At Home with God the Father in the Body of Christ Jesus

Beloved of God, the Lord Jesus has not gone away.  He has not left you alone.  He Himself is with you, and He has poured out the promised Spirit of His Father upon you.  The same Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is even now — and shall be forevermore — your merciful and great High Priest.  He lives before God in righteousness and purity forever on your behalf, in order to establish your place with God; and He reigns over you in love with His Gospel.

As He has stretched out His arms for you upon the Cross, in offering Himself up to the Father as the Sacrifice of Atonement for all your sins, so does He lift up His hands in blessing upon you, in order to justify you with His own Righteousness, to raise you up from death to Life with Himself, and to anoint you with His Spirit by His Word.

Thus, He gives Himself to God as the true Man; and He gives Himself to you as the one true God.  And in Him, both God and Man and heaven and earth are bound together in perfect harmony.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other in Him, so that you are now reconciled to God the Father in His beloved and well-pleasing Son.  Indeed, your flesh and blood, your body and soul, your whole life, and all of creation, are sanctified for Life with God in the Body of Christ Jesus: In His own Person, first of all, but also in His Body, the Church, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.

It is in Him that you know and love God rightly, and that you live the true Life.  Not by escaping from your body of flesh and blood, nor from your own place, wherever that might be, but precisely in that place where God has put you, in your own skin, in your life and occupations on earth.

Remain there, where God has stationed you; and be gathered here within His Church on earth to wait upon the Promise of your Father in Christ Jesus.  Already you are being clothed with His Power from on high, with His Spirit and His Righteousness.  Already you are God’s own child and a citizen of His heavenly Kingdom, although for now it is by faith in His Word and not by sight.  For as the Christ entered into His Glory through His suffering and death upon the Cross, so do you enter into the Kingdom of God through repentance and faith in Him who was crucified for you.

Therefore, do not be afraid, and do not despair of His presence and His peace; for His blessing is upon you in the lifting up of His wounded hands, and the Gospel of His Cross and Resurrection is preached to you in His Name, even as He lives and reigns forever at the Father’s Right Hand and intercedes for you as your Royal High Priest.  God the Father has established Him there by an unbreakable oath, by raising Him from the dead, crowning Him with Glory and honor, giving Him all authority in heaven and on earth, and putting sin, death, the devil, and hell beneath His feet.

Now, I know — and He knows it even better than you and I do — that you don’t yet see or feel or experience the Glory of His Resurrection and Ascension.  You don’t yet see all things beneath His beautiful feet.  You don’t yet experience the fact that His enemies and yours have been defeated.  You don’t yet feel His Victory and your Redemption, except by way of His Cross and suffering, which still seems like exactly the opposite, a contradiction of what it really is.

Given the hardships and heartaches of this body and life on earth, you might easily give yourself over to hopelessness and despair, supposing that you have been abandoned and left utterly alone in your misery.  How often do you cry out, frantic for someone to help you, though it seems for all the world that you are not heard or answered or helped?  And do you sometimes conclude that your family, friends, and loved ones — and God Himself — have forgotten you and given up on you?

Whatever the particulars of your own situation may be, you have heard from the Lord Jesus that in the world you have tribulation.  That’s not the exception but the rule in this poor life of labor.  What you see and feel and experience is not the Resurrection but the Cross.  And it would seem as though the Ascension of our Lord were hardly a cause for celebration, but nothing so much as yet another heartbreaking goodbye, an apparent reminder that you have been left all alone.

And yet, the Lord is with you.  He has not gone away and left you.  That’s not the case at all.  He’s not some “pie in the sky,” but He has entered into the presence of His God and Father in your own skin, as it were, in the same flesh and blood and bones and sinews that He shares with you and with all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.  The Cloud that received Him is the Grace and Glory of God, with which He also comes to you and abides with you in the Liturgy of the Gospel.

It is not by accident or coincidence that men in white stand before you and proclaim the Word of the Lord Jesus to you; for thus it was necessary, not only that He should suffer, die, and rise again on the third day, but also that repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached in His Name to the ends of the earth.  By this Ministry He fills all things and the Kingdom of God comes to man.

It’s like the difference between a single radio, which can only fill a limited space with its sound, depending on its wattage and speakers and volume, and by contrast, a radio broadcast tower, which can blanket a huge area with its signal and be heard wherever its signal is received.  So does the Lord Jesus ascend to the Right Hand of His God and Father, not to “go away and leave you alone,” not to give Himself a break and leave you to yourself and your own devices, but in order to fill the whole wide world with His Word and Spirit, His Flesh and Blood, His Life, and His Salvation. 

So does the Word of the Lord go forth, beginning from Jerusalem, to all of Judea, to Samaria, to Rome, to the New World, the Third World, to Africa and Asia, and to the whole planet.  And as the Word goes out, so does it gather disciples of Jesus together into one Body, one Church, into the Holy City of God, the New Jerusalem, where the Lamb upon His Throne is not only the Priest and King, but He is the Temple of God among men, the Lamp and the Light which illuminate the New Creation, and both the Bridegroom and the Wedding Feast of finest Wine and richest Meat.

That is your Home, your place of Peace and Sabbath Rest.  That is where you live, because that is where Christ is both with you and for you forever.  He really does unite and hold all things together in Himself, in His own Body and by the power of His indestructible Life, as He serves you in His Church on earth, as He worships the Father in heaven, as He pours out the Spirit upon you by the Gospel, and as He ever lives to pray and intercede for you at all times.

It is not only that He is everywhere at once, filling all things with Himself.  Nor is it only that He is with you here and with the Father in heaven; although that much is true, to begin with.  But He also brings God to you, the Father and the Holy Spirit, in and with Himself, in all that He continues to teach and to do, and in His own Body of flesh and blood.  And in Him, at the same time, you are with God; for He brings you to the Father and seats you with Himself in the heavenly places.

Beloved, you are baptized into Christ, and that means, not only that His Cross and Resurrection are yours, but His Ascension, too, His Spirit and His Father, and His place within the Holy of Holies.  Likewise, when you eat His Body and drink His Blood here within His Church on earth, you live and abide with Him in the Bosom of the Father in heaven.  This, indeed, is already to be living the true divine Life for which you have been created by the Holy Triune God.

It’s not as though your life on earth under the Cross were always pleasant or easy.  We all know better than that.  With the rest of creation we are longing for the consummation of all things, for the resurrection of the body, the glorious revealing of the sons of God, and the Life everlasting in Paradise.  We long for that, and we pray for that — and rightly so, as Christ our Lord has taught us to pray to the Father in heaven for the coming of His Kingdom.  Amen!  Come, Lord Jesus!

