Acts 1 1-14
Ascension of Our Lord
Acts 1:1-14, Matthew 28:20b
May 5, 2005
I Am with You Always
after W. Hischke.
Introduction: Back a hundred or so years ago, when a person went off to serve as a foreign missionary, family and friends generally shed a lot of tears when he left. If he was your son or your brother, you knew that you would not see him again for many years. You might never see him again in this life. It was not like today, when a person can easily get on a plane. Or today one can telephone or e-mail Africa or Hong Kong almost as easily as calling or e-mailing next door. Today we observe the departure, the ascension, of Jesus. Jesus rises up into the sky, leaving behind his friends and followers. Are they sad? Do they shed tears? Maybe. Yet what today’s text emphasizes is that they are filled with a great joy. A great joy because of something Jesus tells them not long before he leaves. He tells them, and by means of the Bible he is telling you and me, “I am with you always.”
What Jesus had come to this earth to do, was now done. He had come to work out a way of salvation for humankind, a way by which people could have their sins canceled, a way in which a person could get back into a right relationship with God. Jesus did that, taking on himself the punishment we deserved. He paid the full wages of our sin; he died on a cross. Then he rose again from death and appeared to the disciples over the next 40 days. He wanted his followers to be sure that he was alive again. Then, his mission on earth completed, Jesus went back to heaven. From Luke, “He lifted up his hands and blessed them” (24:50). From Acts, “He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight” (1:9). And with that, Jesus was gone from this earth. No longer would the disciples be able to share a meal with him. No longer could they ask him to explain something they didn’t understand. Jesus was gone.
And yet, he wasn’t gone, not really. Visibly, they would see him no more. But invisibly, he would still be right there with them. This is what the Lord says here in our text, “Surely I am with you always.” And he didn’t mean merely in their memory. When someone close to you dies, someone who for years has been part of your life, in a sense that person lives on in your memory. You can’t help but remember times that you shared together, places where you went together. “Sometimes,” a person will say, “it seems as though she’s still alive.” That’s fine. Memories can help ease the pain of parting. However, that is not what Jesus is referring to here. That is not what he means when he says, “I am with you always.” He’s talking about not only the memory of him, but that he personally is going to be right there at your side.
I was talking with one of our members a couple of days ago on this very subject. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “I don’t understand how the Lord can be here with me and there with you and with other Christians all over the world, all at the same time. But,” he added, “I believe it. I believe it.” It’s something miraculous, of course. It’s something that only God can do. Yet God gives that same assurance time and again in Scripture. Through Moses, when God’s people were about to enter the Promised Land, “The Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deut 31:6). To the apostle Paul, at one of those times when his enemies were after him, “Do not be afraid. . . . For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you” (Acts 18:9–10). Thus also what the Lord says here in our text. This is intended not only for his disciples back then. “I am with you always,” he is saying also to us, “to the very end of the age.” Jesus promises, “Until that time when this world comes to an end, until that time when I return visibly as the judge of all, I will be invisibly with you always.”
It is easy to let this ascension promise of Jesus get away from you. This is one of those Bible verses that many of us have committed to our memory. It’s still there in our memory, still there on that floppy disk in our mind. What we often fail to do, though, is to punch the right keys so that these words of Jesus appear on the screen of our everyday life. So it’s good for us to get these words of Jesus before us here today. It can be a helpful thing once again to think about what he says here, to impress these words on our mind’s eye as we leave this house of God. And it will help to firm up in us the conviction “I believe what he says”; it will help to make us more sure of that when we review in what manner our Lord is with us.
He is with us in the Lord’s Supper. That’s why it is called, the Lord’s Supper. It’s not much of a meal, as far as meals go. When you partake of the Lord’s Supper here in church, you do not on that account skip lunch afterward because you’ve had enough to eat. What you get here is a little piece of bread and a sip of wine. The big thing here, however, is that you get the Lord himself in this Sacrament, his body and his blood. We call this the real presence. Jesus, our Savior, is really present, he tells us, in this Sacrament. He is actually and truly here. Invisibly, yes. Yet he is really here. Thus when you eat of this bread and drink of this wine, you are receiving the Lord himself anew into your heart and life.
Another way the ascended Jesus is with us is in his Word. When you read the Bible for your own personal devotions or together with your family, when you take part in some kind of group Bible study, when you listen to a sermon based on what God says in his Word—the Lord is there with you. He makes that a specific promise, “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Mt 18:20). Still another way the Lord comes to you is in answer to your prayer. In Isaiah 58, “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I” (v 9).
Years ago I drove by one of those outdoor church signs. It said, “If the Lord is not as close to you anymore as he used to be, it is not he who has moved.” That is so true to what God himself tells us; it is not he who has moved. The Lord wants to be close to you. He wants to be right there with you in your everyday life. He loves you. He gave himself on the cross to pay for your sins. And as long as you don’t close the door to him, as long as you don’t move away from him, he will continue to be part of your life.
Jesus ascended into heaven. Visibly, the disciples could see him no more. But invisibly our Lord is still here with us. Take with you today this ascension promise of his. Believe what he says. “Surely I am with you always.” Amen.