“ASCENDED HERE!”
Saint Luke 24: 44-53
The Feast of The Ascension: 21 May Anno Domini 2020
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
You talk a lot about “justification by grace through faith.” Is that it? You talk a lot about Law and Gospel. Anything else? You talk “smack-down” against the Roman Catholics and Pentecostals. How is that working for you?
None of this Scripture, which you confess to be The Word of God, is theoretical.
The reason many pastors, MYSELF mostly, dislike preaching on The Ascension is that we do it every single year. We feel a sinful pressure (are own sin) to somehow make it special, different, and more engaging for you all—every year. It’s why preaching on the Feasts of Christmas and Easter, counter-intuitively also sometimes puts us in the doldrums. These are all wonderful good news texts to the new Christian, the former atheist or Muslim or law-bound protestant who is overjoyed to the point of tears at the free mercy and love and grace of Christ Jesus. But for Lutherans…Lutherans are far too “I know it all” and now I can pontificate and lecture and feel a bit better than the heterodox and heretical.
Lutherans don’t understand that the Bible is to prime one for the actual delivery of Christ in the Sermon. Not the “about Christ” but The Christ. Lutherans don’t understand that the theology is all about to whet your appetite to receive Jesus in His Meal.
To know “more” about the Ascension may not be at all what God wants from you. To be here, as you are now, mainly to hear the Gospel and Sermon, and to also receive the Holy Absolution and Holy Supper is really what The Ascension is.
You live in the very, literal “end times.” Act like it. Let your intellectual faith inform your works, deeds, acts, and yes, your liturgical and rubrical devotion. The Eschaton is imminent [Heb. 1.2; 2 Pet. 3.3; 1 Cor. 10.11].
So, what does our Epistle and Gospel text appointed for this High Feast Day mean?
One, I suppose, is the historical reality. It all happened as the eye-witnesses saw and recorded. Luke himself as well, may have been there. The Christ visually, physically, bodily, kinetically, and in any other actual and real way—lifted off, floated, levitated—from the hill top further and further up in elevation until He became hidden by the clouds; 600 feet, 800 feet, 1,000 feet? Why would you care and what would it matter? Only a frustrated Calvinist, Higher Critic, or a Lutheran wanting to be one or the other of them, would obsess in the picayune minutiae of the physics of it, or what mountain it really was.
Two, of course, is the theological reality. You hear preaching about this all the time. You know Jesus didn’t leave the “12,” the Church, or you. You know He is visually gone from your eyesight but that He is still present. You may not really believe that, but that’s your fault not mine. Repent. You don’t act like The Lord is present. Repent. Continue your confession That He is not absent but rather reigns at the Right Hand of The Father. Jesus was not assumed, or enveloped, or captured by heaven like Han Solo was encased (frozen) in carbonite, but rather Christ assumed heaven as His rightful possession. He’s not off in space but IN this Font, IN this pulpit preaching, and IN His supper by being ON His altar. Not Just Jesus as God—His Divine Nature, but the whole, total, and complete Jesus, with His Human Nature as well. For Christ is not divided. There is but One Lord Jesus. “God set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named…and hath put all things under His feet and gave Him to be head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” [Eph. 1. 20-23].
And finally, three (the third reality) “for you.” This is the “what does this mean” part. There is a reason that parishioners never comment to the pastor about his homily when they’re walking out of the nave. It could be that they didn’t understand his sermon, or that is sermon was just plain bad. But it’s also because they didn’t believe what he said. Oh, they believed the historical, scriptural, systematical and dogmatic assertions. They believed his criticisms of other false denominations or his rants about public morality failures which they themselves agree with. But they won’t thank him for “giving me Jesus” because they don’t believe that He did. They don’t believe the truth of the Ascension.
So instead this year of trying to share with you the various illustrations, demonstrations, examples, and other created graphic, mental, or physical help-aids to explain The Ascension, which frankly I’m tired of doing, I’ll just point you here! Here to Christ’s Church, His living Body, His Creche/Stable where He lives, reigns, serves, speaks, washes, feeds, and Has His reality and presence—His Ascension. The Church is The Ascension because The Church is The Word. She does not give you “about Jesus” She gives you Jesus. Full stop.
“He ascended up far above all heavens that He might fill all things. And He gave some, Apostles; and some, Prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some, Pastors and Teachers: for—the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ” [Eph. 4.10-12].
He is Ascended to be here. He is here and The Holy Ghost has brought you here to again be placed into His side—intro Him, even as He is placed into you.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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