But let us do so, let us pray for the coming of Christ Jesus and the Kingdom of His God and Father, precisely in the bold confidence that He has borne the Cross for us and conquered in the fight, and that His resurrected and glorified Body is already the Firstfruits of the Resurrection of all Flesh.

In His Body it is already a done deal.  And it is for you, as the Sacrament delivers and declares.

That is what His Ascension means and signifies and does for you.  He fills all things in heaven and on earth, in order to be actively present and at work in and with His Church, and so also to bring His Church and all her members, including you, to His God and Father within His own Body.

The fact that He ascends as the Crucified One, and that He serves you by the ways and means of His Cross, means that all the hurt and heartache and hard things shall not be able to destroy you, nor to separate you from Him, His Life, and His Love; but, by His grace, they actually help to heal you and save you and bring you to heaven.  For He works repentance in you, and He disciplines your mortal flesh, in order to bring you through suffering and death into faith and life with God.

There simply is no pain, no persecution, no place nor pit nor hell hole, where He is not with you in peace.  So, too, you are with Him, who lives and reigns forever at the Right Hand of the Father.

He doesn’t make you come to Him, nor even to meet Him halfway.  And He doesn’t simply come to keep you company in misery.  But He gathers you fully to Himself, and He embraces you with Himself, and He abides with you as true God and true Man, as your Savior and your Salvation.  Therefore, as you know from the testimony of St. Paul, your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Mortal life in this fallen world is one of constant separations, which cut you off and distance you from family, friends, and loved ones, and even from your nearest and dearest kin.  Whether by death or disease, by accidents or atrocities, by adventures or adversities, by ailments or age, your relationships and your connections are constantly being changed, and eventually they are ended.

But the Ascension of your crucified and risen Lord Jesus proclaims a permanent place for you and perfect Peace with God.  That does not change, and it cannot be taken away from you.  Nor is it far away from you now, but up close and personal, a very present help at all times, in every trouble, and a source of genuine great joy in the face of everything that confronts you.

It is here for you in the Temple of God, given and poured out for you to eat and to drink.  It is here for you in the hands of Christ Jesus, with which He blesses you and feeds you and absolves you; with which He signs and seals you as a Christian, a child of God; and by which He raises you up.

As all of this is here for you in Him, in His Body and His Blood, so shall He be with you always, wherever you may be.  And so shall you be with Him, and with the Father and the Holy Spirit, at home and at peace with the Blessed Holy Trinity + forever and ever, world without end. Amen. 

Living the Heavenly Life with God in Christ Jesus

Whether your life is hellish or heavenly depends, not upon your location or your circumstances, but entirely upon the faith in your heart and the god on which you depend.  If your heart clings to Jesus Christ and abides in Him, then your life is heavenly and divine, already now in your body here on earth.  But if your heart fears, loves, and trusts in gods other than Christ, then your life is a hellish and damnable “living death,” which can only go from bad to worse.

It’s not that your body of flesh and blood is problematic or a prison; neither is it the material world of God’s good creation that imprisons you.  Rather, it is your sin and death, idolatry, and unbelief that drive you into fear and dread and sheer despair.  Thus do you perceive even your God-given vocations and your holy stations in life to be burdensome, tedious, and irksome, painful and unfair.  And as such, it seems to you that God the Lord is not the Sun that warms and lights you, but a cruel and demanding taskmaster, your judge, jury, and executioner.  So, too, you do not love and serve your neighbor, but you hate him, despise and resent him, hurt and take advantage of him.

How, then, shall you ever be able to escape from such a hellish prison?  How shall you learn to worship the Lord your God in reverent fear, love, and trust, instead of trying (vainly) to run away from Him in dreadful terror?  How shall you break out of that maddening downward spiral, in which you’re always fleeing but never able to evade the threat of death and eternal punishment?

How shall you cling to Christ Jesus in faith, hope, and love, and so rest yourself in Him?  How shall you rise with Him, and live in Him, and abide with Him in the bosom of His God and Father?

As impossible as all of this appears to be, rejoice, give thanks, and sing!  For all of this has been accomplished for you, and it is freely given to you here and now, by your Savior, Jesus Christ.

He is not far away or far above you, but He has brought you to God in Himself, even as He draws near to you with God.  He has done so by His Incarnation, by His Holy Cross and Passion, by His bodily Resurrection from the dead, and by His Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father in His own human flesh.  And He continues to do so by way of His Church and Ministry of the Gospel.

He has entered into the Holy of Holies made without hands, eternal in the heavens, as your great and merciful High Priest, as your Anchor behind the Veil.  There He lives and abides in the presence of God in flesh and blood like your own, even as He feeds your body and soul with His Body and Blood here at His Altar in His Church.  So it is that, where and what and who He is, you are also, by His divine grace, through faith in His Gospel.  God and man, heaven and earth are no longer far apart and separated from one another, divided by sin and death, but they are perfectly reconciled and united in the Body of Christ Jesus.  You find your heavenly life in Him, therefore.

True, there is a right and wrong way to lay hold of Him on earth, as demonstrated in the contrast between Mary Magdalene and Thomas in the stories of the Resurrection.  Ironically, it was faithful Mary Magdalene who attempted to lay hold of Him in an earthly way at first, from which she was dissuaded when He pointed out that He was ascending to His God and Father; whereas doubting Thomas was given to lay hold of Christ Jesus in the sacred wounds of His Cross and Passion, that is to say, within His means of grace — the Word and Flesh and Blood of His Gospel — which Thomas and the other Apostles were then sent to preach and administer in His Name and stead.

Here, then, first of all, even in the midst of your doubts and fears, in spite of your sins and failings, the Lord Jesus lays hold of you in His mercy, with the grace and peace of His forgiveness, by the preaching of His Gospel, and by the administration of the Fruits of His Sacrifice upon the Cross.

That is how and why it is that, already here and now in your mortal body of flesh and blood, you live a heavenly life in the presence of God.  In and through Christ Jesus, your High Priest, you worship God in His Temple, in the midst of His Jerusalem, His Church on earth as it is in heaven.

Christ Jesus Himself is the Incense and the Prayer of His Body and Bride, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  So is He also your Incense, your Prayer, and your Worship, whereby your body, soul, and spirit are received by your true God and Father in perfect peace and love and joy.

Likewise are you given to receive the same Lord Jesus Christ into your body of flesh and blood, and to live and abide in Him by faith in His Word as you go about your callings here on earth.

The truth remains that He is not far from you.  Lo, He is with you always, even to the close of the age, and even to the ends of the earth.  As you go about your life, therefore, be not far from Him.

