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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
2 Kings 2:5-15
Acts 1:1-11
St. Mark 16:14-20
Mercy, and Peace are secure for you from God our Father,
through our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus the Crucified of God!
Who speaks to us, even this evening, as we hear from the
Book of Acts:
“And when he had
said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took
him out of their sight.”
Two things we do NOT want to believe when confronted with
our Lord’s Ascension. One, that He is moving through space-time as we know it;
meaning from one place to the next, as if the Right Hand of God were in
Hoboken, NJ or something. And second, that we don’t try to dumb it down.
Meaning, that we try and rationalize the Ascension using words like “myth” and
“symbolize”. This turns God into Not-God and that’s not good.
The Bible and the Lutheran Confessions do not understand the
Ascension as some sort of space travel. Jesus is not on earth one minute, and
then in heaven the next, as if He took Air Force Jesus to travel there and
therefore, when He returns, we’ll also get to ride Air Force Jesus to get back
here.
No, we believe and understand the Ascension as Jesus’
removal from ordinary sight. that He simply exists in a way in which our eyes
do not have the ability to focus on Him anymore. The Ascension is Jesus’s final
act of liberation from the limitations to which His humiliation had subjected
Him within the created world (Christology, Scaer, 102). If we were able to
still see Him as He was, He would not be exalted anymore.
If we begin to degrade it by rationalizing it, saying its
mythical or symbolic, that “Jesus has ascended to the presence of my heart” or
something equally cringe, then He becomes less than Who He says He is. As soon
as we mythologize or spiritualize Jesus, He turns into a false god who is just
a superman and is limited by time, space, and our superior intellect.
There is no movement from place to place, here. The only
reason you would need Jesus to be a myth or moving is if you wanted Him out of
the Lord’s Supper during the Divine Service. Lutheran Father Abraham Calov,
17th c., put it this way:
“But the heaven which [Christ] occupied is not locally
situated above the stars, as the Calvinists prattle. Scripture knows nothing of
this heaven. No, it is a majestic and glorious heaven, which, like God Himself,
is everywhere. The mathematical calculation we leave to the Calvinists
themselves, who have certainly busied themselves with this noble science.”
(Christology, 102)
If we just wanted another redundant and therefore
unnecessary, story to symbolize God’s glorification of Jesus, then this would
be a myth. If we want to believe like God and keep Christ’s human nature in His
omnipresence and universal dominion in the world and His Church, then the
Ascension is historic fact. Jesus had passed out of the disciples’ sight
before. This time should be no surprise.
Look at Elijah, from our first Reading. He was also taken up
and out of eye shot. Our eyes have natural limits of sight. Called Angular
Resolution, when things go too far away they “disappear”. This is the reason
the angels appear at the Ascension, to make clear that Jesus truly ascended
into heaven (Sunday Sermons of the great fathers, II:438) and didn’t just “go
away”.
Elijah was taken up, as though to heaven, for he was a
servant. Jesus was taken up to heaven, for He is the Lord. One in a chariot,
the other in a cloud. When the servant was called, the chariot was sent. For
the Son, the Royal Throne of His Father comes to get Him, as Isaiah says, “Behold
the Lord is seated upon a cloud” (Isa 19:1). And as Elijah let his mantle
fall to Elisha, so does Jesus send down His gifts of graces upon His disciples,
making not one, but many Elishas. (Sunday Sermons, II:439)
Jesus is received, welcomed, and assumed into heaven as both
God and man. That He also takes His humanity with Him is the main point and our
hope, for His humanity is our humanity.
“For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one
body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit”
(1 Cor 12:13).
Jesus says: “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the
remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried
from the womb;
even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will
carry you.
I have made, and I will bear; I will make you ascend
and will save you.” (Is. 46:3-4)
Once again, these Feast Days of Jesus are for you. Jesus
does not need another proof of His Glory or power. He desires to bring you with
Him. He desires an eternal dwelling place for you. “And if I go and prepare
a place for you”, He says, “I will come again and will take you to
myself, that where I am you may be also” (Jn 14:3). “Take you to
myself”, because He “was speaking about the temple of His Body” (Jn 2:21).
To Ascend with Jesus means to commune with Jesus, to believe
He is both God and man. Fully divine and fully us, only without our sin, since
He has made His sacrifice already, once for all. The Ascension of Jesus once
again proves that He really did rise again from the dead and that He now can be
in all places at all times with His Body, not just in spirit.
In Christ, humanity is welcomed into heaven, into the very
Body of Christ, to shouts of glory, laud, and honor because we are like Him, in
the forgiveness of sins. In Christ, the Father has said, ye are gods (Jn
10:34), because the Word of God has come to you, made His dwelling in you,
and makes you ascend with Him, to His side, for all eternity.
Behold, the dwelling of God is among men (Rev 21:3). God
keeps His promises and remains among us. As God He rules over all. As man He
serves all His forgiveness. It is no heavenly hermitage that He manages in some
far off, distant place. He is near, His kingdom is near, and His heaven is
near.
Near in time, to be sure. He is returning and quickly. But
also near in space, physically near, to commune with His Church.
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