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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!)
Another midweek Divine Service? I am sometimes asked, “Why do you create more work for yourself?” And, I suppose one could add, more work for the office volunteers, the accompanist, and the elders. After all, many of the congregations of other religious traditions in our community do not observe the Ascension of Our Lord, nor is the Ascension of Our Lord observed even by all of the Lutheran congregations in our Circuit, District, and Synod. While in some sense we are free either to offer or not to offer Divine Service on the Ascension of Our Lord, we believe, teach, and confess that observing festivals such as this Holy Day, for example, contributes to peace and good order in the Church (for example, Augsburg Confession XV:1), and we take care not to offend the weak by an abuse of liberty (for example, Apology of the Augsburg Confession XV:51). Some of what are called “principal feasts of Christ” (Lutheran Service Book xi) that we might observe with Divine Service relate more to Christ than other feasts: for example, the Annunciation of Our Lord and the Circumcision and Name of Jesus seem to relate more to Christ than St. Michael and All Angels and All Saints’ Day. But, still other Holy Days mark more significant milestones in our Lord’s life for us: for example, Christmas, Epiphany, and Good Friday. We offer Divine Service on those Holy Days regardless of what day they fall on during the week, and the Ascension of Our Lord, which always lands on a Thursday, as Good Friday always lands on a Friday, is in that same category of Holy Days.
Our Lord Jesus Christ de‑scended from heaven for us and for our salvation, and, when His work of saving us was completed, He a‑scended back into heaven (confer Ephesians 4:9‑10). The Ascension of Our Lord is not our Lord’s “departure or goodbye” to His apostles and the Church, but the Ascension of Our Lord signals “a profound transition in the way [that our Lord] is in and with His [apostles and the] Church” (LSB:CttS, 251). Even before Pentecost, His apostles must have understood something of that, as, in tonight’s Gospel Reading, after He parted from them and was being carried up into heaven, His apostles arguably dropped to their knees right then and there and worshiped Him for Who He truly is, and then they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing, or “praising” God (NIV84, NASB95).
Maybe His apostles appreciated the Ascension of Our Lord better than at least some of us even after Pentecost. Where is the rest of our congregation? Is observing this Holy Day and an opportunity to receive the Lord’s Supper not worth making a trip to Pilgrim even on a Thursday evening? I guess that might be preaching to the choir, if we had one. To be sure, those who are not here are not more sinful simply by their absence, and those of us who are here are not less sinful simply by our presence, though we are certainly righteous and holy as God through His Word and Sacraments works in us, who confess our sins, in order to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). And, as God calls and so enables us to do, we do confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean, that we have sinned against God and our fellow human beings—things that we have thought, said, and done that we should not have, and things that we have not thought, said, and done that we should have—and so we confess that we justly deserve God’s present and eternal punishment, apart from God’s love, mercy, and grace for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. So, we trust God to forgive us, our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, and then God does forgive us: God forgives our sinful nature and all of our actual sin.
In the Roman “capital-C” Catholic church, the Ascension of the Lord is a feast day of the highest rank and so a day when the faithful are required to attend Mass and avoid unnecessary work or recreation. In the evangelical “lower-case-C” catholic church that is the Lutheran Church, we come to Divine Service and receive the Lord’s Supper not because someone tells us that we have to come and receive, but we come and receive because we need to and so want to come and receive. For the forgiveness of our sins and so for our eternal life, we need and want what Jesus offers here through His Church. In the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the Holy Incarnation, the Son of God descended from heaven to earth in order to take on human flesh, and yet He is understood as saying that at the same time He remained with God the Father (John 3:13 KJV, ASV; confer John 1:18). Before He was being carried up into heaven, He carried the sins of the world, including your sin and my sin, in His body on the tree of the cross (confer Hebrews 9:28; 2 Peter 2:24). There, He died in our place, and, on the third day, He rose from the dead. Then, after forty days, as we heard in tonight’s First Reading (Acts 1:1-11), He ascended back into heaven—heaven, not so much “a place up there somewhere” as beyond time and space, perhaps more like a different dimension. There, as we heard in tonight’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 1:15-23), God the Father seated Him at His right hand, also not so much a literal place but a figure of speech for His rule, power, and majesty.
So, Jesus is not confined to heaven, neither according to His Divine Nature nor His human nature, which are equally extensive (compare Acts 3:31 NIV84). Jesus Himself once asked the people who were “taking offense” at His teaching about their eating His flesh and drinking His blood what would happen if they saw Him ascend to where He was before (John 6:62). The Ascension of Our Lord and His real, physical presence in His Supper are both in some sense “scandalous”! Other religious traditions today have trouble with Biblical teaching about Jesus’s taking on human flesh and His working through His Word and Sacraments—Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Holy Supper of bread that is Christ’s Body and wine that is Christ’s Blood. Yet, on the basis of Holy Scripture, we know, and, with the Lutheran Confessions we believe, teach, and confess, that through His ministers, who are given special gifts of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Himself continues to be present in order to teach and do miraculous signs intended to create faith that receives the forgiveness of sins through those very same means of grace (for example, John 2:11).
The Divinely‑inspired St. Luke’s brief account of the Ascension of Our Lord is a fitting end to the Gospel account that bears his name. St. Luke’s Gospel account begins in the temple, with John the Baptizer’s father Zechariah serving as a priest (Luke 1:5-10), and St. Luke’s Gospel account ends in the temple, with Jesus’s apostles praising God. Similarly, the angel’s message to the shepherds of “great joy” for all the people early on (Luke 2:10) at the end has been realized by the apostles returning to Jerusalem after the Ascencion of Our Lord. That same great joy is also ours. Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who exhibited His Divine nature in human flesh on earth, has exalted our common human nature to His throne in heaven, and so in some sense already now we are partakers of His Divine life, even if we will be so more fully in the future. Jesus rules over the world for the benefit of His Church, so, as we, with daily contrition and faith, live in His forgiveness of sins, all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28). And so, in the end, not only the “heart and mind” about which we prayed in the Collect of the Day but also our glorified souls and bodies will dwell continually with Him.
We anxiously await that final, equally if not more profound, transition. In what we join the creeds in confessing about Jesus, the verbs through “ascended” are past tense: He already did them. “Sits” at the right hand is the only thing in the present tense: He is doing it right now. And, the only thing in the future tense is that He “will come” a final time with glory to judge the living and the dead: He will yet do it. That great “milestone” will result in more than both brief worship of Jesus near Bethany and intermittent praise of God in the temple; that great “milestone” will result not in additional work but in eternal worship and praise of our Triune God under His restored sky on His restored earth.
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 + + +