Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord - Lk 24:44-53

 

Ascension

                                                                                      Lk 24:44-53

                                                                                      5/9/24

 

          In a way, celebrating the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord seems to be counter intuitive.  After all, it is a celebration of the fact that the Lord has left us.  That is probably why it is so underappreciated - which is really just a nice way of saying that it is almost ignored.

          It doesn’t help that it always falls on a Thursday.  The ascension of Jesus Christ took place forty days after Easter.  Forty days after Easter always places you on a Thursday, and so every year it is a service that takes place during the week. 

          Between the subject matter of the ascension and its timing, the Ascension Day service is not exactly a big draw for attendance.  In fact, there are many Lutheran churches that don’t even have a service today.

          Yet to ignore the ascension of our Lord is to ignore the exaltation of Jesus Christ.  It is to ignore the reason that God has sent forth the Spirit into our midst.  It is to ignore the comfort we have of knowing that Christ has taken humanity into the presence of God. And it is to ignore the reason for the promise that our Lord will return in glory in the Last Day.

          Our text begins by telling us about what the Lord Jesus said to his disciples after he had demonstrated to them that he has risen from the dead.  He explained, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”  Jesus told them that the events of his ministry – and especially the events of the last several days – were a fulfillment of what God had revealed in the Old Testament.  All of Scripture was about him and pointed to him.

          Next Jesus revealed this to them.  We learn that he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  He gave them insight and understanding about how he fulfilled the Old Testament.  Then he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

          The Scriptures said that Jesus the Christ must suffer, die, and rise from the dead.  It also said that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.  Our Lord said that repentance was needed.  At the beginning of his ministry Jesus had said, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” 

          Jesus’ saving ministry had been about repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  He was here to call people to repentance. He was calling them to confess their sin and turn away from it. And he was here to give forgiveness for that sin to all who repented.

          Your sin was the reason that the Son of God, entered into the world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Paul tells us, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  From the moment of our conception we are fallen people, and as our powers grow so does our sin.  We ignore God as we create false gods that receive more time and attention. We ignore our neighbor because caring for him or her would put limits on the attention we give ourselves.

          The Scriptures had said that the Christ must suffer and die in order to provide forgiveness before God.  Forgiveness was not something that we could bring about.  Only God could provide it.  The great surprise of this fulfillment was the that the Christ was not only a mighty and powerful victor.  He was also the suffering Servant.  Jesus was the Christ, descended from David and anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. 

Yet that anointing with the Spirit had also made him the Servant of the Lord.  He was the One who fulfilled Isaiah’s words, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Jesus had suffered and died to receive God’s judgment against sin.  But on the third day he had been vindicated by God in the resurrection. Jesus had just demonstrated this fact to the disciples. He had shown them that he was the same One who had been crucified.  He said, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me,and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Our Lord then told the disciples, “You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”  The disciples had seen the miracles of Jesus’ ministry. They had witnessed his death.  They were now with the risen Lord.  They would be witnesses to the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Yet before they could do this, something else would happen.  Jesus said he would be sending what the Father had promised.  They were to say in the city until they had received power from God.

Next Luke tells us that Jesus led them out the two miles to Bethany.  Then he lifted up his hands and blessed them.  While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.  The disciples were left there below as they watched him ascend.  We learn that the disciples worshipped Jesus and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ ascension does not come as a complete surprise.  When our Lord is transfigured, and Moses and Elijah appear there with him, we learn that they “spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”  Shortly thereafter Luke tells us, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

Jesus’ ascension into heaven is his exaltation.  In Ephesians Paul refers to the “great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”

          The incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, suffered and died for us.  On Easter, God raised him up as he defeated death.  But this was not the end of Father’s action.  Jesus who had humbled himself in order to save us has now been exalted to God’s right hand.  Paul told the Philippians, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

          In our text Jesus says, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”  It is as the exalted Lord that Jesus sent forth the Spirit on Pentecost.  Peter proclaimed on that day, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.”

          Because Jesus Christ has been exalted, he has sent forth the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the continuing presence of Christ with us as he calls us to faith and sustains us in faith.  He has sanctified us by applying Jesus’ saving work to us through baptism and faith.  Paul told the Corinthians, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

          At Christmas we celebrated the incarnation of the Son of God, as the Word became flesh.  Jesus Christ took on a human nature, and so our incarnate Lord is true God and true man.  He did this to bear our sins and die in our place.  He also did this to defeat death because in his resurrection Jesus has begun our resurrection.  Paul told the Corinthians, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

          But the risen Lord did not cease to be true man in the ascension.  He is still true God and true man.  This means that Jesus has taken humanity - human bodily existence - into God’s presence.  Because Jesus has, we know that we too will dwell in God’s presence as transformed and renewed people, body and soul. His resurrection is the firstfruits of our resurrection.  His ascension is also the firstfruits of our life with God in the new creation.

          I said at the beginning of the sermon for rhetorical effect that Jesus has “left us” in the ascension.  But that’s not really an accurate way of describing things.  He is present through the Spirit, and what he has done is to withdraw his visible presence.  For now we know our Lord by faith and not by sight.

          But the ascension of our Lord reminds us that it will not always be this way.  The ascension alerts us to the hope of the Last Day.  In Acts we learn how the angels said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

The risen and ascended Lord will return in glory on the Last Day.  He will return in a way that every eye will see.  Jesus will raise our bodies and transform them to be like his own immortal body.  He will renew creation and make it very good once again.  And we will dwell in God’s presence forever.