“LOOK UP”
Saint Mark 16: 14-20
The Ascension of our Lord: 13 May Anno Domini 2021
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
Look up! That means look up to Jesus. We’ll get to the angels in a few moments.
Look up! That means look to where The Lord is coming—coming soon on the clouds—coming now in His New Testament Temple filled with rising incense, the prayers of the Saints.
Your problem is that you look down. Your sin; trespass; your wrong doing, thinking, and speaking; is that you look down. Up and down are metaphors for either the things of God, or the things of man, i.e. the world, the flesh, and devil. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” [Mt. 16. 19-21]. Heaven, and by that we mean the presence and location of God—a God Who is of course omni-present—heaven is where The Lord is. The Son returning to The Father doesn’t bring Him away from you, or cause Him to be moved farther from you, but just the opposite. Christ siting on The Right Hand of The Father places Him (and The Father, and The Holy Spirit) as close to you as The Word. So, it’s not that Jesus has ascended into the atmosphere, or low-earth orbit, or the moon, or the great crab nebulae. He has “ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things” [Eph. 4.10]
Look up! Look up with the eyes of faith which He has placed in your head, and which He has opened as surely as He opened the eyes of Bartimaeus. Look up and behold! The sin of Adam, your sin, is that by nature you are, the theological Latin phrase, “cuvatus in se,” i.e. curved in on yourselves.
When you look down you are looking at your self—your gut, belly, navel, heart! “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” [Mt. 15.19]. The truth is not in here, but out there (extra nos) The Word “for you,” for you where The Word has chosen to anchor itself, place itself, so that it would be placed into you; in your ears, on your + heads, on your tongues!
That’s why Jesus “upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen.” They were in a locked room. They were afraid of their government. They were worried about other people pointing fingers at them. They were more worried about dying than about living in God’s abundant Grace—a Grace which had been poured out upon them their entire lives in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in The Hebrew Scriptures made Flesh in their BRIEFLY DEPARTED Master. You too need to be upbraided for your own hard hearts.
The Disciples were to stop looking down at themselves and look up to the Witnesses, to the first Gospelers. There’s a reason The Holy Word is elevated after the Lections are read. There’s a reason The Consecrated elements—The actual, true, and bodily real Body and Blood of God are elevated after the Verba!
And now the angels—the messengers of The Word: “behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, ‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven’” [Acts 1. 10b-11]. Good and godly advice from the Angels. You don’t go to the mountain tops, the skyscrapers, or the International Space Station to gaze “up” looking for God. Yes, Jesus will come again as He went “for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” [1Thes. 4. 16-17].
Yes. But waiting for The Lord, being ready, is not about camping out like a homeless mendicant who has joined a cult and waits for a definable calendar date and certain time-piece second. No. Be about your business in The Lord. Hear His Word and do His Word by The Power of The Holy Ghost. Receive Him and His gifts and The Spirit who has gathered you will sanctify and preserve you until The Lord’s reappearing.
Peter fell at Christ’s feet at the great draught of fish—at his own acknowledgement of sins; his unworthiness to be in the presence of Messias. Peter later fell on his face with James and John at the Transfiguration of the Rabbi Who was Light of Light and God of God. Jesus lifted up all their faces that they might behold His: “for God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness… to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” [2 Cor. 4.6].
Look up.
No, you don’t look up at Calvary or to Calvary. That place of the skull, that blood drenched crucifix is no more. Look up. Look to the High Altar of Sacred Head once crowned with thorns now crowned with glory and grace giving gifts. Look up to the Well of + Remission, Regeneration, and Redemption. Look up to the pulpit pinnacle to hear Peace preached.
The ascended God/Man filling all things and coming to you in His Word—the preached gospel to every creature. Believe! Receive the signs. In His Holy Name, + your new name, devils have been cast out: YOU ARE BAPTIZED. You speak in new tongues of forgiveness and mercy while boldly confessing Christ Crucified! The serpent and His deadly venom can no longer harm you for you drink The Blood of The New Testament—the elixir of immortality!
Look up to The Word (point to + Font)
Look up to The Word (touch Pulpit)
Look up to The Word (point to The Altar)
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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