Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord
Acts 1:1-11 + Mark 16:14-20
When doubts assail, when evil appears to triumph, when troubles abound, when the future seems hopeless, there is one short sentence that is able to break through the darkness, if you believe it: “Christ is risen.” Christ, who loved us and died for our sins, is risen from the dead, and lives forevermore. Death is defeated. Sin is atoned for. And life is assured to all who believe. You can always, always find comfort in Christ’s resurrection.
But Christ’s resurrection is only half of the comfort for the Christian. The other half is just as important, and it’s what His ascension into heaven is all about. Yes, Christ is risen. And, a truth that is just as important, Christ is King.
Before His ascension, the King gave His apostles a command, which is stated in various ways by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
In Matthew’s Gospel: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
In Mark’s Gospel, which you heard this evening: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
In Luke’s account from his Gospel: Repentance and remission of sins must be preached in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
And in Luke’s account from Acts 1: You will be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
“Go, preach, teach, baptize, and testify!” Those are the King’s marching orders, to His apostles directly, and then, by extension, to His Church. Not that every member of the Church is told to do these things, but the Church, as it gathers around the ministry of the Word, is to call men, after the apostles, until the end of time, to do these things, each one in the place or the area where the King calls him through the Church. And because the King Himself has commanded it and authorized it, no one on earth has the right to tell them to stop going, preaching, teaching, baptizing, and testifying.
The King also attached a promise to this command. He said to His apostles: You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Ten days from then, to be exact, on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit would be poured out on them, giving them inner strength, assurance, and guidance to carry out the King’s command. He also attached another promise, as you heard in the Gospel: And these signs will follow those who believe: In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover. Miraculous outward signs, worked by the Holy Spirit, would accompany the apostles’ preaching among those who would believe. We see some of them already being displayed on the Day of Pentecost, and others throughout the first-century ministry of the apostles. Those signs weren’t meant to be repeated forever. Just until the foundation of the Church was built—on the foundation, St. Paul says, of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.
After giving and repeating His command and His promise over the course of forty days, the risen Christ then took His eleven apostles to the Mount of Olives—the same mount from which He began His Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem, the same mount where the Garden of Gethsemane is located—and was lifted up into the sky, while they were watching, and a cloud took him from their sight. Jesus wanted His apostles to see Him going to the Father, so that they would understand that this leaving was “permanent;” He wouldn’t keep appearing to them, as He had been doing for the past 40 days. The King was going back to the Father’s side in victory, having fulfilled His earthly mission of providing redemption for mankind. But His work for our salvation wasn’t done.
Mark tells us that Jesus ascended and “sat down at the right hand of God.” Paul tells us that the same Father who raised Christ from the dead also seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Christ ascended, not to abandon His church, but to reign over all things for the good of His Church. To be seated at the right hand of the Father is not to be restricted to a physical location, but to be given a position of ultimate power and honor in the heavenly realms, like a king sitting on a throne. And it is a throne, because Christ is King.
What is the King doing from that position of power and honor? Mark’s Gospel mentions one thing: The apostles went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word with the accompanying signs. The Lord Jesus is not absent from His Church. He works with those whom He has sent to preach His Word. In the case of the apostles, it was the Lord Jesus who, by His Holy Spirit, performed those miraculous signs among those who believed. And notice what the signs were for! They were to “confirm the word.” A handful of men, mostly fishermen, sent out into the world couldn’t possibly convince anyone that their teaching was the only true teaching. But the power of the word itself, combined with the Lord’s outward confirmation of His word, brought men all over the world to faith in the Lord Jesus.
Today, the King still works with the preachers, or else no one would believe. His promise was to be with us always, to the very end of the age. It is still He who works through the members of the Church to call men into the preaching office, who guides and teaches them, and who works through their ministry. Wherever the ministry of word and Sacraments is being carried out, Christ, the King, is working. That’s part of His reign.
And wherever people hear and believe the Gospel and are integrated into the Church of Christ, that is where Christ reigns. That is His kingdom. His kingdom is not, has never been, and never will be an earthly kind of kingdom. When the apostles asked, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?, they showed that they still didn’t understand Christ’s kingdom. They still held to the “Jewish opinion” that the Christ would set up an earthly kingdom, whose capital was Jerusalem, that His kingdom was a matter of establishing justice and righteousness among men. But the truth is, Christ’s kingdom is not any earthly government or earthly society. It’s the Christian Church, which is made up of all who believe in Christ Jesus. As Luther puts it in the Catechism: How does God’s kingdom come? When the heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word, and lead godly lives, here in time and there in eternity.
But that’s not to say that Christ doesn’t also rule over the secular kingdoms of the world. He does. But He does it in the hidden ways of God, just as He reigns invisibly even over the devil and his demons so that they cannot do all the harm they wish they could do. The King reigns in the world, not to establish justice on earth, but to preserve His saints even in the midst of injustice, and to build His Church, seeing to it that the Gospel is still being preached, in spite of the devil’s opposition and interference, and that the souls who will believe it are still hearing the Gospel and still being served by it, in spite of the world’s desire to snuff it out.
And if the King reigns over the world that hates Him, how much more zealously does He reign over those who love Him, in the lives of each one of His kingdom-subjects, whom He has made members of His own body, for His beloved Christians—mediating for you, interceding for you, advocating for you at the Father’s right hand, justifying you, sanctifying you, preserving you, and guiding you, from the cradle to the grave, and to the life that awaits after that.
So when doubts assail, when evil appears to triumph, when troubles abound, when the future seems hopeless, remember the two short sentences that will shatter all the darkness around you: Christ is risen. And Christ is King. Long may He live! And long live all the subjects of His kingdom! Amen.
