The Ascension of Our Lord (Mark 16:14-20)

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

Forty days after He rose from the dead, Jesus ascends into heaven. Mark writes, “He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.” We confess this every Sunday in the creed, and we've heard Jesus throughout the Easter season teach His disciples that He was going away to the Father. But this is the day it finally happened. Christ the Lord, true God and true man, ascends far above the highest heavens to sit at the right hand of God the Father almighty. But what does it mean that Christ has ascended to the right hand of God? If we think of it spatially, as if the right hand of God were a certain place in heaven, then it doesn’t make much sense to celebrate Christ’s ascension. Jesus is here one moment. The next He’s gone, in His special heavenly place and there to remain until the Last Day when He will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God (1 Thess 4:16). And this is how many Christians understand the session at the right hand, as if its a physical, circumscribed place in heaven. Jesus remains there. We remain here on earth.

But when we consider everything the scripture says about Christ's ascension we see that that’s not the case at all. Moses sings in Exodus 15:6, after the Lord delivered Israel through the Red Sea, “Your right hand, O LORD, has become glorious in power; Your right hand, O LORD, has dashed the enemy in pieces.” David says in Psalm 118 [:15-16], “The right hand of the LORD does valiantly. The right hand of the LORD is exalted; The right hand of the LORD does valiantly.” The right hand of God isn’t a place. It’s God’s almighty power and God’s almighty power is everywhere. Dr. Luther wrote:

The Scriptures teach us, however, that the right hand of God is not a specific place in which a body must or may be, such as on a golden throne, but is the almighty power of God, which at one and the same time can be nowhere and yet must be everywhere. It cannot be at any one place, I say. For if it were a some specific place, it would have to be there in a circumscribed manner, as everything which is at one place must be at the place determinately and measurably, so that it cannot meanwhile be at any other place. But the power of God cannot be so determined and measured, for it is uncircumscribed and immeasurable, beyond all and above all that is or may be. (LW 37:57)

By ascending to God’s right hand, Christ assumes His rule over all creation as both God and Man. David prophesied in eighth psalm, “You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet” (Psalm 8:6), and in the one-hundred and tenth psalm he prophesies, “‘Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’ The LORD shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies!” (Psalm 110:1-2). This is how the apostle Paul speaks as well. He wrote in Ephesians 1[:20-23] that God the Father “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.” He writes in Ephesians 4:10 that Christ ascended “that He might fill all things.” He ascended into heaven and sits at God’s right hand so that He may fill all things, not in a pantheistic way so that we say Christ’s human nature is in every rock, tree, stone, and inanimate objects, but in a divine, heavenly mode in which all created things present to Him.

Having ascended to the right hand of God, Christ is everywhere! But this doesn’t mean that we find Him everywhere. Again, Dr. Luther writes:

Although he is everywhere, he does not permit himself to be so caught and grasped. . . Why? Because it is one thing if God is present, and another if he is present for you. He is there for you when he adds his Word and binds himself, saying ‘Here you are to find me.’ Now when you have the Word, you can grasp and have him with certainty and say, ‘Here I have thee, according to Thy Word.’ Just as I say of the right hand of God: although it is everywhere, as we may not deny, still because it is also nowhere, unless for your benefit it binds itself to you and summons you to a definite place. This is God’s right hand does, however, when it enters into the humanity of Christ and dwells there. There you surely find it, otherwise you will run back and forth throughout all creation, groping here and groping there yet never finding, even though it is actually there, for it not there for you. (LW 37:69)

Christ Jesus, in His mercy, wants to be found by those who seek Him. He wants you to be able to find Him. But not just anywhere. He’s bound Himself to specific places. He promises to be present with His church when He says, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20). He promises to be with His church in the Sacrament of His body and blood. He binds Himself to His church, to His Sacrament, so that we know precisely where we are to find Him for us, for our forgiveness when we sin, for our comfort when we mourn, for our strengthening so that we may live the new life and walk according to His Spirit, and for the increase of our hope.

Christ is present in the ministry as well. Before ascending He commands them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Even in this, Christ’s ascension did not mean His absence, for the apostles went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Christ worked signs in them to confirm the word they preached, that is, to show it was divine teaching, not the teaching of man. When the apostles cast out demons, when they spoke new tongues on Pentecost, when Paul was unharmed by the viper’s bite on Malta, when John drank the poison, whenever any of them laid hands on the sick and healed them, there were all Christ’s works done through them to confirm the truthfulness—the divinity—of the message they spoke that “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”

Far from leaving the world, His Church and her ministers to themselves by ascending into heaven, the ascension means that Christ—true God and true man—is present everywhere, filling all things, and reigning over all things for the sake of His Church. It doesn’t always look like Christ reigns over all things, especially when we gaze with eyes of flesh upon the church’s sad state in this world. But Christ rules even in the midst of His enemies, though this is acknowledged only by faith, and faith believes that He will make His enemies His footstool, even as Scripture teaches. He is seated at the right hand of God—which is everywhere—so that His gospel may be preached to every creature and so that those who believe and are baptized shall be saved. He rules in the midst of His enemies for the sake of His Church, so that we can say along with St. Paul, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28). All things work together for our good because Christ has ascended and is seated at the right hand of God, for He rules all things to protect His church, all who believe in Him, to grow His church, and bring His saints safely to everlasting bliss with Him, His Father, and the Holy Ghost. This is the joy of the ascension. He rules all things for our good. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.