Do not attempt to live your life on earth apart from the Gifts Christ freely gives to you here in the midst of His Jerusalem — the Gifts of His Gospel in Word and Sacrament — whereby He bestows the Gift of the Holy Spirit whom He promised from the Father, which He has first of all received for you in His own crucified and risen Body (in your stead and on your behalf).

As He does indeed pour out His Spirit generously upon you here and now, know that He Himself abides with you and lives in you, in order that you should live and abide with Him, both now and forever, in the glorious presence of the Holy Triune God.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Boots on the Ground, Your Head in the Cloud

It will probably not surprise many of you that I spent my teen years listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40.  Among the things that I enjoyed and still remember about that show was the weekly tag line: “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars!”  That sounded so exhilarating and, back then, even doable.  But life as we know it is far more challenging.  To keep your feet firmly planted is easier said than done, and stretching for the stars is pretty futile.

So it has seemed to me, at times, that the Ascension of Our Lord might feel like a bit of a mockery, or even a discouragement, in the midst of sin and death here on earth.  It is one of the five great Feasts of the Church Year, ostensibly a time of joy and celebration.  And you have heard again the Word and promise of your Lord, that He is with you always, even to the close of the age.  Yet, the Ascension seems to demonstrate what you often feel, that He has gone away and left you behind.

That is how it feels.  You can’t see Him.  He and His presence are hidden and elusive.  You confess that He is risen from the dead, but you often don’t experience the Resurrection in this mortal coil, in this poor life of labor.  Although you know and confess that your sins are forgiven by the Gospel of Christ Jesus, you find that you are still plagued by sin and death in yourself and in the world.

Day after day, you do what you should not, and you fail to do what you should.  You speak such poisonous words against your neighbor and behind his back.  You are quicker to hurt than to help.  You struggle with all manner of sins within your heart and mind, and in your words and actions, even where and when you know better.  And your sins, within and without, separate you from the Lord your God, like a great chasm affixed between yourself and heaven, which you cannot cross.

Your sins weigh you down.  The guilt and the shame, the consequences of your wrongdoing, the separation from God who is alone your Life.  Your sins weigh you down, they drag you down into the depths of darkness and despair, until at last they bury you.  For the soul that sins shall die.

You cannot shake it off.  Trying harder does not release you from your sin.  Recommitting yourself to doing better is good and right, even necessary to this body and life, but it will not save you.  It does not make you righteous, even if you do succeed in improving your behavior (for a while).  The very struggle it requires goes to show how deeply ingrained sin is within your heart and soul.

Your flesh is weak.  Your mind cannot stay focused on the things of God.  Your sinful heart is not charitable.  You are not faithful and believing, but faithless and unbelieving.  You keep on sinning.

You cannot return to God, not by your own reason or strength.  Nor by all of your best efforts.  Nor could you abide in the presence of the Lord your God, even if you were somehow able to reach Him on your own.  You can’t do it.  Not apart from Christ.  And not apart from the Holy Spirit.

If you were somehow to burst into the presence of God, to enter the Holy of Holies — apart from Christ and His forgiveness, apart from the sanctification of His Spirit — you would be consumed by a fire more fierce and terrible than anything you can imagine here on earth.

And yet, it is that same Lord God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who raises you up from the dust of the earth, from death and the grave, and stands you firmly in His presence.  He places the stars of heaven in your hand, even as He takes you into His own hand in mercy, love, and peace.  He breathes the Breath of Life into your body and soul through His forgiveness of all your sins.

God the Father opens His mouth and speaks forth His Son, the Lord Jesus, in the Flesh.  And by that Word of Christ Jesus the Father breathes the Holy Spirit upon you in peace.  He thereby closes the gap between you and Him.  He draws you to Himself, clothed in the beauty of His holiness.  You are righteous in His sight, for Jesus’ sake, and He does not cast you away from His presence.

He brings you into His Holy City.  He brings you into His own House, into His Home and Family.  He adopts you to be His own dear child, a beloved son or daughter.  He gives to you His Name.

So it is that the God and Father of your dear Lord Jesus Christ is now your own God and Father in Him.  And He is not too busy for His children.  He does not make promises and fail to keep them.  He does not lose His temper and lash out in reckless anger.  He rather loves you at all times.  He guards and protects you from all danger and delivers you from all evil.  His discipline is not harsh but wise and gentle.  He speaks to you and teaches you with patience and in peace.  He hears and answers your prayers in mercy.  As often as you fail and fall short, He forgives.  And as often as you get yourself lost, He goes out and finds you and brings you back home to Himself in Christ.

Your God and Father in heaven does all good things for you in Christ, His Son.  As He is risen from the dead and has ascended into heaven, so His Body, the Church, is raised from the dead and seated at the Right Hand of God in the heavenly places.  Where your Head is, there you are, also.

The Lord Jesus Christ is not far away.  He has not gone away and left you behind.  He is still closer than a brother, He is more faithful than a mother.  He has bound Himself to you, and you to Him, so that everything He has accomplished is yours.  It is given to you in His Body of flesh and blood.  For He became like you, conceived and born of St. Mary, in order that you should be like Him.

It was fitting that God should accomplish salvation in this way, by causing the Savior of all men to become true Man, to bear their sins in His Body on the Cross, and to suffer in their stead; and then raising Him from the dead, giving to Him the Name that is above every name, and exalting Him to the highest heavens.  All of this in His own Body of flesh and blood, so that His Body, the Church, should likewise be exalted in Him, and given that very Name which is God’s own Name.

He has done the same for you, as well, in the waters of your Holy Baptism.  All that He has done for you in His own flesh and blood like yours, He has given to you there by His Word and Spirit.

As Christ has thus drawn near to you, given Himself for you, and given Himself to you, so has He drawn you to Himself, and bound you to Himself in heart, mind, body, and soul.  Thus, by faith, even now, you live and abide with Him.  That is where your life is, hidden with Christ in God.  And on the Day of Judgment, your body also shall be raised and glorified with the Glory of God.

That is the truth.  But I know that it is hard to believe it, because it is impossible to see it for now.  It is hidden from your eyes, and you do not feel it in your experience of life on earth.  It is elusive.

Even so, do not gaze wide-eyed into the heavens.  Do not look for the Lord Jesus in the clouds of the sky, nor in the bright shining stars of outer space.  Rather, find Him, receive Him, lay hold of Him, and worship Him, by faith, in the ways and means by which He has promised to be with you.

“Remain in the City,” He says.  “There you shall be clothed with Power from on high, for there I shall pour out the Promise of My Father upon you.”

