A Friend in high places

Today is Ascension Day, the day when the Church commemorates Christ's ascension into heaven to resume the full exercise of His power and authority, which he ceased to fully utilize at the Incarnation.

Despite the common misunderstanding, Jesus did not set up residence on Mars, or somewhere in the Pleides, or on some planet orbiting the second star on the right, and straight on 'till morning. "The right hand of God," spoken of in the Creed, is not a geographical location- unless you can figure out a way to get to the right of Someone Who is omnipresent!

Rather, Jesus ascended, in both natures (after all, as Chalcedon defined, the two cannot be separated; He is one Christ) into the same mode of existence which the Father inhabits. The human nature isn't capable of that? In itself, no. But remember...this human nature belongs to God, and cannot be separated from His divinity!

Besides the Chalcedonian principle that the human and the divine natures of Christ, belonging as they do to one Savior, cannot be separated, there is what I think of as the "three hundred pound gorilla" principle of Christology. Where do you keep your human nature when you are Almighty God? Anywhere you want! You don't tell God that He can't do what He wants with His own creation on the basis of human philosophical principles!

Including, by the way, in, with, and under the bread and wine in the Sacrament- where He promised, in so many words, that it would be. The Ascension doesn't mean that Jesus is far, far away, but that He is always very, very near, having filled all things- and in the Lord's Supper, we can actually touch Him, and He becomes a part of us.

Before He ascended, Jesus left specific instructions to his Church about how to go about spreading the Gospel. There are no numerical goals mentioned. The only "accountability" involved is our accountability to Jesus to follow those instructions.

He said that we should make disciples of all nations ("teach," in the KJV, is a mistranslation), and to do so by: 1) baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and 2) teaching them to observe all that Jesus taught.

Baptizing and teaching. The Word and the Sacraments. That's how real growth has always taken place in the Church, and always will. God's Word spreads by virtue of its own inherent power. It does not spread because of the cleverness of our programs and gimmicks, our manipulation of the unchurched, "seeker-friendly" services which actually downplay the very means which God has ordained to incorporate people into His kingdom, or any of the other trendy, vapid gimmicks so popular today.

So now Jesus, Who suffered and died that you might be forgiven your sins, believer, constantly pleads for you in the Presence of the Father. Every trouble, every need, every sin sees your Advocate, your Defense Attorney, pleading your case before the Throne- pleading not your merit, but His own. Certainly the prayers of our fellow believers to the Father on our behalf are welcome and efficacious, but we have no need of saints- living or dead- to plead to Christ on our behalf. He is already pleading on our behalf with the Father with a passion whose measure is His own voluntary suffering and death on the cross.

So rejoice! Those who are His have a Friend in high places. There is no trouble that escapes His notice, no sorrow that escapes His compassion, and no sin for which He does not plead His own innocence on behalf of those who are His.

And by the Word and the Sacraments, He is constantly being formed within us, as day by day He lives with us in a fellowship more intimate than He had with His own disciples on earth.

It's a day worth celebrating!

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