Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Theme: He has ascended, but is still with us      Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?  This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (vss. 11)

           The Christmas Story is usually that point in God’s history of Redemption when the people of God would have to get used to locating the presence of God in their midst by looking into the eyes of Jesus of Nazareth - the Babe in Bethlehem and then the Man from Galilee who then was crucified, rose from the dead, but now Who has ascended into Heaven. This was quite a change from the burning bush with Moses and the veiled presence of God in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and Temple of the Lord during Old Testament times.  But now, with the Ascension of our Lord, what are we to understand about the how of Immanuel? Just how is it that we can say that God is with His people today? The event of the Ascension of our Lord has been viewed with a note of sadness by many Christians and churches today that long for a return to the New Testament Church, especially during the days when Jesus walked the roads and paths of Galilee and Judea teaching the crowds in public and His disciples in private. They have longed to be able to actually see Jesus.  But alas, they think, He ascended into Heaven a long time ago.  When he disappeared in the clouds over the gaze of the disciples, that was it.  Jesus left, and he has not come back, not yet anyway. 

           Much of the Protestant world around us today believes that when Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven to be with the Father in glory, the man Jesus is now gone. We can only speak of His Divine Spirt as being with us. When Jesus instructed his disciples that soon the world would not see Him any more, they have thought that to mean that even we Christians will not be seeing Him in the world until His return at the end of time.  Instead, they believe the sending of the Holy Spirit is to take the place of the presence of Jesus with His Church here on earth in the meantime. Until Jesus returns on the last day in all His glory, we are going to have to settle for the Holy Spirit to be our Immanuel, our God with us.  With this view, The Holy Spirit now serves as a kind of proxy for Jesus with His Church until the close of the age.  So for many Christians, the answer to the question:  where can you find Jesus these days since He ascended into Heaven is . . . Well, You can’t! Not now any way.  You will have to wait until you go to Heaven and see Him bodily there, or when He returns again in glory should that occur in your lifetime.

           For this reason when you enter most protestant churches, you will find no altar, no crucifix, nothing that would provide any thought that Jesus is there. We Lutherans are almost alone among the Western Christian churches separated from Rome in believing that we can have a Divine Service where the Lord of the Church actually shows up. When Jesus said, Lo, I am with you always, and I will never leave you, He was not simply trying to leave us with a nice sentimental thought. Nor was He saying that He would just be with us in Spirit. With the means that He has instituted, Jesus really is here and we can perceive Him. The Church in the world has not been left here disconnected with Her Lord. Jesus made an all important distinction in the upper room with his disciples in John 14 between the world which will no longer see Him after His ascension, and His disciples who will. He told them, yet a little while and the world will not see me, but you will see me.  

           For those who have been called to a faith life with our Lord in the Church, He beckons us to gather around him in what in German we called Gottesdienst - God’s service - or as we say it more popularly today, Divine Service.  While so many churches teach that we are to go to Church on Sundays to do God a favor by offering Him our worship, praise, and thanksgiving especially for all the things Jesus did for us before He left . . . we gather around the Sacred Things of Jesus with Him present as He has promised - Lo. I am in your midst.  The risen and ascended Lord of the Church has been glorified and exalted by the Father in Heaven, but at the same time, has not left His Church here on earth.  Divine Service is not that we serve the Divine God, but rather that the Divine incarnate Son of God is here and has gathered us around him, not to be served, but to serve us.  I have sometimes wished that a standard Lutheran Nave ought to have a sign over the entry that we would read as we enter and it would say: Sit down, shut up, and get ready to be served by your Lord.  The Divine Lord of the Church is with us!  This is holy ground! And here we behave with awe and reverence realizing just what Jesus promised to his disciples in the upper room.  He will be with us and we can see him.

           He appears in our midst a little different than He did with his disciples.  Here He has chosen to appear to us under the forms of ordinary human language and the simple elements of water, and bread and wine.  With these as masks, Jesus reveals Himself and His presence among us.  And we might think - what? He reveals himself through masks?  And as we know, masks are used to only to hide, but also to reveal. So our Lord both hides and reveals Himself as He comes to us in the Divine Service.  These vestments serve as masks . . . a Jesus suit as it were.  The person of the pastor is hidden and the Lord of the Church revealed by these trappings of the office of the Ministry.  And Jesus showed up this evening and we heard Him in our midst speak . . . I forgive you all your sins.

           And we know that He was not finished with his Service to us.  Right now He is getting ready to reveal his bodily presence in our midst, just as he did with the disciples in that upper room.  He will be both our Host and our menu as he prepares to give us his precious body and blood - given and shed for us and also for the forgiveness of our sins.  We have bidden each other with the words, The Lord be with you . . . and He has responded by doing just that.  And before his precious body and blood we bow to acknowledge His presence.  And then we see him with our eyes, ears, taste, and smell under the masks of bread and wine.  The risen and ascended Lord is not simply here in Spirit, He is here and with us with his whole person.  He is here with us as our Host, bodily.  He comes to offer for our sustenance his precious body and blood, just as He did with the disciples in the upper room when He instituted His holy meal.

           So today, although the glorified Christ is everywhere, the world cannot see him.  He is just a figure out of history, a figure out of the past.  But for those whom He has called to Himself, along with the disciples, by the power of the Spirit . . . for us - He has never left.  He has just changed how he would make Himself manifest to us. He is still here with us revealing Himself in His saving words and deeds - not simply the words and deeds of back then, but in the words and deeds that He brings to us. . . . His words of forgiveness and peace with God, His deeds of the washing of regeneration in the waters of baptism and His feast of his precious body and blood. By these saving works, Jesus has not left you as an orphan, but rather he has adopted you into the family of God.  And He has not left you either.  He is here! He is here to serve you, to feed you, to clothe you in his righteousness, and to take you safely to your heavenly home. 

           In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.