Embodied and Enthroned
Ascension Day and the Theology of the Body
Happy Ascension Day! Today, the church celebrates one of its most neglected and most theologically rich feasts, and I wanted to mark it by writing a special post for my closest partners in this Substack. If you have ever struggled to know what the ascension actually means, or if you have quietly suspected that the church's language about Jesus “going up to heaven” was more embarrassing than illuminating, this post is for you. I hope it is worth your time, and if it is, I hope you will pass it along to someone who might find it useful.
I can’t be the only one who finds preaching on Ascension Day challenging. What exactly is this day all about? Are we celebrating that Jesus flew away from Earth like Superman flying off to Krypton? If not, then what’s this ascension language all about? And if Jesus did fly away, where does that leave us now, except waiting for the day he’ll return? Why did he leave in the first place? And how does any of this relate to the human body?
We’re going to take the scenic route to get there, but here’s my answer upfront: Jesus Christ, who is irreversibly human, has ascended bodily into heaven to exalt human nature to the right hand of God and reign there as Lord and King over all the earth. As Lord and King, he is in the process of bringing all things under his feet, and that includes your body and mine.
Got it? Good! Now let’s unpack this.
Ascended?
Most people don’t believe that heaven is “up there” in any literal sense, so what does it mean to say that Jesus “ascended,” as the creeds and some New Testament passages do? How are we supposed to preach and teach about this day when we no longer accept an ancient view of the cosmos, with heaven above, earth in the middle, and the realm of the dead below?
The honest answer is that the writers of the New Testament are much more focused on where Jesus went than on how he got there, and none of them tries to give a detailed account of the process. When Luke describes the ascension, he writes that Jesus “was carried up (ἀναφέρω) into heaven” (Luke 24:51), and then in Acts, he says that Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).
The cloud likely represents divine presence, similar to the pillar of cloud during Israel’s wilderness journey and the cloud that filled the tabernacle and temple. The reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds in Daniel 7:13–14 is probably also in mind. Notably, in Daniel 7, the Son of Man approaches the Ancient of Days rather than coming from heaven to earth.
The verb Luke chooses in 24:51 is significant. ἀναφέρω is the standard verb in the LXX for bringing a sacrifice or offering to God. It appears frequently in Leviticus and Numbers in the context of the priestly act of presenting offerings at the altar. Hebrews 7:27 uses it of Jesus offering himself, and 1 Peter 2:24 uses it of Jesus bearing our sins on the cross.
When Luke uses this word to describe Jesus being “carried up,” it refers not to movement but to the presentation of a priestly offering. The one who was offered is now being presented. There is a progression from sacrifice to sanctuary that the verb itself signifies, and it directly mirrors what Hebrews states happened at the ascension: the great High Priest entered the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood (Heb 9:12).
In describing the ascension, Luke hints at an event that human language can only express through metaphor, rather than describing the event itself. The “up” symbolizes the ancient idea that the divine realm is above us. It is not a statement about heaven’s exact location or what physically happened on Ascension Day. In short, when Jesus ascended, it was nothing like Superman flying into outer space. That’s simply not how the New Testament describes this important event, so let’s get that out of our minds from the start.
