The New Testament Lesson                                                   Luke 24:44-53

Then he said to them, “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, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Sermon Text

As Christians, I believe we all need to devote ourselves to a thorough understanding of our faith. We should, I think, focus especially on the most fundamental aspects of our faith. I have taken to, when I kneel down to pray, reciting the Apostles’ Creed. Reminding myself, every day, of those essential parts of what our faith is built upon makes me see how those truths present themselves in every part of my life. The part that I keep coming back to, found at the end of the creed’s section on Jesus, is the fact that Jesus “is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.” You will have heard me mention it in several of my sermons lately, because I think that we forget the real impact of that truth. That God, who was, is, and ever shall be, became human and that the human addition to that identity is present in Heaven should change a lot.

The physical presence of Christ in Heaven is celebrated every year in the Church through our marking of “the Feast of the Ascension,” or the associated Sunday preceding or following that day. Today, we are observing the ascension, and as such I think it is important that we do some digging into the truth of our Risen Christ, of his bodily assumption into Heaven, and his continued existence as fully God and fully human. Christ the Lord, not in Spirit or in concept, but in body and reality, is in Heaven, and from this we can draw a great deal of hope.

Christ’s humanity exists in a state that no other humanity does. Christ is, at the core of his being, part of God’s eternal unity. God is not just one person, but three persons, all somehow sharing that singular identity of “Godhood.” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all existed in unison of will, heart, and mind from eternity to eternity. This triune existence, distinct as much as it was unified, did not know true difference until creation took place. In creation, all of God took part, but “through [Christ,] all things were made.”[1] Despite Christ’s direct participation in creation, only one part was blessed with God’s image – the crowning glory of God’s work, human beings.

Strangely, God would have always remained distinct from humanity, even though they bore God’s image, if humanity remained innocent. Instead, however, humanity sinned again and again and again – scripture is clear about this more than just about anything else. We are not just sinful, we are sin-filled. In the infinite wisdom of God, all the same, a divine conspiracy was hatched. To make humanity well, to take them out of the downward spiral of self-destruction, God would join humanity, so that humanity could join God.

Through the unlikely parentage of an unmarried woman, the humble virgin named Mary, God entered humanity once and for all. Through the Holy Spirit, a miracle occurred, and Mary became more than just a woman in a backwater of the Ancient World, she became the Mother of God. Her son, Jesus, was not born into privilege despite his amazing origins. A great rending occurred within him – though he never gave up being God, Christ did give up the benefits of being God. “Emptying himself,” Christ took on the full image of humanity – not in glory or in innocence, but in the sinful and fallen state they had been since Eden.[2] He suffered all that humanity suffered, becoming completely one with humanity on the whole.

Despite this, the God-Man lived a perfect life. Without sin, Jesus walked the earth. Yet, rather than finding a world receptive to his perfection – he was rejected at every turn. Though he had made all things, his creation did not recognize its creator.[3] Despite his perfection, his love was rejected. Christ, the perfect son of God, “was crucified, died, and was buried,” under the orders of Pontius Pilate. He descended to be among the dead, as all humanity had before him, and the eternal Christ tasted – if only for a moment – the bitter sting of oblivion.

Yet, death could not hold Jesus. As he sat in the tomb, his spirit was not left idle, but he “preached the Gospel to the dead,” bringing the righteous into the proximity of God they now enjoy in anticipation of the resurrection. Death, now thoroughly broken of its hold on the souls of humanity, needed to be shown that the body was not subject to it any longer either. Christ rose from death, not only in the sense of life returning to his body, but in the perfection of his physical form. The image of sinful humanity that he had worn his whole life was now turned into the glorious potential that humanity now knew through Christ’s work. The wounds of his life remained, but they were now glorified. The Jesus who had died was the same as the Jesus who rose again, but in a body that could never die, nor face any hardship or pain ever again.

The perfect Christ gathered his disciples, teaching them all they needed to know for when his finite, spiritualized body would leave them. He promised them that the Spirit would come to instruct them, empower them, and lead them. Having accomplished all things, Christ took his disciples to Bethany and opened scripture to them. The people of God, gathered on that mountain, were now ready to go out into the world and proclaim all that Christ had done. His birth, his death, and his resurrection. Now, they witnessed his last earthly wonder, disappearing into Heaven in an instant, Christ was assumed body, blood, soul, and divinity. Christ would only be physically present with his Church when they gathered for the celebration of Holy Communion, and then only in mystery and wonder. The Church now waits, but it is empowered in its waiting.

Christ, though absent from us physically, now is doing unique work for the Church. At all times, Christ continues to pray for the world, “he always lives to make intercession for them.”[4] As Christ in life prayed, “with loud cries and tears,” for our souls, so Christ continues to advocate for us.[5] There is never a moment where humanity is not on God’s mind, because God remains in human form through the Son, and the Son sits at the right hand of the Father and sends for the Spirit to empower all God’s people. In Christ we not only see a preview of what God will achieve in the resurrection of all flesh, nor do we only receive freedom from the consequence of Sin through his death and resurrection, but we receive continual care, support, and power to free ourselves from all power of Sin.

We also affirm that Christ, who ascended, “will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”[6] Christ, in his eternal unity with the Godhead, and in his now eternal solidarity with humanity, will someday return to set this world right. In our Revelation study this year, we dug into the final book of the Bible and found that – despite the way it is usually sold to us – it is a book full of hope. Like we discussed last week, we have a promise of a story that ends perfectly, and that perfect ending is completely to do with a God who created, inhabited, and will redeem completely this world we live in.

The Light which burned since before Light was spoken into being, the eternal glory which precedes all ability of anything to perceive it, the God who was and is and is to come – this is what we meet in the person of Jesus Christ. As we today remember that Christ sits at the right hand of God, and shall someday return in the same manner, I pray that we can remember the fullness of our faith, and the doctrine we proclaim. Let us go forward to believe in full, to proclaim to all, and to enjoy all benefits of the faith we have today rehearsed. May we be blessed in the name of Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, author and perfector of our faith, and the God-man who advocates for us in the presence of God now and forevermore. – Amen.

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[1] John 1:3

[2] Philippians 2:4

[3] John 1:10-13

[4] Hebrews 7:25

[5] Hebrews 5:7

[6] Acts 1:11