That is to say, it is right here that you find Him and receive Him, in the midst of His Jerusalem.  His Church on earth is the holy City in which you are cleansed and clothed and strengthened and sustained by the Word and Spirit of Christ, by the washing of the water with His Word, and by the gift of His Body and His Blood.  Here you receive the Holy Spirit in the Word of Holy Absolution.  Here you are enlivened by the grace of God, unto the resurrection and the life everlasting in Christ.

Not up in the sky, but here within His Church on earth is where the Cloud of God’s Glory abides.  Thus does the Lord Jesus come to you here, in the same way that He was taken up into heaven.

As He once led Israel out of Egypt and through the desert by a Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of Fire by night, and as that same divine Cloud rested on Mount Sinai, as it filled the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple in Jerusalem, so does it fill the Temple of His Church wherever in the world the Word of Christ is preached and His Sacraments are administered in His Name.

As Israel was baptized into Moses in the Cloud and in the Sea, so are you baptized into Christ by the water and His Word.  And as the people ate the Manna in the wilderness and drank the water from the Rock, so are you fed with the Flesh and Blood of Christ in His Sacrament of the Altar.

As the Cloud and the Fire were the visible manifestation of God’s glorious presence with Israel, so are His Word and Sacraments the means of His grace and His glory here with you.  And these means of grace are not elusive.  The water, bread, and wine are not hidden from your sight.  True, the world cannot discern what they are or what they mean, but the Lord has told you by His Word:  “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved.”  “This Is My Body.”  “This Is My Blood.”

By and with these tangible means, by the Word of Holy Absolution, and by the whole Ministry of the Gospel, the Cloud of God’s Glory envelopes you, as it filled the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and as it surrounded Christ Jesus, His Prophets and Apostles, on the Mountain of Transfiguration.

So it is that God the Lord is with you.  Lo, He with you always, even to the close of the age.  And thus are you glorified with the very Glory of Christ Jesus, crucified and risen — a Glory that is hidden from the world, as Christ is now hidden from your eyes — and yet, it is the Glory of God.

And as He is here with you in the divine Glory of His Gospel, so are you seated with Him at the Right Hand of God the Father in heaven.  That is not “up there, somewhere, over the rainbow.”  It is, indeed, wherever Christ is.  And if He were not there, then heaven itself were void and bare.

It is the presence of God.  It is the bosom of the Father.  It is the Holy of Holies where God dwells, and where His people dwell with Him in Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son.  For Christ is your Anchor behind the veil.  He is your Head, and you are His Body.  Wherever He is, there you shall be also.  He has prepared a place for you by His Cross and Passion and in His Resurrection and Ascension.  If that were not the case, He would have told you.  But now He has prepared a place for you.

In the Old Testament, the sacrifices were offered so that the incense would be acceptable to God.  Sacrifice was offered for the sins of the people, that the incense of their prayers might ascend into heaven as a pleasing aroma, and that they should likewise be acceptable and pleasing to the Lord.

Now it is the case that Christ Jesus has arisen as your Incense.  He is the Sacrifice of Atonement for your sins, and for the sins of the whole world; and He is the sweet-smelling Incense of your prayers and intercessions.   He has risen and ascended like Incense before His God and Father in heaven, that you and your prayers should likewise be received, accepted, and pleasing before Him.

When God raised Jesus from the dead, He absolved the world and reconciled the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them.  There is no sin that can separate you from God, if you are in Christ, His Son.  There is no condemnation for you in Christ Jesus.  For He has borne your sins and suffered your death — and yet, He has also arisen and ascended to the Right Hand of God.  His crucified and risen Body are the Father’s resounding “Yes” and “Amen” to all of your needs.

That is how sure and certain your forgiveness is.  And that is how sure and certain your life and salvation are.  And that is how sure and certain it is that, right here in this holy City, in this Temple of God — in this Body of Christ, His holy Church — at this Altar from which the very Son of God feeds you with His Flesh and Blood — you dwell with Him in the House of the Lord forever.

His Cup overflows, and His Table is filled with a great Feast, a joyous Feast, for you and for the many.  His Table and His good Gifts are not far away and out of reach, like the stars in the sky, but He has drawn near to you and prepared His Table before you by His Word.  He has planted His feet firmly on this holy ground, the same Lord who dwells with the Father, far above all the stars in the heavens, who ever lives to make intercession for you.  Hear what He says.  Receive what He gives.  Be with Him where He is, right here.  For this truly is the House of God; this is the Gate of heaven.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Partakers of His Divine Nature

Among the early church fathers — especially the eastern fathers of the fourth century — it was understood, as basic to the Christian faith and life, that “God became Man, so that man might become divine.”  It sounds provocative at first, perhaps even shocking to your modern ears and sensibilities.  Or maybe you imagine the sort of new age mysticism that has twisted and perverted spirituality and detached it from Christ in exchange for personal self-realization.  But none of that.  The fathers were confessing what St. Peter has written concerning Christ in his Second Epistle:

“His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence, by which He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, that through these you might be partakers of the divine nature.”

So let us also consider this ancient confession of the faith, that God became Man, so that man might become divine.  The almighty and eternal Son of God became true Man, so that frail human beings — mortal men and women such as you — might become partakers of His divine nature.

Throughout Christmas and Epiphany, the Church focuses especially on the first point, that “God became Man.”  For the Son of God, our dear Lord Jesus Christ, has become one with us and with our children, taking human flesh and blood to be His own from the womb of the Virgin Mary; and in that flesh and blood He has lived your life and suffered all that you must suffer in your place.

But this festival day, one of the most important occasions of the Church Year, focuses attention on the second point, “that man might become divine.”  For on this day, in the Ascension of our Lord, the Church confesses and proclaims from the Holy Scriptures that our human nature has been raised from death to life and ushered into paradise, elevated to the heights of divine life, and seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly places.  The One who became like you has raised you up to be like Him.  For He is your own Brother in the flesh, who ascends to the Father in His Glory.  And as He was crucified and is raised for your salvation, His Ascension is your life with God.

Right now, I am well aware, that can really sound like nothing more than “pie in the sky.”  It is easy enough to feel trapped and confined by your mortal life here on earth.  And when you try to escape it, with drugs or alcohol or sex, you’ll only end up crashing all the harder on the other side.  When people speak of “heaven on earth,” surely you know that is not actually so.  More often than not, your life on earth can seem like a “living hell.”  So desperate have people become, that too many look for a tragic solution — which is no solution at all — in taking steps to end their lives.

