Please come out and join us for the LPPC Ascension Day service at St. John's Lutheran Church, Purdy, Missouri, on Thursday, May 21, 2008, at 7:00 p.m. The preacher for the occasion will be Rev. Ben Schumacher from Grace Lutheran Church, Aurora, Missouri. The service will be followed by a cookie and coffee fellowship. Included in this email is an Ascension Day sermon for your meditation. Hope to see many of you this Thursday evening.
“THE SAME NEW JESUS”
ASCENSION OBSERVED
ACTS 1:1-11
REV. RICHARD S. CODY
ST. JOHN’S LUTHERAN CHURCH, MONETT, MO
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In most Christian churches ASCENSION Day is "A Silent Day." The church doors are closed and locked. The nave is empty. The pulpit and the choir loft are unoccupied. The candles on the altar are topped with charred wicks, indicating that worship has happened here in the past, but is in no way happening now.
It is curious that we so easily confess the ASCENSION in our creeds, but we have great difficulty in celebrating it in our churches. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that ASCENSION is tucked away on a weekday and we are Sunday-only worshipers.
It may be that our neglect of the ASCENSION story is due to the fact that it is dependent on a world view which we have long ago discarded. The idea that Jesus ascended, like a rocket launched into outer space, and landed on a celestial satellite - a space station in the sky called heaven - and that Christ sits there in a chair at the right hand of God, is just too fantastic for us to believe. A crucifixion is believable. A resurrection is unusual, but not unbelievable (particularly when we want to believe it, for the sake of our own destiny after death). However, a tale about a man, floating upward into the clouds sounds more like the levitation of a magic show than it does a revelation from God.
In the creed, when we refer to the ASCENSION of our Lord, we confess that "He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God ..." We are not witnessing to the physical fact that God has a right hand, nor are we saying that there is a chair that is suspended in outer space where our Lord sits beside the throne of God. This is picture language, used by believers to confess the conviction that the same Jesus who puts aside His might and majesty to be born a baby in a Bethlehem barn, now, once more, assumes His position of power as the Son of God and the Lord of all creation.
What has the Church throughout the ages tried to communicate by celebrating the ASCENSION of our Lord? God does not desire to prove that He can defy the law of gravity, nor is He identifying the location of heaven in the sky - or in outer space. God is not trying to hide something with the clouds that surrounded our Lord at His ASCENSION; rather, God desires to clarify and to verify what happened to Jesus after His resurrection. Our Lord was neither time-bound nor space-bound by His resurrection body. Rather, He was released to reign as the King of all creation. His presence and His power are unlimited. This profound revelation cannot be communicated without the ASCENSION imagery of a movement upward. Christ was moving upward to a higher level of life - a life that was higher than the tangible, material, localized, and limited life that we know.
The intent of the ASCENSION was to reveal to the apostles and to us that Jesus was moving up to a new mode of existence and activity. He was not only raised from death; He was raised up from this space-bound, time-bound life to reign eternally in glory.
By failing to understand the intent of the ASCENSION, we risk forgetting the festival because it has become a dead doctrine for us. If so, it is essential for the full force of our redemption experience to revive it. The ASCENSION means many things, but basically the meaning of the ASCENSION-event can be summarized in three words: confirmation, extension, and coronation.
FIRST, THE MEANING OF THE ASCENSION IS THE CONFIRMATION OF OUR LORD. Without Christmas, there would be no Cross. Without Easter, the Cross would be a meaningless martyrdom. Without the ASCENSION, Easter would be a victory without verification. The ASCENSION is our Lord's confirmation by God the Father. As He was baptized by the Cross and Resurrection, He is now confirmed by the ASCENSION. God the Father confirms and verifies His acceptance of all Christ has done for us. Our Lord's ministry of obedience and the sacrificial offering of His death for our sins have been accepted by God the Father. We are accepted by His acceptance.
We need to know not only what happened to Jesus through the event of the ASCENSION but also what happens to us because of it. Our status of being restored to the family of God is confirmed by the ASCENSION. Our status as born-again children of God is confirmed by the ASCENSION. As one of the early church fathers put it, "Christ became what we are in order that we might become what He is."
But more! The ASCENSION assures us that Christ is our eternal advocate - our "defense attorney." When we stand in the court of God, Christ intercedes for us. Our Lord pleads our innocence based on His sacrifice on Calvary for our sins. He covers us with the innocence of His blood and by His righteousness.
