Sermon May 4th 2008
Jared Rakness
Sermon May 4th 2008
First Reading Acts 1:6-14
Second Reading 1st Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
Gospel John 17:1-11
“He’s on the Loose”
Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let us pray: Almighty God, we come before you a broken and sinful people, and yet you do not cast us away from your presence, instead you seek us out and come to us forgiving us of our sins and creating us new again in your Son. This day as we celebrate the glorious ascension of your Son our Lord Christ, may we who gather here this day know for sure that Christ is not absent from us, but is with us where ever we go, tending to us and keeping us ever to himself, amen.
Today we have before us two important texts from scripture; first we have the Gospel text from John’s Gospel, which is the final part of Jesus’ farewell discourse or his last will and testament. We also have the Acts text for today, the first chapter verses 6-14. Now what can we make of these two readings from scripture and how do they relate to you today?
First we are comforted by Jesus’ prayer to the Father in Heaven. And to back up just a bit in the text we have the end of chapter 16 where Jesus declares “in the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” You may face persecution, you may have troubled times, but take courage, do not worry, but place your faith and trust in the one who has already put the cosmos to rights, the one who has already conquered the world.
For in Christ you have a savior who does not just walk beside you in this world and perhaps carry you when you feel weak and cannot go on in order that you might find solace in a God who walks with you through life, as a very popular Christian poem promotes, no you have a Lord who goes all the way, you have a Lord who has placed all things under his feet, you have a Lord who has already conquered the world, you have a Lord who doesn’t merely walk beside you in life, you have a Lord who dies for you, you have a Lord that sweeps you off your feet you might say and does everything for you.
Now not only do you get these words of encouragement and victory from Jesus but you also get a glimpse of the relationship of the divine trinity. For in these verses Jesus is praying to the Father in Heaven where he highlights the unity of the Father, the Son and the believing community.
In doing so Jesus is showing his authority, the authority that the Father in heaven has given him. Not to be left out you are also included in this authority for God the Father has given the Son Jesus Christ all authority, even authority over you. So when the Pharisees question Jesus about who is he that he has authority over the forgiveness of sins, we know that God the Father has given all authority, even the forgiveness of sins over to the Son, who in turn hands this same authority over to the church before he ascends into heaven.
So Jesus is now about to go away, he is about to be crucified and die, raised from the dead and then ascends into heaven. But so that you would know that you are not left orphaned or abandoned or without any help Jesus makes sure on your account that the Father is going to protect you, so that you may be one as Jesus and the Father are one.
Now the nature of this you cannot know, for you see as through a veil, but you can rest assured in faith that Christ is with you, that he has not abandoned you and that just as he and the father are one, so you also are brought into this relationship and are one with Christ and the Father through the Christian community.
Unfortunately for the more inquisitive of you, this is all that Jesus gives you, for the rest is to be held and believed in faith and so to faith you must yet cling in this life. But what now of Christ’s ascension into heaven? This of course is our first text for today and one that can be troubling. So we must read it and see what it is that produces faith through it.
It is of course the fulfillment of what we have just read in John’s Gospel, that Jesus was crucified for your sins and raised for your justification. Now he is fulfilling another promise that he will ascend into heaven and be seated at the right hand of the father. But where does that leave the disciples and where does that leave you?
First you must understand the disciples, for their hope for the long awaited messiah was different then the messiah they received. They were hoping that Jesus would ascend to take the throne of Jerusalem, an earthly throne, the throne of David. They hoped for a messiah who would throw off the oppressive rule of the Roman’s or anyone else who tried to rule Israel.
They had hoped for the messiah who when he came and did all of these things would usher in the messianic age where every Israelite would have a tree to sit under and a vine for wine, where the entire world would look to Israel and Jerusalem as the center of the world and would go there and deposit the wealth of the world there.
But this is not what they received from Jesus Christ, it reminds me of those tshirts that say something like I went to Disneyland and all I got was this lousy Tshirt, maybe the disciples shirts could say, I left everything, friends and family to follow Jesus Christ, and all I got was this lousy Tshirt. That may have been how they were feeling at the time, scared, lonely and confused.
So what now does it mean that Christ ascends to the Father in heaven? As Dr. Forde wrote in a nice little sermon on this text; “How like him! Just to take off into the blue with a word that amounts to something like kids use these days when you never know what to expect from them next or when: Later! So now he is gone. Disappeared. Ascended. Missing. Gone. Or is he? Has he abandoned us to our own devices? Or is it rather that now he is everywhere?
Now that story of his, that story of his life among us and his terrible death and his glorious resurrection, is inescapable, it penetrates and searches every corner of our lives. As he once put it, it is expedient that I go away…I will send you another comforter and he will convince the world of righteousness, of sin, and of judgment. Had he stayed, goodness knows what would have happened. Perhaps we would constantly have been running after him, everyone claiming him, pushing and shoving, pinning him down as if we were the Washington press corps trying to get him to say something clever or damaging or new.
Or perhaps we would just have tired of it all and crucified him again. Who knows? But now he is gone. We can’t do that anymore. But of course, he is not just gone, he is on the loose now. We can’t own him. He goes his own way. What is to be said of this? He is on the loose now and so we have no choice but to meet him where he promises to be. So we come to eat this bread and drink this cup for the forgiveness of sin. When we do that, we are reminded, we participate in his story once again, we proclaim his death until he comes. What is to come of that? We shall have to see. As he might well has said: Later!”
What does this mean? Well Jesus is on the loose, he is no longer confined to space and time, but he is able to be everywhere. In His Word, in His sacraments, just where he promised you He would be after all. Jesus ascends to heaven so that he is freed, freed to do and go wherever he wills, free to bring his kingdom throughout the world.
This is why we can confidently pray in the Lord’s Prayer “may your kingdom com”. Luther writes in his small and large catechism that we pray that his kingdom may come, knowing that it comes of itself without our prayer, and yet we pray that it may come to us, that is, that it may prevail among us and with us, so that we may be a part of those among whom his name is hallowed and his kingdom flourishes.
What is this kingdom of God? It is simply that God sent his Son, Christ our Lord, into the world to redeem and deliver us from the power of the devil, to bring us to himself and to rule us as a king of righteousness, life, and salvation against sin, death, and an evil conscience. So we ask here at the outset that all this may be realized in us and that his name may be praised through God’s holy Word and Christian living.
How do we receive this kingdom? The coming of God’s kingdom to us takes place in two ways: first, it comes here, in time, through the Word and faith, and second, in eternity, it comes through the final revelation. This is the purpose of Christ’s ascension, for it frees him up to come to his sinners through the Word and Sacraments and through faith, where he brings with him his kingdom and bestows it upon you in the here and now.
So what can we now do and say about these matters? Well, come Lord Jesus and be with us this day and every day, amen.
http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20080602113740394