Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
People come into our lives, and people go out of our lives. In his 1976 hit song “Say Goodbye to Hollywood”, pop star Billy Joel put it this way:
So many faces in and out of my life / Some will last / Some will just be now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes / I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again
Recently I learned that I will be saying “goodbye” to two pastors of other churches here in Kilgore, pastors who will be leaving the area, whom I have gotten to know, and whose friendship I appreciate. While to some extent I am glad for the opportunities their moves will provide them, I will miss their friendship and presence in the community. Truly such transitions can bring conflicting emotions, sort of like those conflicting emotions William Shakespeare has Juliet express to Romeo in the first balcony scene of the play that bears their names. Juliet says:
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow. (Romeo And Juliet Act 2, scene 2, 184-185)
Juliet’s oxymoronic phrase “Parting is such sweet sorrow”, combines the ideas of pleasure and pain and was brought to my mind in as I prepared for tonight’s service and reflected on Jaroslav Vajda’s “stirring” Ascension hymn that we sang as the Hymn of the Day, in which hymn Vajda mentions the disciples’ being left in “happy tears” (Lutheran Service Book 491:1; Precht, 169).
Now, none of the accounts of the Ascension of our Lord that we heard read tonight mentions the disciples’ crying, either tears of sorrow or tears of joy. In fact, the narration of the Ascension read from the last four verses of St. Luke’s Gospel account says Jesus left the disciples worshipping Him and returning to Jerusalem with great joy. We might expect the disciples to be sorrowful, as a writer of fiction might make them, but St. Luke says they were joyful, although he does not say why they were joyful (Plummer, ad loc Lk 24:52-53, 565-566). However, as St. John reports, Jesus Himself had prophesied that, just as a woman giving birth has sorrow because her hour has come but joy when she had delivered the baby, so the disciples sorrow over Jesus’s crucifixion would turn into joy at His resurrection—joy that no one would take from them (John 16:20-22; 20:20).
If we believe in Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected for us, like the disciples, we have great joy that no one can take from us. Would anyone know that we have such great joy from the things that we think, say, and do? Do we think, speak, and act as if Jesus’s Ascension meant that He abandoned us on earth to fend for ourselves? What about our loss of other people in Christ: do we think, speak, and act as if they are gone forever from us so that we will never see them again? Maybe we have yet to fully “get” what the disciples finally seem to have “gotten”! By nature, of course, we are all sinful and unclean, and the original sin that we inherit leads us to countless actual sins of thought, word, and deed, both against God and against our fellow human beings. So, this night we prepared for our Lord’s service to us by confessing our sins to Him. When we so turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning, then God truly forgives our sin. God forgives our sins of thinking, speaking, and acting as if Jesus’s Ascension meant that He abandoned us on earth to fend for ourselves, and God forgives our sins of thinking, speaking, and acting as if other people in Christ are gone forever so that we will never see them again. God forgives all our sin, whatever it might be. God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake.
According to the Scriptures, Jesus Christ suffered and on the third day rose from the dead, and repentance and forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in His Name to all people. God loved you and me so much that He sent Jesus to die and rise for us, that He might forgive our sins, and Jesus’s Ascension is an act of God’s love for us, too. To be sure, Jesus’s Ascension 40 days after His resurrection is not so much a spatial change as it marks the end of His post‑resurrection appearances to His disciples, but, probably more importantly, Jesus’s Ascension is thought to mark the beginning of His sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, enthroning the human nature that He shares with us and there fully exercising His divine power as He rules over all things for the benefit of His Church, as we heard in tonight’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 1:15-23). Hymn‑writer Thomas Kelly’s text that we will sing as our Closing Hymn invites us to consider our Lord’s humiliation turned into exaltation with these words (LSB 495:1):
Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious; / See the Man of Sorrows now!
From the fight returned victorious, / Ev’ry knee to Him shall bow.
Crown Him! Crown Him! / Crown Him! Crown Him! / Crown Him! Crown Him!
Crowns become the victor’s brow. / Crown’s become the victor’s brow.
Truly, Jesus Christ was victorious over sin for us, ascended into heaven for us, and rules there for us, but He also has not abandoned us on earth to fend for ourselves.
Tonight’s Gospel Reading says that Jesus lifted up His hands and blessed His disciples and that, while He blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther someplace speculates that Jesus blessed the disciples with the benediction that was given to Aaron in the Old Testament book of Numbers (6:24-27), the same benediction that closes the Divine Service here at Pilgrim and at every other congregation using the historic Christian liturgy. The Lord has long blessed His people, both in person and through others, both using such words and in other ways. In fact, St. Paul in writing to the Ephesians specifically connects the Ascension of our Lord to His gift of the Office of the Holy Ministry (Ephesians 4:7-16).
Perhaps that gift of the Office of the Holy Ministry is one of the reasons why, even though Jesus was no longer with them in the same way, the disciples could return to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple “blessing” (or, perhaps better, “praising”) God. Jesus Christ remained with them as He remains with us, albeit in different ways. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus returned to heaven to send (John 16:7), Jesus preaches the Gospel through pastors He calls and ordains to do so. By the power of the Holy Spirit with water, Jesus through pastors baptizes us, working forgiveness of sins, rescuing from death and the devil, and giving eternal salvation to all who believe. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus through pastors individually absolves those who privately confess to their pastors the sins they know and feel in their hearts. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit with bread and wine, Jesus in the Sacrament of the Altar through pastors communes us with Himself, with His body and His blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins, and so also for life and salvation. Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father may be resting from His work of atoning for our sins, but He, our Great High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, continues to be active through His ministry (Mark 16:20) and to personally intercede for us before the Father and rule and protect His Church as He governs over all things for the benefit of His Church.
Whether people moving in and out of our lives or a change in our Lord’s presence with us, in some sense “Parting” can be “such sweet sorrow”. Yet, as we will be reminded in the first Distribution Hymn (LSB 821:2; John 13:18-19), our Ascended Lord Jesus does not leave us orphans, but He comes to us in the ways that He promises to come to us, forgiving the sins of we who repent and believe, even as we fail to always fully appreciate His presence with us. So, by God’s mercy and grace, we also ascend in heart and mind, and, ultimately, we will continually dwell with Him in soul and body.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +