could see Christ’s own vision of an end to evil and a better life for suffering humans, both slaves and slave owners. William Wilberforce went boldly to the heavenly throne of grace. Not easy when he was threatened and vilified. Not easy when he and all prosperous English citizens profited greatly from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
William Wilberforce took Jesus’ yoke upon himself and found Jesus moving, even if ever so slowly, to grant the mercy and grace only our great high priest is in a position to grant.
Slavery was a normal, commonplace reality across the Roman Empire in Jesus’ own time. Jesus’ words and acts offer freedom to all from every form of slavery, slavery to sin, slavery to religious bigotry, slavery to self-deception and, most of all, Jesus offers a new freedom to be born anew from above, freedom to trust, not fear, but to trust God’s promise of mercy and grace. Jesus promises, “If you continue in my word…you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31)
Jesus says, “The one who believes in me, who trusts in God’s promises freely given in me, this one will also do the works I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)
Look how many centuries it takes, from Jesus’ time, to the modern world when William Wilberforce finally hears the House of Commons pass his bill abolishing slavery across the British Empire in 1807. Two hundred years ago, on this very day. And it takes another sixty years and a civil war to free the slaves in this county, and another century before our civil rights movement brings an end to segregation. And truth to tell, as long as I fear my enemy, whether near or far away or within me, unless and until I choose to love my neighbor as myself, I need boldly to approach this our great high priest, trusting who he says he is and trusting why he is busy sitting on the right hand of God the Father.