We have a Friend in high places

(audio only of tonight’s sermon, no video)

Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord

Acts 1:1-11  +  Mark 16:14-20

Today we celebrate the day of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the day He wrapped up His visible, earthly ministry and began His invisible, heavenly one. It’s a day for Christians to breathe a sigh of relief. Because, in spite of all the obstacles we face in this world, in spite of all the wickedness down here, Christ’s ascension reminds us that we have a Friend up there. We have a Friend in high places.

You heard in the Gospel how, on Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared alive to His disciples two days after He died on the cross. His appearance to them began with a rebuke for not believing that He had risen as He said He would. But after that, He issued and then kept repeating a great commission. Every time He appeared to them over the next forty days, He further described the mission He was sending them on. And notice, it wasn’t a mission to make the world a better place. It wasn’t a mission to get involved in the world’s politics or to infiltrate the world’s governments. It was a mission to spread a message.

In tonight’s reading from the book of Acts you heard one of those commissions: You will be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. You heard another commission in Mark’s Gospel: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

So what is “the gospel”? What is the message Jesus sent His apostles to spread? It’s summarized elsewhere as “repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name.”

Now, “repentance” itself can be summarized as the message of creation, sin, and judgment. It’s the message of who God is, how He made the world and all things, how all have sinned and have brought death and every form of trouble into the world, and how God has set a day of judgment, with an eternity of hellfire in store for all who have fallen short of His righteous requirements. That’s the first part of the message.

The second part of the message can be summarized as the message of Christ, the atonement, and the promise of the forgiveness of sins in His name. To be Christ’s witnesses means that the apostles were to spread the message that God had sent His Son into the world, as promised, and that, by His perfect life, His innocent death, and His glorious resurrection, He has made atonement for the world’s sins. And now the Lord Jesus, through His missionaries, holds out the forgiveness of sins to all who believe in Him. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

That’s the message that has reached us all here, nearly 2,000 years after Christ’s ascension. But the mission includes more than just spreading a message, doesn’t it? In another one of Christ’s commissions, the one recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, He put it this way: All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. There’s more than just spreading a message in that commission. There’s a “discipling” involved, a baptizing and an ongoing teaching, a gathering of people together from all nations and within all nations, a shepherding of a flock, a building that is to take place, not necessarily building church buildings or monuments or cathedrals, but the building up of a Church made of livings stones, of people gathered around the apostles’ teaching and the Lord’s Sacraments, of saints who are still living in the world but are no longer of the world.

That’s the mission Christ gave His Church to fulfill in the days and years and centuries ahead. It includes the message as well as the discipling. And then, after repeating and explaining that mission over the course of forty days, He gathered His disciples together on the Mount of Olives, and He was taken up into heaven, Mark says, and He sat down at the right hand of God. But it’s not as if Christ gave His Church that monumental task so that He could be separated from His Church or go away on vacation. No, Christ ascended on high for the very purpose of being present with His Church and helping us to carry out His mission, guaranteeing us success (as God measures success). It’s not a task we can accomplish on our own. But we have a Friend in high places.

You are Peter, Jesus said on another occasion, and on this rock I will build My Church. I will build, He said. Yes, the apostles had to spread the message and baptize and teach. But Jesus says He will be the One actually doing the gathering and the building and the discipling. Behold, He said, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. With us invisibly. With us by His Holy Spirit, whom He sent into the world on Pentecost and has left here with believers as our Helper until the end of the age. With us, to work together with us as we carry out His mission. As we heard at the end of Mark’s Gospel, they went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word with the accompanying signs.

So although Jesus has sat down at the right hand of the Father, our Friend in high places is still with us, working with us. More than that, He is ruling over all things for our good. As St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians and Corinthians, God raised Him from the dead and 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…For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

Do you have troubles? Do you have uncertainties? Do you have enemies here below? It’ll be all right. You have a Friend in high places, in the highest place of all, ruling over the universe for your good, not yet removing all the wickedness from the world, but managing it so that the gates of Hades can’t prevail against His Church, and so that His people are preserved in faith and kept safe for the day of judgment, when He will remove all the wickedness from the world.

And that brings us to the last comforting truth I’d like you to think about this evening. What is our Friend in high places doing right now, in addition to working with us to carry out His mission and reigning over all things for our good? He told His disciples plainly: In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

Now, we shouldn’t imagine that Jesus needs time to build and decorate mansions for us, as if the construction work took a long time. But He wants His Christians to picture it that way, to picture Him working for us, getting things ready for us, so that we understand that, even though He has ascended on high, He hasn’t forgotten about us. He won’t forget about us. On the contrary, He has His people on His mind at all times. Everything He does now He does so that you may be with Him in the end and spend eternity with Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, so that, when we see Him coming down again from heaven in the same way they saw Him go up into heaven, we may follow Him where He has gone.

Yes, it pays to have a Friend in high places. If you think about all the ills that plague this present generation—loneliness, disconnection from community, disconnection from God!, purposelessness, the exaltation of sinful man above all things, the destruction of truth and the perversion of everything good—which of those ills isn’t resolved, or at least tempered, by the truth of Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God, and by the mission He gave His Church to carry out as our Friend and Savior reigns on high at the Father’s right hand? Every Christian has peace with God through the risen and reigning Christ. Every Christian has a community throughout the world of people who pray for each other and who care for each other, even though we may not know one another, yet. Every Christian has a purpose, both collective and individual, to further the mission Christ gave His Church, to spread the message, to live as disciples of Christ and as lights in the world. Every Christian has the hope of the new heavens and the new earth, the permanent home of truth and of righteousness. And every Christian has Christ’s assurance that the one who died for you and rose again is with you always, even to the end of the age. Think about these things! Give thanks to God! And rejoice in the One who has called Himself your Friend, who lives and reigns, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, in the highest place of them all! Amen.