Ascension Day

The Day of Christ's Ascension can be perplexing. Although He promised to be with us always, He is no longer here in the same way that our neighbors are present on earth. So we stand with the first disciples gazing up into heaven, wondering where Jesus has gone, wondering when He might come back, and wondering where we might find Him in the interim.

Growing up in the charismatic movement, the highest virtue among us was a passionate pursuit of the presence of the Lord. But we flatly rejected and ultimately despised the Word of God concerning the Sacraments. Seeing, we did not see, and hearing we did not hear. God was coming to us in water and word, bread and wine; and like the pitiful, blinded dwarfs in C.S. Lewis' Last Battle, we missed it. Refusing to believe God's Word, we were longing for some other manifestation of His presence -- a manifestation attested as true by nothing but our own subjective, internal sense of it. This was not just a shame or a pity, it was a sin -- despising the gift of God and working to find something more worthy than these lowly elements could possibly convey.

God did not abandon the Church on Ascension Day. We do not need to work our way into His presence. We do not need to wonder whether this "manifestation" or that is valid and true. God told us exactly where to find Him. Wherever two or three are gathered in His name, wherever repentance and the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed, wherever the washing of regeneration is poured out, wherever Christ's body and blood are received for the forgiveness of sins -- the Holy Trinity is truly present -- without the slightest hint of uncertainty, no matter how well or how poorly we sense it.

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God has given us Baptism, the Sacrament of the Altar, and absolution to bring Christ very close to us, so that we can have Him not only in our heart but also on our tongue, so that we can feel Him, grasp Him, and touch Him. God did all this for the sake of those shameful spirits who seek God according to their own pleasure, with their reason and their own ideas and dreams.

To make it possible for us to recognize Him, God presents Himself to us perceptively and clearly in signs. But we do not accept these; nor are we concerned about the divine Word, although Christ the Lord Himself says: "The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does His works" (John 14:10); again: "He who hear you hears Me" (Luke 10:16); and again: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation; he who believes the Word of God and is baptized will be saved" (Mark 16:15-16). But we utterly disregard such words of the Gospel as well as absolution...

At all times God has so governed His people that He could also be recognized visibly by them, lest they say: "If it were possible to find God, we would roam to the ends of the earth in search of Him." If you had ears to hear, it would be needless to wander far in search of God. For He wants to come to you, plant Himself before your eyes, press Himself into your hands, and say: "Just listen to Me and take hold of Me, give Me eye and ear; there you have Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. Open your mouth, let Me place My hand on your head. I give you this water which I sprinkle over your head."

-- Martin Luther

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"And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

-- Jesus, Son of God, Son of Mary