“At The Right Hand of Majesty”
Saint Mark 16: 14-20
The Feast of The Ascension of our Lord: 10 May Anno Domini 2018
Father Jay Watson SSP
“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” God for you is not in the atmosphere, stratosphere, or star-studded outer space. Immanuel.
In His Ascension Christ turns His sacred Head from the “12” to all His disciples, to you. Calvary and the Empty tomb is not the end. Salvation is the end to be sure, through the forgiveness of sins. Life is the end, to be sure, through the death and resurrection of the God/Man. But it’s in the eternal presence of The Groom that the Bride is united as one flesh wherein joy and peace kiss in immortality, blessedness, and the beatific vision. And it will be in “the flesh.” To His High and Holy Altar “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.” [Ps 24.7]
“Afterward He appeared unto the eleven.” Whether it’s frightened Disciples, lost sheep, gentiles, Saint Thomas, or sinners fallen, Jesus always appears. He did so for the “12” while “they sat at meat.” How meet that He came during meat—supper/dinner, the taking of nourishment. Now they would be fed, satisfied. Now they would know Who was their real “daily bread” from The Father. It also is why Christ was recognized by the two Emmaus Disciples when The Lord broke bread in their midst. Yes, Jesus is for you in The Word…in The Scriptures and this Homily. But He is for you at the pinnacle of Peace on His Altar where He the Prince of Peace becomes your Sacramental-Union Peace, both with wine and bread, and with you in communion. The Ascension made real is at the Blessed Mass!
Do you, like the Disciples, need to be “upbraided” for your own unbelief and hardness of heart? Yes. Your “old Adam” daily looks back and yearns for Egypt and the fleshpots of sins and comfort. You even struggle over belief in His Bodily Presence in The Sacrament. Only that kind of wavering, or sublimation and intentional minimizing, could ever allow one who is truly a Disciple and friend of The Lord, to be absent from The Weekly Feast. Your hardness of heart is not just in failing to Love Jesus with your whole body, soul, and mind, but it’s also failing to love your neighbor. Love your neighbor and believe him. Do you not believe your “neighbor” Saint Matthew’s words to you in our text? Do you not believe your “neighbor” the Magdalene’s words to you that she and the women had seen Jesus; that He is alive—in The Flesh?
“God is gone up with a merry noise, and The Lord with the sound of the trump” [Ps. 47.5] “Go ye into all the world and preach The Gospel.” The Ascension, The Christ, touches you and feeds you in the preaching of The Gospel. Good News, your sins are forgiven! You believe, you are saved. This Good News has a face, He is your Brother, The Heavenly Father’s only begotten Son Who is for you. You have Peace. You are free from guilt, shame, and deserved punishment.
“…Signs shall follow them that believe.” They did in spectacular ways for The Apostolic band and they continue to do so in sublime, understated, veiled, but still real ways for His New Testament Church. Devils shall be cast out. They are. Pastors baptize babies and catechize the pagan. People, parishioners, like the prodigal, repent and daily drown their old natures. People shall speak with new tongues. They do. Pastors “in the stead and by the command” loose and absolve in the new Tongue of He Who makes all things new. People, parishioners, like the woman with her tears, love much and forgive much because they have been forgiven. You speak the tongues of forgiveness in the Our Father and in your daily compassions. They shall take up serpents…any deadly thing shall not hurt them. A mighty fortress is your God. One little word shall fell him. The devil flees when you, when Christ in you, resists him by The Word. The snake’s head is crushed. The snakebite anti-venom is washed + onto you, bugled into your ears, and placed on your tongues.
How? All the gifts of God come to you from His Throne of mercy from before the worlds began; from The Promise to Eve, from The Annunciation to the Virgin, from The Bethlehem Nativity, from the Tree at Golgotha, from The Empty Tomb, BY WAY OF THE HOLY ASCENSION to the right hand of majesty. His pierced right hand touches you where He has touched, claimed, and sanctified a Holy Tabernacle, Font, Pulpit, and Altar.
No clever word studies or creative exegesis. Jesus literally, not figuratively, moved off the solid ground at Bethany and went up vertically into the sky until He could no longer be seen by the vision of the “12.” He will not be seen with their eyeballs, or yours, until He returns at the end of The Age. But He has told you where He is—where He really IS for you. Take Eat this IS My Body; Take Drink this IS My Blood of the New Testament. Where two or three of you are gathered together in My Name, there I AM in the midst of you.
The Sun 93 million miles away in measurable distance but all around you in its ever-present radiating heat, light, and life. The powerplant dynamo out-of-sight in some heavy business district but all around you in electrical current wherever you turn to a plug-in. The fount, the headwater, again, somewhere outside your ocular perception but in the flowing current and wet freshness of the river you stand in—present—for you. Bad and incomplete analogies, sure. But Jesus gives you the only answer that you and the Church needs: “…they shall lay hands…” and “they went forth, and preached everywhere, The Lord working with them.”
Enoch was translated. Elias was taken up in a fiery chariot. But Jacob saw angels ascending and descending from the Crucifix, the ladder that forever now unites fallen man with The Gracious God. As the Seraphim fly around His throne, The Cross, singing Holy, Holy, Holy, His angels on earth sing to you “lift up your hearts.”
The Ascended Victor is now always on The Father’s right-hand in His full exalted state. You are Ascended with Him in your Baptism. You descended into His death and you ascended with Him in His Resurrection. He hath led captivity captive, Hallelujah. He hath led you here this evening to His throne room at the Altar.
This is no puffy cloud that Jesus has been zoomed up into. This is no heaven that looks like Olympus, Asgard, or a Family Circus cartoon strip. The Ascension brings Jesus and you here to the Church. “He hast raised your human nature on the clouds to God’s right hand; Here you sit in heavenly places, here with Him in glory stand. Jesus reigns adored by angels; YOU with God are on the throne. Mighty Lord in Thine Ascension you by faith behold your own.” [TLH #218.5]
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
Email the webmaster.Contact Augsburg Lutheran Church: (913) 403-6194