Ascension

The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ – 21 May 2020 | A Sermon on Ephesians 1:15-23 | by Samuel David Zumwalt |

Ephesians 1:15-23 English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers]

 

¹⁵ For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, ¹⁶ I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might ²⁰ that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. ²² And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

 

HEAD OVER ALL THINGS

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

The Eyes Have It

 

When I was a chaplain resident in a large trauma hospital for an entire school year after my ordination to the holy ministry, I witnessed firsthand, on a regular basis, people hovering between death and life. Sometimes death was imminent. Sometimes death was likely. Sometimes death was a slight possibility but yet an unlikely outcome. The triage system first developed during the Korean War separated the wounded bodies according to immediate need and, then, likelihood of recovery. Because trauma teams are adrenalin junkies very adept at jumping into the fray quickly, there was a great confidence in what was challengingly possible and a great matter-of-factness about the inevitability of death in the cases of those who seemed too far gone.

 

Occasionally, the medical staff and I found ourselves in conflict over how we saw patients. Since it was both the county hospital and the teaching facility for a medical school, there could be a huge cultural difference between the patients and the staff. People off the street, mental patients, addicts, the homeless, and the poor, out of their hearing, might be referred to by staff as “dirt bags.” In both the Emergency Room and the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, one might hear patients referred to as “the gunshot in bed three” or “the liver in bed five” or “the brain trauma” in bed seven. As with the designation “dirt bag,” the convenient shorthand for the patient’s condition, nevertheless, was as depersonalizing as a concentration camp tattoo on the forearm or the prisoner number on the jail mug shot. Trauma victims that were closer in age or socioeconomic status were likely to acquire names and attract empathy for their families. It was all in what the eyes saw when they looked at the patient. I gently but firmly reminded the staff day after day that these were precious people with stories.

 

Now, we know people who are optimists and those pessimists. We know people who are fun to be with and people who drain energy out of us. There are people who appear cynical but, in fact, are shielding themselves from greater hurt, and there are those whose cynicism is from the very devil, who steals, kills, and destroys. The eyes have it. How do people view this life? How does their worldview shape what they see and how they make sense of and judge what they see? It depends very much on who is in the center of all things. Is it the Lord or us?

 

At the Right Hand

 

On this Ascension Day, we Lutherans celebrate the fourth of six major festivals. The first two occur during the Christmas cycle (Christmas and Epiphany). The next three occur during the Easter cycle (Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost). Holy Trinity, the last of the six, introduces the half-year of ordinary time that follows the festival half of the year. The three Western creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian) all confess that the Ascension is integral to the story of salvation. The Crucified and Risen Christ, true God and true man, has ascended to the seat of power at the Father’s right hand. The earliest Christian creed, an early hymn, still declares in Philippians 2: “Jesus is Lord!”

 

The Christian faith is not a Gnostic story that despises the material creation. God not only takes on our flesh in the Virgin Mary’s womb. Jesus, the Son of God, is risen indeed in a Jewish body marked by circumcision and by the wounds in His hands, feet, and side. He ascended in that body and will return again in that body to judge the living and the dead.

 

We Lutherans piously love to sing, “Beautiful Savior, Lord of creation, Son of God and Son of Man, glory and honor, praise, adoration, now and forevermore be Thine.” Left untethered from the wounded Jewish body that was crucified, dead, and buried, the glorified Lord Jesus can become the fixation of a theology of glory in which a fully realized eschatology insists we can also be untethered from woundable bodies that will suffer, die, and be buried. Such a Gnostic Jesus, for whom death is an embarrassingly unfortunate event that must be overcome and forgotten, becomes the popular icon of the health-wealth heresy. Margaret Thatcher once said that socialism works until you run out of rich people. St. Paul might be telling the Ephesians that Gnosticism works until you run into your own or your loved one’s bodily suffering and death.

