Ascension Day ecumenical service
Ascension Day proclaims that there is no sphere, however secular, in which Christ has no rights—and no sphere in which his followers are absolved from obedience to him. Instead of it being a fairy tale from the pre-space age, Christ’s ascension is the guarantee that he has triumphed over the principalities and powers, so that at his name “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11)
Bruce M. Metzger, “The Meaning of Christ’s Ascension,” in Search the Scriptures: New Testament Studies in Honor of Raymond T. Stamm (ed. J. M. Myers, O. Reimherr, and H. N. Bream; Leiden: Brill, 1969), 128; as quoted in Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 459.