A Sermon Based Upon Luke 24: 44-53
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
February 26th, 2017, Series: Apostles Creed 9/15)
If
there is any part of the gospel story we ‘biblical’ Christians pay very little
attention to, it is the Ascension of Jesus Christ. It certainly wasn’t that way in the ancient
church. When I traveled to visit great Cathedrals in
Europe, I found them filled with images, paintings, and sculptures of the
ascending Jesus as the ascended Lord.
But
it seems we know little how to teach or deal with this today. Maybe it’s because it’s become very hard for
us, in this space age, to imagine Jesus riding on a cloud and rising up in the
sky, going up toward the stars. As the
first Russian astronaut said when he returned; “I didn’t see God up there sitting on a cloud!” Neither did John Glenn, Neil Armstrong,
or Buzz Aldrin. Humans have gone into
space and marveled at God’s creation, but none saw any evidence that Jesus actually
ascended into outer space.
So,
what does this ancient creed mean when it says, “He Ascended Into Heaven?” Is
this something we must believe today? What in the world, or what ‘out of this world’ are we going to do
with this story which tells us that 40 days after his resurrection (Acts 1:40),
Jesus ascended into heaven, the sky, or into the clouds?
THE
RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER = Power
However you imagine the ascension of
Jesus, don’t miss the phrase Jesus speaks to his disciples when he says, “Stay here in the city until you have been
clothed with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49). This part of the creed which speaks of
Jesus’ ascension is about the release of divine ‘power’. Now that God’s
saving power has been clarified by the life, teaching, crucifixion, and
resurrection of Jesus, it will be released into the world by the ‘sending’ of the Holy Spirit into life
and ministry of the church.
It is unmistakable that this image ‘the right hand of the Father’ is an
ancient image of imperial, ‘power’. In the ancient world, there were no oval
offices, but there were ‘throne rooms’
where Kings and Queens displayed their royal power and instructed their
servants to accomplish their will. The
ascending Christ points to the spiritual reality of the resurrected Christ
ascending into the ‘heavenly’ throne to accomplish God’s purposes.
Using this well-known image, Scripture
points directly to this spiritual power
that will accomplish God’s will on earth, as it is in heaven. We are
not left to wonder what these purposes are: “I am sending upon you what my Father promised;…” (v. 49). The power
being sent is ‘that repentance and
forgiveness of sins … be proclaimed in his name to all nations….’ (v.47). An ascending Christ points to the God’s will being
‘fulfilled’ (v.44) or ‘finished’ (Jn. 19:30, that is
completed) in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus so that now, the
disciples of Jesus and the church of Jesus Christ will be able to be ‘witnesses’ to the ‘power’
of God in the world.
When the Scripture speaks of Jesus’
work, God’s power, and the gospel witness, it is speaking to a new kind of
spiritual power which Jesus’ life, death and resurrection has released into the
world. The gospel presents this power as saving, healing, and redemptive
as revealed and released through the message of Jesus Christ.
Of course, this ‘power’ of God is not
yet the dominate power in the
world, but it is the dominate power over
the world. This is exactly what the
ascension of Jesus means. While God’s
power does not, and will not, dominate the news, politics, past-time, and even
the religions of humanity, God’s power is still true, healing, redemptive and
saving. Since Jesus has already ascended
to the Father’s right hand, his saving power is now released to become
available to any who will believe ‘in
his name’.
The recent presidential campaign in the
United States was said to be one of the most unusual and unforgettable in
American History. What is common in all
elections, which we all know all too well, is the political promises which
politicians make to try to get our vote.
Whether it be Republican or Democrat, or Independent, the promise is
always something like, “if you put me into ‘power’ I will make a difference in
the direction and future of this nation.”
We all know these promises are easily made, but not always easily
fulfilled. But this does not stop or
keep the politicians from making them. I
have never seen a political campaign short on promises, but I have seen every
president struggle with how their legacy reflects the reality of the promises
they made.
What we need to understand from Luke’s
picture of an ascending Jesus, making his promise of power to his disciples, is
that this is a different kind of promise from a different kind of leader. Jesus does not promise his disciples ‘everything’,
but Jesus promises his followers the spiritual resources that can make the
future possible. IT is ‘repentance’ of sins and ‘forgiveness of sins’ that the
ascending Christ promises as the very different, but real promises of power that
accomplishes God’s saving will and work to bring humanity hope.