Thank God, that isn’t the whole story, nor the real story.  In the waters of Holy Baptism, God has become your Father, and He has cleansed and restored your human nature in Christ Jesus.  In the flesh and blood of the incarnate Son, you partake of the divine nature; you live with Him in God.

It is from within your Baptism into Christ that you participate in the divine nature and eternal life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In those life-giving waters, sanctified by the Word and Spirit of Christ, you have been crucified, put to death, and buried with Him.  So are you also raised with Him in His Resurrection from the dead.  And today, in particular, we also confess with great joy and thanksgiving, that by your Baptism into Christ you ascend with Him into the heavenly places.

No matter how bogged down you may be in the muck and the mire of this mortal life, in Christ you find that you are destined for higher things.  It’s not just pie in the sky.  It is the true reality, just as real, and just as much yours, as the waters of your Baptism.  In Christ you find that your entire life as a Christian is a heavenly life, which Christ lives in you, and you in Him, even here on earth.

As this heavenly life is yours in Christ, not only someday, but here and now by faith in His Gospel, so do you actually live the life of Christ in your dealings with those whom God has positioned around you and placed in relationship to you.  As the incarnate God, your Savior, Jesus Christ, lives forever in His own Body of flesh and blood, so do you live the divine life that you share with Him in and with your body, and not only in your heart or in your head.

In Christ, by His grace, through faith in Him, by the Spirit of His Father, you are like Him, and you live like Him.  You sacrifice your time, your treasures, and your talents for the sake of others.  Not that you squander these good gifts of God, but that you exercise a faithful stewardship of His gifts in the service of His Church and for the benefit of your neighbors, instead of serving yourself.

You likewise demonstrate mercy and compassion for your neighbors.  Your forgive those who sin against you, and you pray for those who set themselves against you.  You love your own family and friends, to be sure, but so also those who deal unkindly with you, speak ill of you, or think nothing of you at all.  To live the divine life is to live as Christ Jesus has lived for you in the flesh, taking up the Cross and bearing it in love, in the confidence of the Father’s Word and promises.

The simple fact of the matter is, that the life of Christ Jesus — His active faith and love, His Cross and Passion, His Resurrection and Ascension — His life in the flesh is the Life of God in Man.

At all times and in all place, then, follow the example of your Lord Jesus Christ.  But of course, He is far more than just a good example.  He gives you Himself.  He gives you His life.  He pours out His Spirit upon you with His forgiveness of your sins.  And He makes you a partaker of the divine nature, as He has named you with the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in your Baptism.  So are you a member of His family, a divine child of His own God and Father forever.

It’s certainly not as though you now live the divine life by your own power or initiative.  It’s not a matter of trying hard, of girding up your loins, or of pulling yourself up by your own boot straps.  Left to yourself, you remain down here on earth, with your chin and your heels dragging in the dirt.  But the divine life that you do now live is ever and only in Christ, as He lives in you, and with you, and through you, by His grace.  Indeed, you live as a Christian only as Christ Jesus lives in you.

That is why, when Christ appears to His Apostles, He includes along with His suffering, death, and Resurrection, the necessity that repentance and forgiveness be preached in His Name.  For you need the preaching of His Gospel as much as you needed His Cross and Resurrection.  The one would do you no good without the other.  You live by His Word and the preaching of it, and not at all apart from it.  It is by His Word that He takes your flesh and blood, your body and life, to be His own, to live with Him in His Kingdom, with His Father and His Holy Spirit, now and forever.

And as the Word of Christ brings you into His Cross and Resurrection and Ascension by the washing of water with His Word in Holy Baptism, so does the preaching of His Word also bring you to His Holy Supper, whereby He feeds your life in the flesh with His own divine flesh.

It is in the holy Body and precious Blood of Christ Jesus that you live and abide with God in both body and soul, both here and hereafter.  It may be that we have sometimes focused too narrowly on the Sacrament as a means of forgiveness.  And to be sure, let us rejoice and give thanks that the Body and Blood of Christ are given and poured out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of sins, without which you would have no life with God but only death and damnation.

But let us also revel in the divine life and salvation that are yours in the Holy Communion.  For in this Holy Sacrament, you eat and drink the Body and Blood of the true and only God.  And as you thus partake of God in the flesh, so do you also partake of the divine nature in Him, not only in your head or in your heart, but with your mouth, and with your body, unto the life everlasting.

God knows that you need forgiveness on a daily basis — as He has taught you to pray — for you sin every day and surely deserve nothing but punishment.  But in saving you from your sins, which would otherwise bring you death, He saves you for life with Himself in both body and soul.  It is to that end that He became true Man, and bore your sins in His own Body to the Cross, and died in your place; that in His Resurrection and Ascension you might become divine and live in Him.

Friend of God, “you are what you eat.”  And as you eat the divine Body and Blood of Christ, the Son of God, your own flesh and blood are raised to new heights, to partake of the divine nature in Him.  Thus are you prepared for your own Ascension into heaven.  And even now, the holy Body and precious Blood of Christ, in your hands and on your lips, sanctify your hands and lips, your body and life, for service to others; that you should live the divine life in faith and love on earth.

“God became Man, so that man might become divine.”  Not only has the Son of God become in every way like you, but He has also raised your human flesh and blood to be divine through Him.  By your Holy Baptism, He has shared His Cross and Resurrection with you.  In His Holy Supper, He feeds you with Himself, so that His Body and His Blood become a part of you, enlivening your flesh with His.  And on the Last Day, He will raise you up to be like Him forever.  Indeed, He will transform your lowly body of humiliation to be like unto His own glorious body forevermore

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Living with Christ in God

By His Incarnation, our Lord has graciously come down from heaven to make His dwelling here on earth with men.  He has come to visit us in peace and to bestow His Spirit and His Life upon us.  He has come to be with us here, in order to take us with Himself to His Father in heaven.  That is the special grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we celebrate with great joy on this festival day.

It is a kind of homecoming.  A homecoming for Jesus, but so also a homecoming for you.  As He returns to the Father in heaven, whence He came, He takes you with Him.  And you ascend into heaven with your Lord Jesus, not simply as a visitor or a guest, but as a beloved child of God at home with your Father.  That is why Jesus has come.  He has become like you in all things, so that you may be like Him; so that everything which belongs to Him should be yours by His grace.

He has taken not only your flesh and blood, but also your sin and death upon Himself.  He has borne your sin, and He has suffered your death, so that, by His sacrifice, and by His Resurrection from the dead, you should be set free from the bondage of sin and the fear of death, and raised up with Him to life everlasting.  For indeed, His Life is now your life.  You are a son of God in Christ.

