In the name of our Risen and Ascended Lord – Jesus Christ.
There’s a book I read earlier this year called How God Became King which was a good read about the message and context of the Gospel. That title though is what is of interest this evening – how God became King. Yes, God has always been King, but we didn’t always know that and recognize it. At the Ascension, we have a glimpse into the fullness of just how exactly it is that God in Christ became king.
In
the reading from Luke, Jesus is opening the minds of the disciples to
understand what the Scriptures are all about, what their trajectory is, and how
they are fulfilled in him. Luke records Jesus saying, “Thus it is written, that
the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name… You are
witnesses of these things.” On the Feast of the Ascension, we remember and proclaim
that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, which is where the monarch
reigns. He is not only Christ Jesus, or Messiah Jesus, but King Jesus. And, in his
own words, Jesus connects his Ascension to the right hand of God with his suffering
and rising.
Scholars
call this a “paradoxic exaltation.” It is exaltation, yes. We see that in all
of the readings, that Jesus has been seated on high with all power and authority
and greatness. It is no surprise to learn that the Son of God belongs on the
throne of God. The twist comes in how he gets there. It is not through a
successful military campaign against the Romans, not by setting up shop in
Jerusalem as a fixer of everyone’s problems and a healer of every disease, it
is not by bringing peace and prosperity to every corner of the world. No, the
paradox in the exalting of Jesus to the throne of heaven is that it comes through
his violent death. When he is lifted high upon the cross we are witnessing his
enthronement. And his rising is not an undoing of that death, but rather a vindication
of the steadfast love by which he bore his passion and a transformation of
death into life.
In
other words, God became King through the Passion. This truth fundamentally reconfigures
our priorities, allegiances, and assumptions. With the cross as the pattern at the
heart of God, things like humility, generosity, and mercy are next to godliness
and the values of our society such as influence, wealth, and celebrity become
mere sound and fury signifying nothing. Jesus is making us witnesses to the
fact that the cross was not an unfortunate accident on the way to salvation.
The cross was not a problem that God had to overcome with Easter. The cross was
not a plan-B in God’s plan of redemption. The cross has always been at the
center of the love of God, and it is what makes Jesus King. And if our King is
crucified, then our values, worship, and communities should likewise be
cross-shaped.
The
result of the cross being central to the kingship of Jesus is that, as he puts
it, repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in his name to all
nations. It’s interesting that Jesus connects his name to repentance and
forgiveness. Our Anglicized version of his name is Jesus, but in his native Aramaic,
it would have “Yeshua” which is where we get the name “Joshua.” And this name,
in Hebrew, means “God saves.” Jesus’ very name means “God saves.” Every time we
call on that name in prayer, in exasperation, in agony, in gratitude we are
recalling the fact that God has saved us through the cross and Resurrection.
Repentance
is about a change. When Jesus says “repent” he doesn’t mean “feel sorry” or “make
an apology.” Rather, repentance is about seeing things differently, seeing them
through the prism of the cross and living accordingly. Another way of saying “repentance”
would be to say, “be transformed.” In and of itself, this would impossible. If someone
tells us to change and be more compassionate, or more understanding, or slower
to anger, sure, maybe that would work for a few hours, maybe a couple of days
at the best. But real change doesn’t happen from within. Transformation is a
gift from God.
This
is what the “forgiveness of sins” enables. Our repentance happens in response
to God’s mercy. Because we are forgiven, it means that we are not beholden to
our mistakes, we are not defined by our flaws, we are not indebted to our sins.
We are set free, this is what the word “forgive” means, to let go. All those things
that could have been counted against us have been let go by God. And so that
there would be no doubt in our minds about the limitlessness of God’s love for
us, in Jesus, God goes to the cross. It’s not that God wanted or needed a sacrifice
in order to forgive us, but that God wanted us to be confident that all has
been forgiven and all have been redeemed.
Certain
of this forgiveness, we are then freed to repent and follow King Jesus instead
of all of the other rulers vying for our allegiance. The difficulty is in
really believing that we are forgiven. Some struggle with this because they
refuse to accept the fact that they need to be forgiven – they convince
themselves that they aren’t “that bad” or because they haven’t explicitly or egregiously
broken any of the Ten Commandments that they don’t need to be forgiven. Others
find difficulty in believing that anyone, let alone God, could forgive them
because they aren’t even sure if they forgive others or, more often,
themselves.
There
is a condition called “Stockholm Syndrome” in which people who are captive or
held hostage develop positive feelings for their captors. That’s a way of
understanding our relationship to Sin – we are held in the power of Sin and though
we are free to walk in the way of love, so often we chose not to. This is what
St. Paul captures so well when he writes in Romans that “I do not do the good I
want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” It’s a trap we all fall into – doing
things that don’t comport with who we want to be or who we want people to think
we are, we all think things that don’t align with the person we strive to be,
we all have feelings that betray our values. This is what it means to be human –
we are tangled up in Sin. Jesus may well free us from the consequences of Sin, but
we are not freed from having to still contend with its effects on us.
The
Good News of the Ascension is that though we still struggle with Sin, though we
serve false idols, the one at the right hand of God, the one who is the judge
of all things is none other than Jesus Christ, who out of love suffering the
cross and rose in glory. Not only does his death atone for our sins and liberate
us from a debt that we could never pay, but his place at God’s right hand
assures us all shall be well. The Ascended Jesus is, as the great hymn puts it,
crowned as the Son of God, the Lord of life, the Lord of lords, and the Lord of
heaven. Though we struggle with Sin, we need not be captive to it because Jesus
who loves us to death is crowned and on the throne.
This
is a truth is not a piece of information to have, it is a message to proclaim.
Jesus says, “You are witnesses of these things.” We are to, in thought, word,
and deed, show forth this repentance and forgiveness in his name. Because, as
we heard in Ephesians, we are the Body of Christ, it means that on this side of
the Ascension we are the story of Jesus. Our lives are the biography of Jesus as
we find our life in his. Jesus has commissioned us as witnesses to remind the
world of the hope of forgiveness, of the call to be transformed, of the power
of love. We cannot claim ignorance; we have come and seen this love that makes
all things new and so it is our role to, with our lives, with our privileges,
with our scars, with our pains, with our talents, with our resources witness to
the sort of love that makes us come to church on a Thursday night, the kind of
love that makes us forgive those who trespass against us, the type of love that
gives us hope in the midst of anxiety.
Again,
the Good News about this is that we don’t have to be perfect witnesses – Jesus doesn’t
expect or ask that of us. When we falter in our witness, we are forgiven and
that forgiveness and our trust in God’s mercy becomes a further witness to the
power of God’s love. Even our failures and shortcomings witness to the grace,
mercy, and love of God.
As
he ascends, Jesus lifts up his hands and blesses the disciples, and we receive
this blessing through Scripture, Sacrament, and community. We have all we need
to be witnesses. We have these great things to remind us of this message of
repentance and forgiveness and we also have them to point others towards. Jesus
has ascended to the throne of God, and this is why we can boldly believe and
proclaim that all things shall be well.