 

To have a Crucified, Risen, and Ascended Lord Jesus in a Jewish body at the right hand of the Father is to have an empathetic, gracious Lord, who has conquered sin, death, and the devil and now intercedes for us in our struggles with sin, death, and Satan. Seeing Jesus through the eyes of faith in His promises, we don’t eschew His cross or turn it into incomprehensible bling. Like John the Beloved Disciple, we look into the empty tomb and trust that ours will be emptied, too. We are Easter people, people of hope, who refuse to despair. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

 

His Body Now

 

Several years back, a pious family from another Christian tradition came to our parish with a bit of fear and trepidation. Having heard and read about the worst of our particular Lutheran denomination’s excesses and miserable departures from the Christian faith, they heeded the encouragement of a former pastor, held their collective nose, and worshiped with us. To their surprise, they discovered an orthodox Christian congregation in preaching and practice. Several significant conversations followed over the next months, after which, the head of the family said: “I have heard more about Baptism in the weeks we have been worshiping here than ever before in my life.” I explained that Holy Baptism was not something we did for God as an outward sign of inner obedience nor even the mere mark of the New Covenant into which we are entering.

 

In Holy Baptism, we are joined to the death and resurrection of God’s Son Jesus. There He takes our sin and death to His cross and gives us His life and righteousness as a free, unmerited gift. The center of Lutheran preaching is not the sovereignty of God but rather the cross of Christ. We preach Christ Crucified and, yes, bodily raised from the dead. The Lord Jesus is not aloof in some realm at the edge of the universe awaiting our being lifted to Him spiritually. He is a down-to-earth Lord, to whom we are united in the Word and Sacraments. The Ascended Lord is not materially absent. He is differently present now in the Word, written and proclaimed, and enacted in water, bread, wine, and even the physical laying on of hands that accompanies His Holy Absolution, the forgiveness of fearfully confessed, real and otherwise damnable sins.

 

The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ is an essential part of His story and ours. Now, we are His Body in the world, because the Crucified, Risen, and Ascended Lord has claimed us as His own through no effort or merit of ours. Marked with His holy cross in Baptism and having received the Holy Spirit as a guarantee, we are His Body in the world, His house of living stones built for His own habitation. The Ascended Lord Jesus has declared to our old evil foe that his reign has ended. The Lamb, who was slain, has begun His reign. Alleluia! So, with the eyes of faith, we go into the unbelieving world with the gifts of hope and love. Like the prophets of old who often labored faithfully despite mocking, cynicism, and threats, the Body of Christ now dares to declare that our Lord Jesus has already put all His enemies under His feet.

 

At the trauma hospital, I met Sister Regina, a little Polish nun who had served first as a nurse and then as a trained chaplain for seventeen years. The head of the pastoral care department was on his second appointment to that position. The regular staff chaplains, including the Jesuit priest, had all been there for less than half of Regina’s tenure. Day in and day out, year in and year out, she went into room after room, patient after patient, a sign of her Lord’s abiding presence, a woman of great faith, hope, and love. Bolstered by the daily reception of Jesus in the Host and Cup and returning nightly to a community of prayer, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Regina pointed beyond herself to the Crucified, Risen, and Ascended Lord, the Head over all things to the Church.

 

On one difficult day in which the weight of human suffering was particularly heavy, I asked Regina how she managed to keep going. She smiled gently and said: “Sam, you open your heart to others in their pain, and that is where you find the joy of the Lord, who bore the sins of the whole world in His Body on the cross.” Regina saw with the eyes of a heart enlightened. She saw the end of all things. She saw the Word made flesh. She saw the Crucified Jesus. She saw Him risen bodily. She saw the ascended Lord. She saw Him in the Host and Cup. She saw Him in every body she cared for. She saw Him returning in glory. She was, with all the faithful baptized, His Body in the world. He was her Head, and He is the Head over all things to the Church.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

©Samuel David Zumwalt

szumwalt@bellsouth.net

Wilmington, North Carolina USA