[AI translation] As many of you know, in our regular weekly Thursday Bible study, we study questions from the Heidelberg Bible, which is celebrating its 400th anniversary. Today is also Thursday, the day of the Ascension, so let us take up our ancient creed! Let's see what our Reformed Church has been teaching about the mystery of the Ascension for four centuries! Here are questions 46, 47 and 49. Let us take them in turn.Question 46: "What do you mean by going up to heaven?" Many believers would be confused as to how to answer this question. And notice how simply he gives the answer, "That Christ ascended up from earth into heaven for the sake of his disciples, and is there for our sake until he comes again to judge the living and the dead". He does not explain anything, he does not explain the mystery, he does not try to prove that yes, it was so and so, but simply, almost humbly, almost verbatim, he repeats the testimony of the witnesses, as the miracle of the ascension is described in the Bible. There too - in the Bible - it is only mentioned so briefly by the apostles. It is as if they were saying that there is nothing to wonder about, nothing to explain, nothing to discuss. It is natural, self-evident. The life of Jesus, who came from heaven, was to lead us to heaven. It could not have been otherwise. Things that are self-evident need not be explained in a pompous way. It is also self-evident that the Christian man who believed and lived according to the gospel on earth will also go to heaven. The way of the gospel always leads to heaven. This need not be proved in detail. Not even on your deathbed! This is natural. That is why, as we have already seen, the KJV says only this much about the fact of the ascension.
Of course, I also know that the believer of today is not satisfied with such a sentence. Because we are concerned with questions like this: what is heaven, where is it, how does it fit into the completely changed world view that science has of the world today. How can we imagine the ascension of Jesus, etc.? Well, I've explained a lot, but I don't hesitate to say again that heaven is not imagined somewhere far away, beyond the constellations. But that heaven is that invisible part of the created universe from which God sees and directs the universe. It is a higher spiritual world of a completely different dimension, which we cannot perceive or sense with our senses, but only with our faith. And this heaven is not far away, but is "above", qualitatively above this visible world. It holds, carries and permeates our earthly world and the world of the stars. It was here that Jesus ascended, or rather, in the sight of his disciples, 'invisibly entered' into this higher, spiritual life-form, the eternal world of God and higher spiritual beings, that is, angels and glorified souls. If we are to imagine the mystery of the ascension, let us imagine it in some such way! And certainly not in such a way that he ascended higher and higher, beyond the clouds and stars, and finally ascended to heaven. In no way! But in such a way that he became invisible in eternity, in the heavenly world that surrounds us all, that carries us, that gives us life!
But more important than any idea is what our KJV goes on to say: 'It is for our good there, until he comes again to judge the living and the dead'. What this means is that Jesus' ascension was not a flight, a flight from the earth, not a defection. For it is not precisely that He is now leaving this earthly world to its fate, that He may enjoy only the glory of heaven, but it is almost a breathless mention of His ascension and His coming again to earth. He went to heaven in the sense that He will come back to earth. He is not there permanently, but only temporarily, and there for our benefit, to do there also all that is necessary to bring this earth back into the radiance of heavenly light, to reconnect this lost province, the earth, to the heavenly world of God.
So, the person of Jesus, in a way, connects heaven with earth. Earth and heaven are one, they are a whole. Both are important. Those who simply shut out heaven and the heavenly horizon from their lives, those whose whole horizon does not extend beyond the earth, those who say: this earthly existence is everything, are wrong. But neither are those who despise the earth and melt in a sweet expectation of heaven, the mystics, the enthusiasts, who have no vision that this earth belongs to the Lord! Not just heaven! Well, that's the great thing about the Heidelberg Catechism: it connects the two. Earth is not everything, but neither is heaven! But the two together. Our Catechism draws the line from earth to heaven, and then from heaven back to earth again. God does not want to destroy this earthly creation, but to redeem it, to renew it! It is Jesus who will reunite heaven and earth. This is what is meant by this sentence of our KJV: "For our sake Jesus is in heaven, until he comes again to judge the living and the dead".
