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. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
Now You See Him, Now You Don’t—some of you may remember the 19‑72 Disney science‑fiction/comedy movie by that name, starring Kurt Russell, as a college chemistry student, who accidentally develops a formula for invisibility. (That movie is at least more‑recent than the Beatles’ 19‑65 movie Help!) Or, if you have never heard of the movie, you at least may know the expression “Now you see it, now you don’t” from that expression’s association with magic tricks or other sleights‑of‑hand. That expression is, to some extent, apt in regards to tonight’s First Reading for the Ascension of Our Lord, insofar as a cloud took the ascending Jesus out of His apostles’ sight, or, more literally, “from their eyes”. Although, given that the two angels told the apostles that Jesus would come in the same way that they saw Him go into heaven, for tonight’s sermon theme we have recast the expression as “Now you don’t see Him, but you will”.
The Ascension of Our Lord in a sense “bridges” the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke’s Gospel account, his first “book”, and his “second” book, the book of Acts (confer CSSB, ad loc Acts 1:2, p.1655). Tonight’s Gospel Reading, with its shorter narration of the Ascension of Our Lord, was the ending of St. Luke’s Gospel account (Luke 24:44-53), as tonight’s First Reading was the beginning of St. Luke’s book of Acts, with its longer narration of the Ascension of Our Lord. Where tonight’s Gospel Reading says simply that Jesus “parted from them and was carried up into heaven”, tonight’s First Reading tells us that the Ascension came forty days after the Resurrection of Our Lord (confer Acts 13:31); it says two times that Jesus was “taken up”; it gives us two examples of Jesus’s instructions to His apostles through the Holy Spirit; it refers to Jesus’s letting Himself be seen by them; it says two times that they were “looking”; it reports that Jesus was lifted up and that a cloud took Him out of their sight; it indicates that they were “gazing” and “saw”; it speaks of Jesus going and coming; and it notably mentions four times “the sky” or “heaven”. During the forty days since His resurrection, Jesus arguably had been coming‑from and going-to heaven—not to mention remaining-in heaven (confer John 3:7 with the variant)—in somewhat of a “now you see Him, now you don’t” fashion, in each of His post‑resurrection appearances to His apostles. Tonight’s First Reading makes clear to Jesus’s apostles, however, that those post-resurrection appearances had come to an end, that the next time that Jesus would come as He had gone would be the Last Day.
Right now we may wish to see Jesus as the apostles saw Him, as if He still is not present with us in other ways. Even though in tonight’s First Reading Jesus makes clear that the apostles’ witness is sufficient for His Kingdom to expand from Jerusalem to the end of the earth (confer Isaiah 49:6 and Acts 5:32), including even our country and our cities, we may be dissatisfied with or not make use of the apostles’ witness in the Divinely‑inspired and therefore inerrant Holy Scripture or its correct exposition in the Lutheran Confessions. We may be standing around, watching, and waiting, instead of moving, speaking, and acting in the time that God has given us in order to live our lives in the callings that He has given us in His Kingdom. We may not trust God’s means of Grace, and so we may not trust Him to sustain a small remnant of faithful believers and confessors. Even if we do not sin in those ways, we certainly sin in countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature, and so we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. And, either at our deaths, or when Jesus comes in the same way as the apostles saw Him go into heaven, whichever comes first, we would be so sentenced to torment, apart from God the Holy Spirit’s leading us both to be sorry for our sin and to trust God the Father to forgive us for the sake of God the Son, Jesus Christ.
All three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity are active in our salvation, as all Three are evident in today’s First Reading, for example, with its mention of the Father’s promise, through the Son, of the Holy Spirit. The Jesus Whom a cloud took from the apostles’ sight still is the Son of God in human flesh, once transfigured and identified as Such when a cloud overshadowed three of the apostles on a mountain (Luke 9:28-36), even as the power of the Most High earlier had overshadowed the Virgin Mary in the conception of Him, Who had long been present with His people of old in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (for example, Exodus 13:21). That same Jesus suffered and died on the cross for the sins of the whole world—all who ever have lived, now live, or will live, including each one of us. And, after His suffering, He presented Himself alive to His apostles by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God. That same Jesus and His work completed on the cross we believe in for our forgiveness and confess, in part, as ascended into heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Father, as celebrated in tonight’s Psalm (Psalm 47:1-9; antiphon: v.5) and described in tonight’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 1:15-23; confer Mark 16:19 and Acts 2:33).
When we are sorry for our sin and so trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then we stand forgiven. Unmistakable in tonight’s First Reading is language at least suggestive of God’s Word and Sacraments (confer Acts 10:41). As we are born from above by water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism, we can see and enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:3, 5). For us, our pastors exercise the keys of the Kingdom, either binding sin in excommunication or forgiving sin by Holy Absolution (Matthew 16:19; 18:18). The Collect of the Day prayed that we might “ascend in heart and mind and continually dwell” in heaven, and we mean “already now, before the Last Day, when our bodies will be raised to join Jesus in heaven”, for, in the meantime, Christ is truly present in His Word and Sacraments, which “create and strengthen faith, whereby we know the joys of God’s presence already here” (Fickenscher, Looking Forward, p.140). The book of Acts later reports St. Peter’s saying that it was necessary for heaven to receive Jesus until the time for restoring all things (Acts 3:21), but that statement does not mean that Jesus is confined to heaven and so cannot be really, physically present with His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Holy Supper—the same Body and Blood that was crucified, suffered, was buried, rose, ascended, sits, and will come again. Jesus says that presence is a lesser scandal than His ascension itself (John 6:61‑62). Nevertheless, there He gives us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, and, perhaps especially in this way, we, as tonight’s Proper Preface will put it, are partakers of His Divine life. Truly Jesus continues both to be present with His Church and to work through His ministers’ preaching the Gospel and handing out the Sacraments (confer Augsburg Confession V:1).
“Now you don’t see Him, but you will”. No Disney or Hollywood magic or any other kind of magic trick or deception or sleight‑of‑hand but only the power of God is in both the Ascension of Our Lord and His coming again with glory to judge both the living and the dead. Once for a little while, Jesus, Whom His disciples saw, was in the grave unseen by His disciples, but then, after His resurrection, He was seen again (John 16:16). Now, unseen in heaven, He has all things under His feet and is head over all things for the benefit of His Church, but He will come in the same way as He went into heaven, simultaneously by every eye be seen in even His human body, restore all things, and have us with Him forever (confer Luke 17:24; 21:27 with reference to Daniel 7:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; Revelation 1:7; Luther AE 37:224; Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:99; and Stephenson, CLD XIII:104). Thanks be to God!
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 + + +
