Ascension Day is the perfect church holiday because the world can't steal it. The culture around us has quite ruined Christmas and Easter. Of course, the world owned Christmas as its festival for the restoration of the sun before the early Christians used it to disguise their celebration of Christ's birth. … But the world has now stolen it for its consumeristic purposes and has seized Easter ...

To embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.

—N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Church of England) and writer (1948—)

When you try to go to another world, there is incredible danger.

In January of 1967, there was a launch pad test of Apollo 1, which was to be the first flight of a three-man Apollo capsule into Earth's orbit. Somewhere in the capsule's 31 miles of wiring, a wire had been stripped of its insulation. The bare wire happened to be near a cooling line, and there was a violent chemical reaction between the ...

Following an Easter service in 2003, a woman approached a pastor I know and asked, "So what happened with Jesus after the Resurrection?"

"Well, he ascended into heaven and he's still alive," the pastor said.

"I know he was resurrected, but he's alive?" she said.

"Yes, he's alive."

"Alive? ALIVE?! Why didn't you tell me?!"

For the next two weeks, she telephoned everyone she knew and exclaimed, "Jesus is ...

As a capstone to his lifelong interest in the central texts of the Christian faith, Jaroslav Pelikan edited (with Valerie Hotchkiss) what could only be called a second magnum opus: Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, a four-volume critical edition with a one-volume historical and theological guide called simply Credo.

Judaism has its shema and Islam its shahadah, but Christians, ...

After various moves and prominent jobs, [classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach] finally settled down in Leipzig in 1723, where he remained for the rest of his life.… Bach's stay in Leipzig, as musical director and choirmaster of Saint Thomas's church and school, wasn't always happy. He squabbled continually with the town council, and neither the council nor the populace appreciated his musical ...

Emmanuel, God with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with Him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and Second Advent splendor.

I would like to take you, if I could, to a graphic portrayal of the Word of God in a great cathedral in Milan. Come in out of the glare of the Italian sunshine, pass through the cathedral doors, and suddenly see stretching out before you, Europe's third largest cathedral where fifty-two marbled columns hold up the lofty, octagonal dome, with over 4,400 turrets and pinnacles. Statues of angels rise ...

Hebrews tells us that, in an act of enormous courage and defiance, Jesus "endured the cross, despising the shame" (Hebrews 12:2) and then adds, significantly, that he is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and ascension--the going down and coming up of the Son of God--open the way not only for the forgiveness of our sins, but also for the lifting ...