The question arises naturally in the believer's mind, and is raised by the following passage: "Is not Christ with us always, even to the end of the world, as He promised us?"(HC 47 k-f.) Yes, if He is in heaven and we are on earth, does not this mean separation from Him? Well, the answer of our Catechism is: "Christ is real man and real God. Christ is real and real, real and true, and He is no longer on this earth in His human nature, but in His divinity, majesty, grace and Spirit He will never depart from us. Today we would simply say this. Just as the certain heaven to which Jesus ascended is not far away, but is here around us, carrying us, permeating this visible world, so Jesus is not far away, but is here, directly with us, always, everywhere, carrying us, surrounding us. This is the majestic mystery of the Ascension, that this is how Jesus comes very close to us, how he becomes omnipresent, how he can breathe from that other dimension into this earthly world always and everywhere. So he is with us, every day! Every day Jesus is here again. He is there at the beginning and at the end of every joyful or sad day! Let no one fear that tomorrow Jesus will no longer be here! I don't have to worry about how I will be able to cope with the problems that await me tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Because Jesus will be there! He will be with me! The important thing is that I seek communion and relationship with Him at the beginning of each day. His promise is: "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Mt 28:20)
But our Catechism goes on to explore the blessings of Jesus' ascension. Behold, the next question (49) is: "What does Christ's ascension do for us?" And he answers, "First, that He is our Mediator in heaven before the Father. Secondly, that our body in heaven is a sure pledge to us that He, as our Head, will also receive us, His members, there. Thirdly, that He will send His Spirit to us in return as a pledge, by whose power we do not care for those on earth, but for those who are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God".
So, first, "He is our Mediator in the presence of the Father in heaven". In human terms, too, we know very well when a person has a good intercessor somewhere: a good-wisher who speaks a good word to him in a competent place, who knows him from all sides, who takes his fate to heart. Well, then, we have such a mediator in the highest place, where our affairs are conducted on the highest level: in heaven, before the throne of God. Jesus is our advocate, our surety, our mediator in heaven. This is so great because there is no one better qualified to do this than He, who has taken upon Himself human nature, flesh and life, knows our weaknesses and temptations, takes our fate to heart, and stands by us with compassionate love. He will not forget us in heaven, but will! To imagine what this intercession must be like, I imagine that the very presence of Jesus in heaven is itself an intercession for us: without prayer or words! Jesus himself is a great intercessory prayer! He is Himself. His being in heaven is itself a constant reminder before God that all things are done!
Our prayers also reach God through Him. He is the connection! He represents us humans to God and He represents God to us humans. But many unexpected and unsolicited blessings descend from heaven sometimes on the lives of some of us, all because of this intercession! So: He is our intercessor in heaven before the Father!
"Secondly, that our flesh in heaven is a certain pledge that He, as our Head, will also bring us, His members, up to Himself" - Jesus' disciples after Easter did not meet a ghost, but a Jesus in the flesh, whom they recognized as being Him, whom they saw with their eyes and heard with their ears. The resurrected body of Jesus, the glorified body, was quite similar to his body before his death, you could recognize it - but somehow it was different at the same time. He appeared and disappeared through closed doors - so it was not a material fabric, but a kind of spiritual body! Essentially the same, qualitatively different! And it was in this body that the disciples saw Him disappear into eternity. So that Jesus is there in heaven, Who also bore our human bodies, Who was born of a woman, Who was the body of our flesh and the blood of our blood. So our human body is there now in heaven, glorified, but in a recognizable personal capacity. And this fact is a guarantee that we will be there as well: in a spiritual body, in a recognizable form, in our personal capacity. So, "our body in heaven is a certain pledge that He will also take us up to Himself" - as our Head, us, His members.
And lastly, "Thirdly, that He will send His Spirit to us in return, by whose power we are not concerned for those on earth, but for those who are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God". Now, just so much of this, that we also seek those above, where Christ is. What does that mean? In no way some kind of spiritual escape from this real world where we have concrete tasks. Nor is it some kind of fanciful longing for heaven, an escape to some sweet little mystery, because every day we are called again to the hard work we have to do. We are looking for the people up there, to bring them into this world, into the people.
Do you know that when one truly prays according to the spirit, one enters into heaven in spirit, because true prayer is nothing other than appearing before the heavenly throne of God. And when we then rise from prayer, we almost return from heaven - back to earth. That is why we seek those above. And what is up there? There is peace, harmony. Well, we bring something of that peace with us and we bring it into our house, into our church, into our society. So we don't come back empty-handed. Up there is purity, holiness. We bring something of that with us into this polluted world. And up there is joy, goodness, love... And so we always bring a piece of heaven with us to earth.
I said at the beginning that Jesus did not flee from the earth, but went to prepare the earth for total renewal. Behold, the celebration of His ascension brings us all the way back to earth. Jesus' ascension is a warning to stand firm on this earth, in a practical, sober way! The people celebrating His ascension are not fan figures, but people who have been empowered to work on earth for the glory of the Lord and the good of all people. They do not seek what is already on earth, but seek and want to bring into life on earth what is not here: the beauty and goodness of heaven!
Amen.
Date: 23 May 1963 (Holy Thursday)