Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Christ is
ascended!
He is ascended, indeed! Alleluia!
This past
Thursday, the Church celebrated the ascension of Jesus. If you missed it or
forgot, don’t feel bad. It’s easy to miss. It lands on a Thursday. We didn’t
gather here for worship. Ascension doesn’t have the romance of Christmas or the
punch of Easter. Yet and still, as an historical event, it happened. The Holy
Spirit saw fit that St. Luke recorded it twice, in Luke 24 and Acts 1. The
early church agreed, making sure that it was confessed in not only the
Apostle’s Creed, but the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds as well. So, hear again
the Ascension Gospel from Luke 24:
“Then Jesus
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 and the Prophets and
the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the
Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should
suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for[a]
the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations,
beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 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.” 50 And he led them out as far as Bethany,
and lifting up his hands he blessed them. 51 While he blessed them, he parted
from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him and
returned to Jerusalem with great joy, 53 and were continually in the temple
blessing God.” (Luke 24: 44-53)
You’ve
probably seen the various artwork of Jesus’ ascension, whether it is one of the
classic works by Dali, Rembrandt, or Tissot, or a simpler picture you might
remember from your Sunday school lesson. Universally, the pictures shows Him
with His hands raised in blessing. That’s all we need on this commemoration of
the ascension is to look at the hands of Jesus, raised in blessing, and we can
read in them the meaning and blessing of Jesus.
These are the
hands, born in infant frailty, that held close to His mother, Mary, while He
nursed. These hands learned to hold a pencil and write the words of Scripture
that He knew by heart when He challenged the teachers of the Law as a 12 year
old. These hands held a hammer or saw or chisel while he worked with Joseph.
These are hands that touched the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, and
the tongue of the mute. These warm hands took hold of the pale, cold, dead
hands of a little girl and restored life to the girl and then delivered the
girl to her parents waiting outside.
Read through
the Gospels and pay attention to what Jesus hands did – stretching out,
touching, grasping – always with personal love, personal contact, and personal
attention to the person standing, sitting, lying in front of him. Those hands
weren’t afraid to get dirty, to be contaminated, or to touch the unclean. The
Savior of the World came to be with sinners, to rescue sinners, and to destroy
sin. One by one, Jesus reached into the world of death and destruction, chaos
and darkness; one by one, Jesus touched sinners; one by one, Jesus healed –
never en masse, in bulk, or by volume.
These are
hands that gathered the little children unto Himself, holding, hugging and
kissing them. These are hands that reached out, just in time, to snag a
doubting and sinking Simon Peter. Those are the hands that reached out to
prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners with compassion that was absent in
other hands. With these hands, he broke bread and raised the cup and said,
“take and eat; take and drink.” These hands were held out for Thomas to see, to
touch, and to believe.
Greatest of
all, these hands were pinned to the cross by nails. The hands that had done so
much for others did nothing to save Himself. Instead, those nails assured Jesus
did everything to save others. Those scars, presented to Thomas the week after
Easter, those hands, raised in blessing, those hands tell us what we need to
know of the blessing of Jesus on Ascension day.
What does
that mean for us this day? Those scars tell us that Jesus took your sins, your
punishment upon Himself and went to the cross for you. Those scars proclaim Jesus
was forsaken – alone and abandoned by His disciples, His friends, and His
Father in heaven – so you would not be forsaken by God but be forgiven. Those
scars declare that because Jesus died for you and rose for you, and because you
are baptized into His death and resurrection, you will be made alive as
children of God.
Because Jesus
hands were once stretched out on the cross, in His ascension, they are stretched
out in blessing upon His disciples. The one who ascends and blesses carries the
marks of the cross on his hands. No cross, no blessing. Cross, blessing. That
is why when I speak the blessing to you, it is done so with the sign of the
cross, whether it’s on your forehead or in the air. That is what Jesus means to
you at the Ascension this day: life and blessing won and given.
