The
Feast of The Ascension of Jesus Christ
Text:
Mark 16: 14-20
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, One God. Amen.
The Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven is possibly the most significant,
unknown event in the Church. Stop the average person on the street on December
25 and he'll tell you it's Christmas. Stop a person Easter Sunday and he'll tell
you it's Easter. Ask a person what today is and he'll tell you it's Thursday.
But the fact is, the Ascension is the one even that gives permanent, eternal
meaning to the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Without the Ascension, God
could never have accomplished the fullness of what He intended from the before
the foundation of the world.
We were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, St Paul tells us in
Ephesians. And we were chosen for the express purpose of being adopted into the
family of God the Father. We were chosen, Paul says, "in Him". We are "in Him"
and there is therefore no condemnation. In Him we are one body. In Him we
triumph. In Him the veil is done away, old things are passed away, and we are
seated in heavenly places.
God the Father, Who was always a Father because there was always a Son, chose in
His great mercy to come among us and become one of us. He took on this
corruptible and weak flesh. Understand, please, that He did not come and just
put on a body, like you and I would put on a mask or a costume. He did not come
and inhabit a body, like you and I would rent a cabin in the woods for the
weekend. He did not simply materialize and make it look like He had a body. GOD
THE SON BECAME MAN.
And He lived and died as one of us, reconciling us to God the Father. He
sanctified human flesh by becoming human. And as a man, as a human being, He
tasted death for all of us, and as a man He descended to the place of the dead
and set free the souls of the righteous. As a man, He not only tasted death, but
conquered it, rising on the third day as He said He would, and made a way for us
all to be ‘in Him’.
All of those things were absolutely necessary events in order to secure our
redemption, but every one of them was essentially a prelude to the Ascension.
Each of those things - the Incarnation, the Death and Resurrection of Christ,
dealt with the past. They dealt with freeing us from the bondage to sin in which
we lived. Each one of them had to be accomplished, but the final piece of the
puzzle, the crowning glory, if you will, is the Ascension.
And I say that for this reason: The Incarnation, Death and Resurrection dealt
with who we were and what we were in our sinfulness. In the Ascension, the Son
of God took hold of us and pulled us with Him into what we are designed to be.
Listen to the passage from Ephesians (1:15-23): Paul wants us to know what is the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance, and the exceeding greatness of His power toward us. None of that has to do with the past, but the present and with the future. As I have told you in the past, the Kingdom of God is something for us to see and something for us to enter, and it is the Ascension that has made that possible.
I have heard all my Christian life that Jesus laid one hand on God and one hand
on man and bridged the gap between us. I have seen wonderful illustrations in
stirring sermons, using the image of the outstretched arms of Christ on the
cross as the picture of His spanning the gap between God and man.
But I have never heard much about the ascension's really incredible news, and I
suspect that it was because people were afraid to believe it! Jesus bridged the
gap alright, but not just to be a connection between God and man, where we
remain here and He remains there. Jesus bridged that gap and calls us over to
the other side; the uncreated side to be with Him where He is.
In Hebrews (2:5-18) that the point was to bring many sons to glory. It says that He is not ashamed to call us brothers. It says that He has released us, and that in all things He has been made like us. Then in tomorrow’s Vesper’s readings: Hebrews 4:15-5:10, “For we have not a high priest who can not have compassion on our infirmities; but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin….”
Because of the Ascension, we are seated with Him in heavenly places, reigning
and resting in Him, and we stand reconciled to God, not only for now and for the
past, but for all eternity. Thanks be to God, we are strangers and aliens here
because our true home (not just our future home) is with God in Christ.
Because of the Ascension, God has completed the work of bringing us into His
family and securing His plan that has been in place since before the world
began.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, One God. Amen.