THE SECOND WORD OF THE ASCENSION EVENT IS EXTENSION. Without the Good News of the ASCENSION, our relationship to the Lord would be limited to hearing the story of the earthly Jesus. It would be second-hand information at best. However, the ASCENSION proclaims the extension of Christ beyond the limitations of time and space. Now we can have direct access with the ascended Lord.
The phrase, "at the right hand of God," does not locate a place. It refers to an act of participation. Christ participates not only with the reign of God over all things; He also, and at the same time, participates in the lives of all believers. As He sits at the right hand of God, our Lord's hands can still reach into our lives and touch us. Christ is present to wipe away our tears and to penetrate the loneliness of our lives with His Joy-filled presence. He reaches into our lives through the marks of the church—through His Word and His Sacraments. There we find the ASCENDED AND GLORIFIED Lord Jesus Christ veiled under Word and Sacrament. He veils Himself in these places so that we the people of God can approach the King of His Glory.
CONFIRMATION OF OUR ACCEPTANCE BY GOD THE FATHER, EXTENSION OF OUR LORD'S PRESENCE INTO OUR LIVES; FINALLY, THE ASCENSION MEANS CORONATION. The ASCENSION crowns our Lord with glory, majesty, and power. It is one thing to assert that Jesus has been raised from death; it is quite another thing to assert that He now shares the throne and reign of God over heaven and earth.
Most of our thinking about Christ is in the single dimension of His common humanity - a babe born in a barn, a friend of fishermen, a rural rabbi who walked the dusty back-roads of Palestine, wearing a homespun robe, quietly teaching the truths about God, challenging the pride of the Pharisees, discouraging the elaborate ritual of the priests and the liturgical extravagancies of the temple.
We picture our Lord as the "Gentle Jesus," the humble "Servant-Savior" with a bowl and a towel, who sits washing the feet of his disciples and silently submitting to the immanent death of a criminal on a cross. This is a true picture of our Lord, but, it is only a one-dimensional view. It is only a partial picture of our Lord, particularly when we fail to project our vision above time and space in order to catch a vision of the regal Christ who reigns as king of all creation.
The evidence of the ASCENSION is limited in the New Testament. Only the Book of Acts gives a detailed account. But, what the ASCENSION of our Lord symbolizes and stands for is - the confirmation of our acceptance by God, the extension of our Lord's presence into our daily lives, the coronation of Christ as King of all creation. All of this permeates to the heart of every word penned by the writers of the New Testament. These inspired believers, who wrote the words of Holy Scripture, were men who were enlightened and lifted up by the risen and the ascended Lord. The perspective of the ASCENSION is the viewpoint from which they witnessed. They wrote, not with fear-filled hearts and tear-filled eyes. Rather, they sang each word that they wrote with the hope and the joy which was flooding every fiber of their being. They had caught the vision of the ultimate victory of Christ. They were messengers of a battle fought and won - and of a kingdom come. They saw beyond the man, Jesus, to Christ the King. They saw beyond the stable to the sacred sanctuary of God. They saw beyond the cross to the crown. They saw beyond the tomb to the ultimate triumph.
ASCENSION Lutheran Church on the East Coast has above the altar a stained glass window which depicts the ascending Christ. The congregation decided to completely remodel the chancel of the church. Because of the sentimental attachment of the people to the altar window, they decided to retain the ASCENSION window in the new design.
When the remodeling was completed and the congregation returned to the church for worship, the little seven-year-old son of the pastor leaned over to his mother and said, "A brand new church, but the same old Jesus."
Now, it is true that Jesus is old. He is, in fact, He’s a couple thousand years old. He is historically removed from us by nearly two centuries. We remind ourselves of this fact every time that we date a check, begin a letter, or ask someone what day it is. Yet, the good news of the ASCENSION is that Jesus Christ is both old and new. On the one hand, He is the same "old Jesus" but, on the other hand, He is the same "new Jesus" - new every day, because His acts of power are not limited to the record of His earthly life. The Holy Spirit brings Christ to us daily in His "real presence."
The message of the ASCENSION - the confirmation of our acceptance by God, the extension of our Lord's presence in our lives, and the coronation of His kingly power over all creation - can be condensed to one simple truth; "Christ is Lord and He is with us." The same Christ who lived and died, the same Christ who was resurrected and ascended in kingly power is our daily companion and friend, our daily defender and protector. Rejoice! Christ lives forever in us, with us, and for us. To Him be the glory forever! Amen!
Sanctify us, O Lord, by Thy Truth; Thy Word is Truth! Amen!