Now… do not
ever think that Jesus ascension means He has gone away. Do not think of the
cloud that hid Jesus’ departure as an escalator that took Jesus “into heaven,”
as if it is a location far, far away. Before Jesus ascended, He promised that
He is with us wherever we might be. Could you imagine the chaos had He not
ascended; had He remained physically located only in one place at one time? You
can hear it, can’t you: “I’ve got Jesus, yes I do. I’ve got Jesus. Why not
you?” No…because Jesus has ascended, He is able to be all places at all times.
He is with us, here, right now…and with the saints of God in Walburg…and in
Indiana…and Boston…and Taiwan…and Pakistan…and St. Petersburg…and anywhere else
on earth (or outer space, for that matter) His children gather. He promised it.
How He does it, we cannot fully fathom. And we don’t need to. He promised it,
and that is enough.
With His
hands held high, Jesus ascends into the cloud. This was a special cloud, I
think – one which had appeared before in Scripture. We saw the cloud at the
Transfiguration. We saw it in the Old Testament when the cloud was above the
two angels on the ark of the covenant and when the people of God journeyed by
day through the wilderness to the promised land. The cloud was the guarantee of
the presence of God. So, at the Ascension, the cloud marks Jesus physically
leaving behind the world of man and returning to the realm of God. Jesus is no
longer with us in our ordinary way of thinking. Jesus is now present and does
things in God’s way, also no longer constrained to earthly ways of doing
things. He is still a man, but a resurrected, glorified and ascended man who is
also fully God.
Jesus has not
gone away. He is with us now, more powerfully than ever before. He is with us
more powerfully than when the disciples saw him. He is among us. And we live,
then, in the presence of our ascended and ever-present Lord. He is with us. We
cannot be destroyed. Easter lives in us. Christ is risen! We are risen! He
paves the way to victory for us. He leads us, giving us strength and courage
for each day – whatever it might bring us – and leaving us anticipating,
yearning for, looking forward to the consummation of the promise of His bodily
return, soon, as well.
We are here
today as the disciples were – with great joy. We’re not wringing our hands in
fear – Christ is with us. We’re not tapping our fingers in worry or hurry –
Christ is here. We are here with hands that make the sign of the cross,
reminding us that we are baptized into Christ. We are here with that are open,
ready to receive the gifts of God in His Supper. Our hands are so full of the
blessings of God, if we stopped to ponder them all – if we used our hands to
write them all down – we would be stunned at the good and gracious gifts God
gives to us. Our hands pick up the food God gives to nourish us. Our hands open
the door to our homes that give us shelter. Our hands button shirts, zip up
pants, and tie shoes to clothe us. Our hands put on glasses so we can see,
insert hearing aids so we can hear, open medication bottles to keep our bodies
healthy and strong. Our hands are sore from working outside yesterday in the
yard, our hands still sting from applauding a grandson who hit his first
little-league home run. Our hands…gifts from God.
And, our
Ascended Lord uses your hands, filled with His blessings, to leave this Holy
House and share those blessings with others. You serve others as the hands of
Christ. That means that when you reach out to shake a hurting hand, you show
them Christs hands of compassion. When you change a stinky diaper, you do it
with the servant-hands of Christ. When you call your parents or your kids, you
dial with the hands of Christ who spoke to his mother with
love. When you buy a bottle of water from the little league team,
you pay for it with the hands of Christ that summoned children to come to him.
When you buy a sandwich for a man on the street-corner, your hands echo Jesus’
hands as He once fed 5000. When you fold your hands and pray with your neighbor
who struggles from depression, your hands imitate Jesus’ hands who prayed for
the women of Jerusalem. When you reach out and touch the sick or the dying, you
share the touch of Jesus who once raised the dead. When you hold the hand of a
child who has been bullied, you share the gentle touch of the Shepherd. When
you touch your spouse’s cheek, you touch with the hands of the One who is
Love. In those moments, the love of Christ is present in you and
through you. He has ascended, but He is still very much here.
And soon, He
will return. Watch. Wait. Anticipate.
Amen.