Speaking of political promises and
power, one of the most interesting
stories about a ‘different’ kind of political power was reported by the
Washington Post, late last summer, about a politician, Curry Todd who was
running for the Republican State House Seat in Tennessee’s 95th
district. He had held that seat for 18
years, but was during the republican primary race, was caught snatching his
opponents political yard signs and arrested.
Interestingly, when his opponent , Mark Lovell, heard that his
competitor was sitting behind bars with a $100 bond, he said,
“Man, I’ll pay it. Shoot, I felt
sorry for him.”
While I wouldn’t say that the Mark
Lovell’s motivation for paying his opponent’s bail was purely a ‘good deed’, as
he said it was, but it certainly does point us toward kind of spiritual power
Jesus meant when he spoke of the power of ‘repentance’
and ‘forgiveness of sins’.
INTO
HEAVEN = Presence
What is even more astounding about ‘how’
God sends his ‘power’ into the world, is that as Jesus leaves the world, is how God’s Spirit is being ‘sent’ and
released into the world in a greater, better and superior way. This is counter-intuitive, isn’t it? When a person leaves, you would naturally think
they are less with you---and physically they are. But what we all know, especially those of us
who have lost loved ones, or had to leave loved ones behind, is that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’
because there often an even greater sense of someone’s ‘presence’ in their
‘absence’.
If you turn to the book of Acts, which
gives us the most detailed description of the ascending Jesus, you will find ‘two men in white robes’ telling disciples,
who are ‘awestruck’ by Christ’s leaving, that ‘This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in
the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11 NRS). While this is a certainly part of a ‘promise’ about when, in the age to come,
Christ will ‘restore the kingdom to
Israel’, we must also acknowledge that we have already received God’s
spiritual ‘power’ to become ‘witnesses’ to this future restoration,
which is not only future, but as already begun. “It is
not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own
authority (Acts 1:7),” Jesus said.
We do not need to know the ‘when’ because ‘…now is the acceptable time,…now is the day of salvation!’ (2 Cor.
6.2).
God’s power to save is available now, just as God’s work and will can be
accomplished now, because ‘this Jesus,
who has been taken up…will come in the same way…’ (Acts. 1:11). We do not belittle the ‘Second Coming’ of
Jesus, when we also acknowledge, that through the power and presence of the
Holy Spirit among and in God’s people right now, Jesus is already present with and among us,
right here, and right now. In the
ascension, Jesus did not ‘blast off’ into outer space, but Jesus ascended into
God’s space, that is ‘into heaven,’ affirming
that from now own, the Spirit of Jesus would no longer be limited to one person
or one place on earth, but in the coming of the Holy Spirit, Jesus will be anyplace,
in every place, wherever God’s Son is acknowledged not only as “Savior”, but also as “Lord”.
The late Baptist scholar, James
McClendon, tells of an early Baptist, way back in the 16th century,
who exemplified the truth of Jesus’ ascension promise, “I will be with you always’ (Mat. 28.19). The
story is found in Martyrs Mirror, which tells how baptist Dirk Willems, in
1569, fled his persecutors across the winter’s ice. When his lone pursuer broke through the ice,
Dirk turned back to save the man from certain death. Thus, Dirk was then caught, tried, and then
burned to death for his ‘Anabaptism.’
But as he suffered and died, he cried out ‘over seventy times’ to ‘my
Lord, my God!’ McClendon remarked: “If we
judge that the Lord was present with him that day, we can associate his story with unnumbered
others, reaching all the way back to Stephen, the very first Christian martyr
(Acts 7:54-60), making a link between Christ’s presence and their costly
passion (James McClendon, Systematic
Theology: Doctrine, Abingdon Press, 1994, p. 241).
What the ascending Christ means for us,
is exactly what it meant for Dirk, and for Stephen, ‘filled with the Holy
Spirit..., gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the
right hand of God’ (Acts. 7:55). Do you
recall what Stephen said next? “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man
standing at the right hand of God!”
(Acts 7:56). This made the
religious leader ‘cover their ears’
(v. 58), but even while they were stoning Stephen, they heard him praying ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ (v.
59).