He lives and abides with God the Father, also now in and with His human nature, in His own Body of flesh and blood.  For that which He took from the Blessed Virgin Mary in His Incarnation, He retains to all eternity.  When He ascends to heaven and returns to the Father, it is not simply as the Son of God, but as true Man, your Brother in the flesh.  For God’s purpose was that Christ should be the Firstborn of many brothers.  And so He is.  The Son of God has become like you forever.

It is therefore One like you who ascends to the Father in heaven.  It is flesh and blood like yours that now abides in the Holy of Holies made without hands, in the true Inner Sanctum of God; that resides forever in the bosom of the Father.  It is your Savior, your Redeemer, your great and merciful High Priest, who ascends to the Father — and you with Him.

His whole body and life, His flesh and His blood, are a priestly intercession for you, and a constant prayer for you.  In fact, He Himself is your Prayer, your Incense, and your Intercession, as I also said this past Sunday.  He is the Church’s morning and evening Sacrifice of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, and He is heard and received, acceptable and pleasing to the Father on your behalf.

In His own Body, with His own holy and precious Blood, as the One who has made Atonement for the sins of the world, who has redeemed the world for God by His sacrificial death upon the Cross, and who has reconciled the world to God in His perfect faith and love — He ever lives to make intercession for you before the Father in heaven.  Day and night, while you go about your day, and as you sleep in your bed, the Son of God, your great and merciful High Priest, is praying and interceding for you. And for His sake, in His Name, the Father gives you all good things.

Make no mistake, the fact that Christ now lives in the presence of His Father forever, that He is your Anchor behind the Veil, as the Letter to the Hebrews so beautifully puts it, does not mean that He has gone away and left you here by yourself.  The Lord Jesus has not abandoned His Church.  He has finished His work of Atonement, that is true.  But having finished that good work, once and for all, His priestly work continues in His constant intercession, and so also in His Ministry of the Gospel, in His preaching of forgiveness even to the ends of the earth and to the close of the age.

As surely as Atonement, Redemption, and Reconciliation have been accomplished once for all by His Cross and in His Resurrection, so surely does Absolution continue every day in His Church.  For He daily and richly forgives you all your sins and cleanses you from all unrighteousness.  And He whose human lungs were suffocated on the Cross as He died that slow and painful death, now breathes the Spirit of God into His people, into His Church on earth, by the preaching of His Word.

For you are still hindered by your sin, you are still hampered by your mortality.  You are still in the midst of tribulation and trial within and without.  So the Lord in His love for you continues faithfully to serve you with the Fruits of His Cross, with those Gifts of His Redemption, with all that He has accomplished for you by His Sacrifice.

He has not abandoned you.  Far from it!  Rather, in His Ascension, He has filled all things with His glorious Body and Life.  For He is the Fulness of all things, and He binds together both God and Man, both heaven and earth, in Himself.  He is the Head of His Body, the Church, and He ever lives to serve His Body in love, in grace, mercy, and peace.

The Gospel that He preaches, which forgives you all your sins — the Gospel which He preaches and administers, as in your Baptism, so at His Altar — gives you life and salvation.  It gives you life with God.  It gives you eternal salvation with God, because the Gospel gives you Jesus.  It is constantly binding you to Jesus, sewing you together with Him, lashing you to Him, the way a sailor might lash Himself to the mast on a boat in the midst of a great storm.

So it is that, as the storms of the world rage around you, you are not thrown overboard, and you are not lost, but you remain with Christ, who binds you to Himself, to His Cross and Resurrection.  He did it in your Baptism, in which you were crucified, dead, and buried with Him, and then raised with Him, united with Him, tied together with Him, bearing His Name, anointed with His Spirit, a son of His Father, a daughter or son of God in Christ.

And He does it so profoundly, so intimately, so graciously and tenderly, in His Holy Supper.  For He takes His Body and His Blood — the very Body and Blood that were sacrificed for you upon the Cross, the Body and Blood that rested in the tomb for you, the Body and Blood that have risen and ascended — and with that priestly Meat and Drink He feeds and nourishes you in both body and soul.  How much more closely could He possibly bind Himself to you?  And how more tightly could He bind you to Him?

And as the Gospel thus binds you to Christ, He also binds you to His God and Father in heaven.  So that, where He is, you are also.  As He lives in the glorious presence of God, seated at the Right Hand of His Father, and as He lives and abides in that Holy of Holies made without hands, your Anchor behind the Veil, you also live there with Him.  Doesn’t St. Paul say that very thing, that you have died with Christ in your Holy Baptism, and that your life is hidden with Christ in God?

Consider that, and take it to heart.  You are bound together with Christ as a member of His Body.  And you are a son of His Father, in whose home you dwell forever.  That is how sure and certain your life is.  Even in the midst of frailty and weakness.  Even though you daily sin much in your thoughts, words, and deeds, and for your sins you deserve nothing but punishment.  And though you are mortal and your body grows weak and weary and old and sick and dies.  And though you are in the midst of tribulation, just as Jesus forewarned.  Though you bear the Cross, yet your life with God is sure and certain, firmly and forever established in Christ.  Absolutely.  Unshakably.  Because it is in Christ.  And all the weakness, all the sin and all the death, all the hurt and sadness that you find in yourself, does not undo what is true for you in Christ.

You know that it is true in Him, and you know that it is for you, by the Gospel that is preached to you.  You know it from the Words of Christ Himself, especially as He gives you His Body to eat and pours out His Blood for you to drink.  This, He says, is for you.  And with these Words He tenderly invites your heart to believe, to trust, to know for certain, that in Him your life is permanently established and shall not be shaken nor taken from you.

In that confidence and faith, your life in Christ moves in two different directions.  Just like His.

Here’s what I mean.  On the one hand, the Lord Jesus Christ has gone up to His God and Father.  By His lifting up in death upon the Cross, and in His Resurrection and Ascension, He has made Atonement, accomplished Redemption, and reconciled the world to God.  And now He lives to intercede for you before the Father in heaven.  So there is this upward movement of Christ, His homecoming, in which He takes you with Him.  And yet, there is also the movement of Christ to His Church and into all the world, whereby He goes out with the Gospel into all of creation, and gives good gifts, and gives Himself, and preaches forgiveness.  But this isn’t about geography or space travel.  It is about the One who fills the heavens and the earth, who is always interceding as your Priest before God, and always preaching to you as the great Apostle of the faith.

And in much the same way, your life also moves in two different directions.  As you are in Christ Jesus, by faith, and through the Holy Spirit, you also ascend to the Father in heaven.  Your prayers rise to Him as incense.  You worship Him.  Your heart, mind, and spirit, your head and your hands are lifted up to Him in Christ Jesus.  Your life is hidden with Christ in God.  So there is also this upward movement in you, in your body and soul, in your thoughts, words, and actions.

