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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
2 Kings 2:5-15
Acts 1:1-11
- St. Mark 16:14-20
Who speaks to you this evening, saying:
“And they went out
and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked through them, confirming His word
by the signs that accompanied it”
When we speak of the Ascension, we are speaking of stepping
up. And, there are a few places in the Bible where an ascent to heaven happens.
And it happens in such a way that we might even believe heaven opened up at
those places and maybe is still open for us, if we could just reach the right
spot.
The first place is the Garden of Eden, where God walked and
talked on earth. there, heaven was on earth, but in a massive descent, the
Fall, the way was closed. If it were possible to get ourselves back to the
garden, maybe there would be a way of getting higher.
Then there’s Enoch, who seemed to have slipped into heaven’s
gate, who knows how. There’s Elijah that rode the chariots of fire up to
heaven. All very convincing but all very out of our league. From fiery chariots
to flaming angel swords, all those ways appear locked or at least impossible to
pass.
There is one that is hopeful, however. That is Jacob’s
Ladder. This is something that is not only comprehendible, we all know what a
ladder is, but also something that is within our abilities to produce. Who
knows when the first ladder was invented, but I bet it was really early because
they are very useful!
So to see that there is a ladder that can reach up to
heaven, from, earth, gives real hope. Even if it is not a literal ladder, that
also means a metaphorical ladder exists that one can ascend into heaven, just
by exerting some effort.
In fact, these false prophets say, you can activate your
faith and climb such a ladder. And since you are a citizen of heaven and it all
belongs to you anyway, your activated faith should allow you to ascend, grab
heavenly things, and bring them back down with you. Activation usually involves
falling into a trance, you know, just like St. Peter…
To move upward, then, its the usual menu: speaking your
faith out loud, take action on corresponding works, act on God’s Word, pray
with expectation, I don’t know why else you’d pray, and the coup de grace: step
out of your comfort zone.
Every sermon you’ll hear, out there, comes with one or more
of those points. As if ascending is all a part of God’s big plan for your life.
As if robbing heaven is the point of ascending and as if there is a way to get
there.
“But the righteousness that is by faith”, says Romans
10:6-7, “says: ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’’
(that is, to bring Christ down) or, ‘Who will descend into the Abyss?’ (that
is, to bring Christ up from the dead)” (Rom 10:6-7)
So there is no ascension for humanity, apart from Christ.
What would that look like? Becoming like God? God has never been like man nor
was there a time when He was not God. Indeed, being able to move up on our own
would make all of God’s work vain, because it would mean God and His Life are
accessible directly. Open to any hacker. And God would have no need to come
down to us.
In other words, there would be no need, no worth, in Jesus
Christ. As the central figure in His own religion, Christ-ianity, He would be a
useless entity. Unneeded. And some who call themselves “christian” believe
this, that Jesus was simply a man who pointed the way to all of us becoming our
own gods.
To this, Holy Scripture plainly saith in Isaiah 14:
“How you have fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the
dawn! You have been cut down to the ground, O destroyer of nations. You said in
your heart: “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the
stars of God. I will sit on the mount of assembly, in the far reaches of the
north.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make
myself like the Most High.” But you will be brought down to Sheol, to the
lowest depths of the Pit. Those who see you will stare; they will ponder your
fate: “Is this the man who shook the earth and made the kingdoms tremble, who
turned the world into a desert and destroyed its cities, who refused to let the
captives return to their homes?” (Isa 14:12-17)
Jesus is not just the key you need to unlock something for
you, beyond Him. He is the Key, the Door, and the Beginning and End. And His
Ascension is the first and last ascension for humanity. There is no “becoming
like God” without Him. Call it what you will; deification, theosis, or change
of life. The Ascension of Jesus is the only way.
And that way has two qualifiers to it, in order that we
recognize it correctly. The first is, “whether God and His life are accessible
directly, or only in the crucified and risen Savior, and in His gospel means of
salvation alone. And second, “is whether deification is driven by the downward movement
of God or by the upward movement of man.”
To this God answers in 1 Timothy 6:16, He “is immortal
and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” and
from Job 36:22, 26, “God is inaccessible due to his power…God is exalted and
unknowable; the number of his years is beyond counting”.
And yet, as usual, when we run to quoting verses out of
context, we run into opposing verses, such as “God is near” and when
Jesus says, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father” (Phil 4:5; St. Jn
14:9). Likewise, Jeremiah 30:21, “Who would dare approach me
unless I let them come? declares the Lord.”
But therein lies the turn and our point. There is no
ascension unless the Lord first wills and allows it. There is no holiness
unless the Lord first creates it. The point the Lord wants to make is for you
to listen and not just mimic the words you see on paper. For in order to ascend
to God you must first know where He is, Who He is, and what He’s doing.
If you simply ascend with your own understanding and your
own wisdom, even with Scriptures, you will not ascend, but descend. You will
walk a path that leads to shame and great vice. You will think you are mounting
the hill of God, but upon reaching the summit, you will find the devil sitting
on the throne, enjoying the view.
Yes, it has been tried. You are not innovative in thinking
that you can ascend to God when even satan has failed. Yet, he made it there
before you, as Isaiah quoted earlier said, and it was the cause of his
downfall. Not because he invaded heaven, but because of what he found when he
got there.
What he found was the Incarnation of God. He found heaven
empty, because the Lord had taken on flesh. Jesus had descended to the depths
of hell to take on flesh, suffer, and die for sinners. This Way is what the
angels are investigating for all eternity in joy and what they are doing on
Jacob’s Ladder.
The always behold the face of the Father and look constantly
at His divinity. And now they descend from heaven after He was made man. Now
they look upon Christ and wonder at His Incarnation. They see that He has been
made man, humiliated, and placed on His mother’s lap. They adore the man Who
was crucified and rejected, and they acknowledge Him as the Ascended Son of
God.
If you could ascend on your own it would not be grace, it
would not be faith. Jesus has already tackled the question of why God says in
His Psalms, “I have said you are gods”, in John 10:34, and it is because
the Word came to them. The Word descended first. The way was opened first. The
offering was made first.
Then we perceive it. After the work of making holy what had
become unholy, sinners, was finished, then we are invited up, in Christ. Into
the suffering, into the wounds, into the grave where we are then brought along
into the eternal Easter. That is ascension by grace, through faith, for
Christ’s sake alone.
“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows
the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Mt
11:27). In the Fall into sin, we lost the knowledge of God. In our
redemption in Christ, we are restored to God. Not partially, but fully. “it is
finished” means it is finished.
The blessed Dr. Luther puts it this way:
“we are so filled with "all the fulness of God,"
that is said in the Hebrew manner, meaning that we are filled in every way in
which He fills, and become full of God, showered with all gifts and grace and
filled with His Spirit, Who is to make us bold, and enlighten us with His
light, and live His life in us, that His bliss make us blest, His love awaken
love in us.
In short, that everything that He is and can do, be fully in
us and mightily work, that we be completely deified [vergottet], not that we
have a particle or only some pieces of God, but all fulness. Much has been
written about how man should be deified; there they made ladders, on which one
should climb into heaven, and much of that sort of thing.
Yet it is sheer piecemeal effort; but here [in faith] the
right and closest way to get there is indicated, that you become full of God,
that you lack in no thing, but have everything in one heap, that everything
that you speak, think, walk, in sum, your whole life be completely divine” in
the Crucified Christ. (CTQ 64:3, 197-198)
Jesus has ascended, true, but He remains with us. Notice
again the end of St. Mark’s Gospel which we read this evening: “And they
went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked through them, confirming
His word by the signs that accompanied it”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
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