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+ + + 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!)
Most of us have probably heard the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind”. The saying is not a Biblical proverb but an aphorism that reportedly goes back hundreds of years further than its first written record by the English writer John Heywood in the middle of the sixteenth century. The saying is thought to mean that, when we do not see something or someone for a while, we tend to forget about it or him or her, or at least the saying is thought to mean that a thing or person enters our thoughts less often than when it or he or she is always near us. Our Lord Jesus may well have been aware of the risk that when He ascended out of sight His apostles might have tended to forget about Him or think about Him less often, and so the Holy Spirit comes to make sure that the apostles do not forget about Him or think about Him less often, and through the Holy Spirit Jesus continues to do and teach, like He did when He was in sight. On this Ascension Day, we consider especially the First Reading with the theme, “Jesus is taken up but is still doing and teaching”.
The First Reading twice refers to Jesus’s being taken up, and it also refers to His being lifted up and going or traveling, but the Reading’s saying that a cloud took Jesus out of their sight perhaps best conveys that truth about Jesus’s Ascension that it ended His 40 days of revealing Himself to His apostles after His resurrection (what we call His post-resurrection appearances). At least somewhat like Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) before Him, Jesus no longer was seen among His people the same way that He had been seen. That reality of Jesus’s dramatic Ascension may have taken a while to sink into His apostles, who, at least for a time, stood gazing into heaven, until two angels asked them why they were doing so. We lost in thought might similarly stare after those driving away, when we know we will not see them for a while.
The reality of the saying “out of sight, out of mind” can lead to another saying’s taking effect: when the cat is away, the mice will play. Young children left to themselves without adequate supervision certainly may break rules that they would not have broken when their parents or other adults were around, forgetting or not thinking so much about the consequences for breaking those rules. All of us sinner-saints can likewise think that we have been left to ourselves with no real consequence for how we break God’s Commandments. After all, God is out of sight, and so all too easily out of mind. We might falsely think that if no other person sees what we are doing, or hears what we are saying, or knows what we are thinking, then God must not either. In fact, God knows our sin, including what we think of as our secret sins and hidden faults, better than we know them ourselves.
The angels’ words to the apostles that Jesus would come in the same way as they saw Him go into heaven, with the clouds of heaven, certainly reminds us of God’s coming judgment (Daniel 7:1-14; Revelation 1:7; 14:14), at which our sinful natures and actual sins would merit the punishment of eternal death, endless separation from God and torment in hell, if He did not enable us to turn in sorrow from our sin, trust Him to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning. That judgment’s time or season that the Father has fixed by His own authority is not for us to know, and so we live every day so repenting of our sin. And, as we do, we live every day in God’s forgiveness of sins for Jesus’s sake.
As St. Luke in the First Reading told Theophilus that St. Luke’s first book, his Gospel account, dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, we think of everything that St. Luke records the God-man Jesus Christ doing and saying for us and for our salvation: from His incarnation by the Holy Spirit to His Ascension into heaven, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading (Luke 24:44-53). But, we especially think of Jesus’s taking our sin upon Himself on the cross and there suffering the punishment for our sin, so that we do not have to. And the third day Jesus rose again and, as the First Reading says, after His suffering He presented Himself alive by many proofs, letting Himself be seen by His apostles and speaking about the Kingdom of God. There was nothing in those apostles and there is nothing in us that can come to know or merit God the Father’s love for us in His Son Christ Jesus, only His own revelation of Himself, makes that knowledge possible, as through the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the case of the apostles, the Holy Spirit especially was active in their lives when He came upon them as Jesus had promised at Pentecost, but the Holy Spirit certainly was also active in their lives already before that. For example, the First Reading says that before Jesus’s Ascension He had given the apostles commands through the Holy Spirit, and we would think that the Holy Spirit was active in their lives when they likely were baptized by John the Baptizer. The Holy Spirit not only descended upon Jesus in His baptism (Luke 3:21-22), but the Holy Spirit also descends on us in our baptisms, albeit in a different way. Likewise, in a way different than that whereby He stayed and ate and drank with His apostles (Acts 10:41), Jesus stays with us in the Sacrament of the Altar, as we eat bread that is His Body and drink wine that is His Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus was taken up and out of the usual sight of the apostles, but Jesus has not left His Church. Rather, Jesus remains present with His Church through His Word and Sacraments, and, by the power of His Holy Spirit working through us, Jesus is still doing and teaching, like He did when He was in sight of our eyes, not only our faith.
Seated at the right hand of the Father, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 1:15-23), Jesus rules over all things for the benefit of His Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who Himself fills all in all. His Holy Spirit leads us to keep His Commandments, not because we mice know the cat is not away after all, but because He has loved us with such a great love that leads us to love Him and those whom He places around us in this life. His Holy Spirit leads us not only to do works of love but also to teach about why, because of that greatest work of love, God’s sending His Son to die for all that we might have the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In such ways, His Holy Spirit works out from Jerusalem, the old kingdom of Israel known as Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth, to include all God has elected salvation, until we all are caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17) and come with Him here for eternity together on renewed ground under a renewed sky.
The saying “out of sight, out of mind” is popularly claimed to have been rendered by early computer translation software as “invisible idiot” or “blind and insane”. Though those things might be what we are by nature, thanks to the Holy Spirit, we are given eyes of faith to see Jesus and remember Him and what He has done for us, His dying and rising for us that we might live forever with Him. As we have realized this evening, “Jesus is taken up but is still doing and teaching”. Through His Word and Sacraments, He is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
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 + + +