At the same time, there is an outward and downward movement to your life, as you go out to your neighbor, and as you kneel down in humility to serve your neighbor, to serve the little ones, to serve the weak, the helpless, and the despised.

So, then, as you are ascending with Christ before God, so are you also descending with Christ in love.  And you have the courage to do that, and the strength and the confidence to do that; and you have the freedom to do that, come what may, because your life is hidden with Christ in God.

He has rescued you in Himself, and He has brought you to God in Himself, not in order to take you away from your spouse and your children, your parents and family and friends; not to take you away from your neighbor, but so that, in Him, you are now able to serve the neighbors that He has put around you with the very life and love of Christ.  To forgive, as you are forgiven.  To care for your neighbor in humility and peace.  You have the confidence to live and love like that, because it doesn’t matter how people receive you.  It doesn’t matter if people even notice, whether they say thank you, or whether in fact they actually despise you for your faith and love.  Even if the whole world hates you, just as it hates Christ, nevertheless, your life remains secure and steadfast in Him.

You have this wonderful freedom of faith in the Gospel, this wonderful strength of your life in Christ, so that you can dare to do great things.  Great big things, or great little things.  You can dare to do important good works for your neighbor.  You can apply yourself to the jobs and to the tasks that God has given.  You can do your work with confidence that it actually means something.  For you go about your job as one who lives before the Father in heaven in Christ Jesus.

And not only are you able to work and to serve in love, to forgive, and to receive persecution, and to turn the other cheek, to forgive those who trespass against you.  But you are also free to receive and to use, to enjoy, and to savor the good things that God gives you in Christ even here on earth.  For all of creation has been redeemed and sanctified by the Cross and Resurrection and Ascension of Christ.  All things are made brand new in Him.  And your Father gives you good gifts because He loves you.  You can use those good gifts to serve your neighbor, to care for your neighbor, to bring joy and gladness to your neighbor.  But you also are given joy and gladness in those good things that your Father gives you in Christ Jesus, your Savior.  As you receive them and use them, as you do your job, as you suffer patiently the Cross, so do you also abide with Christ in God.

You abide in the gracious and glorious presence of your God and Father.  As you live by faith in the Body of Christ, in His Church and in His Sacrament, you are continually in the Temple praising God.  Because you are in Christ.  Whether you are near or far, whether you are home or away, whether you are working or playing, sleeping, or reading, or whatever you may be doing, you are in Christ.  And Christ resides in the Holy City, New Jerusalem.

He is the Temple and the Light of that great City, in heaven and on earth, even as His flesh and blood are the Tabernacle of God among men.  He’s not up there, somewhere, over the rainbow, in the sky by and by, but right here, right now, for you, and for the many.

He is here with you in His Church on earth, breathing His life-giving Holy Spirit into you by the preaching of His Gospel, and feeding your body and soul with His Body and Blood.  And the Father is with you in Him, in Christ His Son.  And you are with the Father.

Indeed, you are a fragrant aroma, a sweet-smelling incense to your Father.  You arise and ascend into His nostrils, and He is pleased and delighted with you because you smell like Jesus.

Your God and Father in heaven loves you and rejoices over you.  And you know how dear you are to Him by the Resurrection that we continue to celebrate throughout these great Fifty Days of Easter.  You know His heart and mind toward you, His gracious good pleasure in you, and the life that is yours in Him, in the Ascension of His Son.  Because the Resurrection of Christ Jesus and the Ascension of Christ Jesus are your Resurrection and Ascension in Him.  They are yours by your Baptism into Him.  They are yours by His Body and Blood, which He puts into you, into your body as a down payment on your resurrection.  For He who binds together heaven and earth and God and Man, also binds you to Himself, and in Himself He binds you to your God and Father.

You are beloved of God.  You are in and with Christ.  You are anointed by the Holy Spirit.  And here you stand in the presence of God.  Not for death, but for life everlasting in body and soul.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Never Say Goodbye

Beloved of God, the Lord Jesus has not gone away.  He has not left you alone, but He Himself is with you, and He has poured out the promised Spirit of His Father upon you.  The same Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is, even now, and shall be evermore, your merciful and great High Priest.  He lives before God in righteousness and purity forever, on your behalf; in order to establish a place for you with God.  And He reigns over you in love with His Gospel.

As He has stretched out His arms for you upon the Cross, in offering up Himself to the Father as the Sacrifice of Atonement for all your sins, so does He lift His hands in blessing upon you, to justify you with His own righteousness, to raise you up from death to life with Himself, and to anoint you with His Spirit by His Word.

Thus, He gives Himself to God as the true Man, and He gives Himself to you as the one true God; and, in Him, both God and Man, and heaven and earth, are bound together in perfect harmony.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other in Him, so that you are now reconciled to God the Father in His beloved and well-pleasing Son.  Indeed, your flesh and blood, your body and soul, your whole life, and all of creation, are sanctified with God eternally, in the Body of Christ Jesus: in His own Person, first of all, but also in His Body, the Church, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

It is in Him that you know and love God rightly, and that you live the true life.  Not by escaping from your body of flesh and blood, nor from your place in life, wherever it might be, but precisely in that place where God has put you, in your own skin, in your life and occupations on earth.

Remain there, where He has stationed you, and be gathered here within His Church on earth, and wait upon the promise of your Father in Christ.  Already you are being clothed with His power from on high, with His Spirit and His righteousness.  Already you are God’s own child, and a citizen of His heavenly Kingdom; although for now it is by faith in His Word, and not by sight.  For as the Christ entered into His Glory through His suffering and death upon the Cross, so do you enter the Kingdom of God through repentance, by faith in His forgiveness of sins.

Therefore, do not be afraid, and do not despair of His presence and His peace.  For His blessing is upon you in the lifting up of His wounded hands, and the Gospel of His Cross and Resurrection is preached to you in His Name; even as He lives and reigns forever at the Father’s Right Hand, and intercedes for you as your Royal High Priest.  God the Father has established Him there by an unbreakable oath, by raising Him from the dead, crowning Him with Glory and honor, giving Him all authority in heaven and on earth, and putting sin, death, the devil, and hell beneath His feet.

Now, I know — and He knows it even better than you and I do — that you don’t yet see or feel or experience the Glory of His Resurrection and Ascension.  You don’t yet see all things beneath His beautiful feet.  You don’t yet experience the fact that His enemies and yours have been defeated.  You don’t yet feel His Victory and your Redemption, except by way of His Cross and suffering, which still seems like exactly the opposite: a contradiction of what it really is.

