Updated May, 2025
In a phone conversation with my sister, I mentioned that I had led a session at a conference called “With a Shout! What Difference Does the Ascension Make for Everyday Life?” There was a long pause on the other end of the line, followed by a bewildered “Why would you spend a whole day talking about the ascension?”
My sister is not alone in seeing the ascension as a slightly baffling footnote to the story of the resurrection. The good news of the ascension is that the resurrection isn’t the final chapter in God’s story. Christ rose to God’s right hand in his wounded human flesh, where he continues to intercede for us as our ever-present high priest. This is heady and exciting stuff that can transform our understanding of worship, vocation, and sanctification.
As with any liturgical season or service theme, worship planners will want to find music that supports the theology. That doesn’t mean each song has to preach a sermon, but all the songs should illuminate the theme in some way. Certainly we should continue to use classic ascension songs such as “Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise,” but perhaps some new repertoire would bring fresh perspective to our understanding of ascension theology, deepening our worship on Ascension Day and throughout the whole year.
The difficulty of choosing ascension music is that Ascension Sunday happens only once a year. It isn’t wise to introduce too many new songs in one service, especially if they can only be used one day each year. The songs that follow take this into account. Though most of them will be new to your congregation, the selections focus on new texts set to familiar tunes, songs that can be used all year long, and songs that can be introduced by a choir or cantor and then picked up easily by the congregation.
To learn more about worship and the ascension, read
“Reclaiming the Promise of Ascension” and “The Incarnation Continues”. For a more comprehensive list of ascension songs, visit (https://worship.calvin.edu/resources/articles/ascension-resource-guide)
God Has Gone Up with Shouts of Joy!
In this text found in Sing! A New Creation 154, James Hart Brumm uses the words of Psalm 47 (the Ascension Day lectionary psalm) as a launching point for an exploration of Christ’s work. In fact, each of the three stanzas reflects the three answers of Heidelberg Catechism question 45: How does Christ’s ascension benefit us?
Using the familiar tune mit freuden zart (“Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above”) Schutz allows the congregation to concentrate on the rich theology of the text. Brumm drives home the point that Christ ascended to heaven in his wounded flesh. Because Christ reigns eternally in human flesh, it gives us hope that we too may follow Christ to glory “with our pain and scars.” The text also emphasizes that Jesus knows and cares about the everyday details of our human existence. The author summarizes all of these ideas in the final words of each stanza: we are invited into “Love’s eternal blessing.”
James Hart Brumm was a member of the committee that prepared Sing! A New Creation. He is pastor of Blooming Grove Reformed Church and adjunct faculty at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. His collection of texts, Out of the Ordinary, is published by Wayne Leopold Editions.
A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing
This ascension text, penned by the Venerable Bede (673-735), is unusual in that it tells the whole ascension story. There is a power that builds over the seven stanzas as we are drawn into the story, preparing us for the narrative’s theological implications in stanza 5:
O grant our souls with yours to rise
with tireless wings unto the skies;
until our faith finds rest in you
and heav’n and earth are all made new.
—from Benjamin Webb’s 1854 translation,
adapted by Greg Scheer
In the Lutheran Book of Worship the text is paired with LASST UNS ERFREUEN (“All Creatures of Our God and King”) Assisi. This melody is familiar, but its high range and extended "alleluias”
may prove to be vocally tiring when all seven stanzas are sung. The Presbyterian Hymnal pairs three stanzas of the text with the tune DEO GRACIAS, a modal tune often associated with “O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High” Kempis. The tune’s rugged beauty holds up well with repeated use, making it ideal for the lengthy text of “A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing.” Infact, this same tune could be used throughout the liturgical year with other long meter (LM) texts, weaving each season’s stories together with the same melody:
- Advent: “On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry”
- Epiphany/Lent: “O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High”
- Transfiguration: “O Wondrous Sight, O Vision Fair”
- Easter: “O Sons and Daughters”
- Ascension: “A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing
The arrangement shown here is sparse enough that it lets the medieval folk character of the tune shine through. The light percussion adds to the song’s rhythmic vitality and helps support the offbeat rhythm in the third measure of each phrase. One performance possibility would be for the choir to chant the first stanza, bring in percussion on the second, and slowly add voices and harmony each stanza to build the momentum of the song. Instruments—especially recorder or oboe—can double the vocal lines, and in more contemporary churches guitar could strum the chords. This song makes a very effective processional hymn.
The First Place
“The First Place” is not in common currency in the praise and worship repertoire, but that may change with its recent appearance at John Piper’s Desiring God conference, "Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World.” The song is a brilliant recasting of Colossians 1:15-20,portraying Christ’s reign over heaven and earth and in our hearts.
After establishing the supremacy of Christ in the stanzas, the refrain bursts into the Kuyperian exclamation, “Every inch of this universe belongs to you, O Christ.” The refrain concludes with personal application “So you must have in all things the first place”—that is, if Christ’s supremacy is displayed throughout all creation, certainly he should also reign in our lives.
The music complements the text perfectly, with simple chords and a low-range melody in the verses that are answered by the expanded range and energy of the refrain. The song is best accompanied by a praise band, but can also effectively be led by just piano or guitar.
The song’s composer, Matthew Westerholm, is a graduate of Trinity International University. Westerholm has been on the worship ministry staff at Harvest Bible Chapel in the northwest suburbs of Chicago since1998. He maintains a blog at http://retroevangelical.blogspot.com/.