Every time we take communion, every time we pray ‘in Jesus’ name’, and
every time we worship, work, witness, or open God’s word of truth, we find ourselves ‘standing in the presence’ of the ‘Son’ who is not just ‘seated’
at the ‘right hand of God’, but in
Stephen’s case, and in our own case, especially when we suffer with him, for him, and because of him, Jesus will be ‘standing’ at ‘God’s right
hand’ (7:56) to be with us. The
ascending Christ is the Jesus who is ‘with
us always, even until the end’ (Matt. 28:19).
HE
ASCENDED = Potential
In other places, when the New Testament indirectly
mentions the ‘ascending’ Christ, it refers to how Christ’s ‘power’ and ‘presence’ is now made available to our lives.
One of my favorite references comes in
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which I’ve already mentioned, where Paul wrote:
“Therefore it is said, "When he
ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his
people" (Eph. 4:8). Paul’s
point gets fleshed out in the next verses where Paul refers to these ‘gifts’ as human gifts to the church
were are ‘some would be apostles, some
prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and teachers to equip the saints for
the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all come to
the unity of the faith and the knowledge the Son of God, to maturity, to the
measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4: 11-13). Here’s the ascension of Christ is tried
directly to the most practical, daily, ministry and mission of church.
There are, of course, other indirect
references to the meaning of the ascending Christ, but perhaps by now you can
get this picture, that it very well may be that the Ascension of Jesus is the
most practical, personal, and useful of all the gospel pictures of who Jesus
was and what Jesus does ‘for’ and ‘through’ us.
When I think of Christ’s ascension, I can’t help but think of one of the first
sermon’s I ever preached on the ascension, when I was in Europe. While I was researching a sermon on the
Ascension of Jesus, I came across a
small book of sermons by one of great German Theologians, Karl Barth. He preached these sermons, and put them in a
book entitled, “Deliverance to the Captives” as sermons that were preached to
inmates living behind bars in Basel,
Switzerland. His sermon on Jesus’
ascension was fittingly titled, “Look Up
to Him!” Because that sermon was already
written in German, I studied it word for word, and found it hard to improve
on. Listen to Dr. Barth’s lines to
prisoners in their dark prison. He
wrote, “Look up to him, and your face
will shine! What an announcement! What a promise and assurance! People, very ordinary humans, with
illuminated faces! Not angels in heaven,
but men and women on earth! Not some
lucky inhabitants of an island far away, but people here in Basel, her in this
house! Not some very special people
among us, but each and every one of us!
Might this be the true meaning of this promise? Yes, this is the true meaning. But is this the only true meaning? Yes, this is the only meaning. Look up to him, and your face will shine..
When…any one of us, obeys and looks up to him, to Jesus Christ, a momentous
change takes place…Why then are our faces not bright? … Why don’t we reflect the radiance of Jesus
Christ?” ( p. 46-48).
When Jesus was ascended into heaven, something
happened, that remains mysterious, but it should also be the most practical truth
of all. As Jesus told Nathaniel, whom he
first saw under the fig tree, “You will see greater things than
these….Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (Jn. 1.51). What ever happened when Jesus ascended into
heaven, it means that ‘heaven’ was ‘opened’ in a way that there would be ‘angels’ continually, unceasingly, ‘ascending and descending so that God’s power and presence might release
our own potential to obey and serve God.
This brings us finally, to the meaning
of Christ’s Ascension for our lives. This communicated best by Jesus Later in
John’s gospel, where Jesus speaks about being ‘the bread of life’ (6:48) calling people to ‘eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood’. This was a saying so hard, that even the
disciples could not easily understand it.
So Jesus explained: “Then what if
you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the
spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit
and life. (Jn. 6:62-63)
Jesus came to give us the power of his
living presence, so that we can fulfill God’s purpose and realize God’s Kingdom
potential in this world. But this does not happen unless we invite Jesus to
ascend to the throne of our own heart and life.
As Luke Johnson writes: “When the
church gathers in the name of Jesus it gathers for nothing if Jesus is not
truly our Lord in the daily living of our
lives” The questions we have about the ‘how’ of his Ascension is “not nearly so important as the question the
Lord Jesus asks of us.” Jesus has
been acknowledged by the Father in heaven as Lord over all, but have we allowed
him to ascend to the throne of our own heart and life? This is a throne Jesus will not ascend until
we bow our hearts fully and completely to him.
Will you bow with me? Amen.
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