It has crossed my mind, these past few days, that if you were kidnapped and held captive for a decade, bound in ropes and chains, used and abused by some stranger, you would be sorely tempted to hopelessness and despair, and could easily suppose that you had been abandoned and left utterly alone in your misery.  How often would you cry out, frantic for someone to help you, but seemingly not heard, and not helped?  Would you conclude that your family, friends, and loved ones had forgotten you and given up on you?  And what about Jesus?  Where would He be then?

I pray to God that none of you are ever in such dire straits and terrible circumstances as we have all been hearing about this week.  But you are likely tempted and tried in many of the same ways, even so.  Perhaps you feel trapped, or imprisoned, not by some stranger, but within your own home and family, by your job, or by your debts and obligations.  Perhaps you are tied up and chained by doubts and fears, by guilt and shame, or by envy and jealousy.  Perhaps it is the devil who is using and abusing you with his lying and murdering, day and night, within and without.

Or, whatever the particulars of your own case may be, you have heard the Word of the Lord, that in the world you have tribulation.  That’s not the exception, but the rule in this mortal life.  What you see and feel and experience is not the Resurrection, but the Cross, and it would seem as though the Ascension were hardly a case for celebration, but nothing so much as a sad goodbye.

And yet, the Lord is with you.  He has not gone away and left you.  He’s not some pie in the sky, but He has entered the presence of His God and Father in your own skin, as it were; in the same flesh and blood and bones that He shares with you and all people.  The Cloud that received Him is the grace and glory of God, by which He also comes to you and abides with you in the Gospel.

It is not by accident or coincidence that two men in white stand before you and proclaim the Word of the Lord Jesus to you; for thus it was necessary, that, not only must He suffer, die, and rise again on the third day, but also that repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached in His Name to the ends of the earth.  By this means, He fills all things, and the Kingdom of God comes to man.

It’s like the difference between a single radio, which can only fill a limited space with its sound, depending on its wattage and speakers and volume, and, by contrast, a radio broadcast tower, which can blanket a huge area with its signal, and be heard wherever its signal is received.

So does the Word of the Lord go forth, beginning from Jerusalem, to all of Judea, to Samaria, to Rome, to the New World, the Third World, to Africa and Asia, and to the whole planet.  And as the Word goes out, so does it gather disciples of Jesus together into one Body, one Church, into the Holy City of God, the New Jerusalem, where the Lamb upon His Throne is not only the Priest and King, but He is the Temple of God among men, the Lamp and the Light which illuminate the New Creation, and both the Bridegroom and the Wedding Feast of finest Wine and richest Meat.

That is your home, your place of peace and Sabbath rest.  That is where you live, because that is where Christ is, both with you and for you, forever.  Because He really does unite and hold all things together in Himself, as He serves you, and worships the Father, and pours out the Spirit by the Gospel, and prays and intercedes for you at all times.

It is not only that He is everywhere at once, filling all things with Himself; nor only that He is with you here, and with the Father in heaven — although that much is true, to begin with.  But He also brings God to you, the Father and the Holy Spirit, in and with Himself, in all that He continues to teach and to do, and in His own Body of flesh and blood.  And in Him, at the same time, you are with God; for He brings you to the Father, and He seats you with Himself in the heavenly places.

Beloved, you are baptized into Christ, and that means, not only that His Cross and Resurrection are yours, but also His Ascension, too, His Spirit and His Father, and His place within the Holy of Holies.  So, too, when you eat His Body and drink His Blood here, within His Church on earth, you live and abide with Him in the Bosom of the Father in heaven.  This, indeed, is already to be living the true divine life for which you have been created by the Holy Triune God.

Not as though your life on earth, now, under the Cross, were always pleasant or easy.  We all know better than that!  With the rest of creation, we are longing for the consummation of all things: for the resurrection of the body, the revealing of the sons of God, and the life everlasting in Paradise.  We long for that, and pray for that!  And rightly so, as Christ our Lord has taught us to pray to our Father in heaven for the coming of His Kingdom.  Amen!  Come, Lord Jesus!

But let us do so — let us pray for the coming of Christ and His Kingdom — precisely in the bold confidence that Christ our Lord has borne the Cross for us and conquered in the fight, and that His resurrected and glorified Body is already the Firstfruits of our own sure and certain resurrection.

In Him, it is already finished: a done deal.  And it is for us.  It is for you, as the Sacrament declares.

This is what His Ascension means and signifies and does for you.  He fills all things in heaven and on earth, in order to be actively present and at work in and with His Church; and in order to bring His Church and all her members, including you, to His God and Father within His own Body.

The fact that He ascends as the Crucified One, and that He serves you by the ways and means of His Cross, means that all the hurt and heartache and hard things shall not be able to destroy you, nor to separate you from Him, His Life and His Love; but, by His grace, they actually help to heal you and save you and bring you to heaven.  For He works repentance in you, and disciplines your mortal flesh, in order to bring you through suffering and death into faith and life with God.

There simply is no pain, no persecution, no place nor pit nor hell hole, where He is not with you in peace.  And so, you are with Him, who lives and reigns forever at the Right Hand of the Father.

He doesn’t make you come to Him, nor even to meet Him halfway.  And He doesn’t simply come to keep you company in misery.  But He gathers you fully to Himself, and He embraces you with Himself, and He abides with you, as true God and true Man, as your Savior and your Salvation.  Thus, as you know from the testimony of St. Paul, your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Mortal life in this fallen world is one of constant separations, which cut you off and distance you from family, friends, and loved ones, and even from your nearest and dearest kin.  Whether by death or disease, by accidents or atrocities, by adventures or adversities, by ailments or age, your relationships and your connections are constantly being changed, and eventually they are ended.

But the Ascension of your crucified and risen Lord Jesus proclaims a permanent place for you, and perfect peace with God.  It does not change, and it cannot be taken away from you.  Nor is it far away from you now, but up close and personal, a very present help at all times, in every trouble, and a source of genuine great joy in the face of everything that confronts you.

It is here for you in the Temple of God, given and poured out for you to eat and drink.  It is here for you in the hands of Christ Jesus, with which He blesses you, and feeds you, and absolves you; with which He signs and seals you as a Christian, a child of God; and by which He raises you up.

As all of this is here for you in Him, in His Body and His Blood, so shall He be with you always, wherever you may be; and so shall you be with Him, and with the Father and the Holy Spirit — at home and at peace with the Blessed Holy Trinity, forever and ever, world without end.  Amen.