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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, spoke at length about His soon being away from His disciples for a little while (presumably the parts of three days that He was in the grave after His crucifixion), about His being with the disciples again (presumably the forty days between the day of His resurrection and the day of His ascension), about His sending the Holy Spirit (not many, but only ten days after His ascension, on Pentecost), about His continuously coming to the disciples (in Word and Sacrament), and about His coming a final time to be with them forever (the same way they saw Him go into heaven). As we remarked repeatedly during our Midweek Bible Study’s recent five weeks of considering Jesus’s so‑called “Farwell Discourse”, Jesus did not always speak as precisely as we might like about those different times periods and events. We might understand, if not excuse, the disciples’ asking Him, when they had come together, as narrated in tonight’s First Reading, whether He would at that time restore the kingdom to Israel. As we heard, Jesus answered that it was not for them to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But, they were to receive power and would be His witnesses, not only to the area covered by the old kingdom of Israel but also to the ends of the earth. Tonight our reflection on the First Reading is directed to the theme “Times and Seasons”.
The other day I was speaking with a former seminary classmate who is a pastor in a small town in Ontario, Canada. The coronavirus restrictions that he, his family, and his congregation have experienced there have been much tighter than the ones we have experienced here, which has made me all the more grateful for those who govern our nation, state, and municipalities. I asked about their opening up more, and he remarked that there were plans to open up more but that there were no dates attached to those plans. Oh, how we all are like the disciples who inquired about the time. We also want to know the times and seasons, the duration and events (Trench, Synonyms, 209-212), the days and the hours (Matthew 24:36)—not only of secular things, such as the easing of the coronavirus restrictions (not to mention the timing of its next wave and any vaccine for it), but also of spiritual things, such as the length of the afflictions we experience, the day of our death, the extent of the intermediate state when we might be with the Lord, and the timing of Jesus’s coming in glory to judge the living and the dead, along with the resurrection of the dead that accompanies it, and the beginning of the life of the world to come.
The Divinely‑inspired St. Luke in tonight’s First Reading mentions Jesus’s ordering His disciples to “wait” for the promise of the Father, and in doing so St. Luke uses a Greek word for waiting that the New Testament uses only there. We are not always good about waiting. We are not always, if ever, patient enough. We may doubt or disbelieve that God has given or will give us grace sufficient for the afflictions that He in His wisdom permits us to experience. We may not believe that our afflictions and life will come to an end and that they have purposes greater than what we might think of or even imagine. From these sins, as from all of our sins and from our sinful natures, God calls and enables us to repent. God gives us “Times and Seasons” to repent, so that we are not condemned to the eternal torment in hell that we deserve on account of our sins but instead receive forgiveness of sins and so also eternal life and salvation with Him.
In tonight’s First Reading, St. Luke reminds us of Jesus’s suffering and resurrection, and, in tonight’s Gospel Reading (Luke 24:44-53), he reminded us that the Christ’s suffering and resurrection were written about in the whole Old Testament—the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms—also written was that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His Name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Jesus Christ’s suffering and resurrection were for all people, including us! Jesus died on the cross for us, died in our place, died the death that we deserved. When we turn in sorrow from our sins and trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake. Our faith is not some generic faith but faith in a Lord Who was crucified and resurrected for us, and Who also ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. His ascension removed Him from His disciples’ sight, signifying an end to His forty days of appearances to them after His resurrection, but His ascension did not remove Him from His Church. And, His being seated at the right hand of the Father not only, as we heard in the Epistle Reading (Ephesians 1:15-23), enthroned Him as ruler over all things for the benefit of His Church, but also exalted the human nature we share with Him, assuring us that we, too, one day will be exalted to heaven and glorified there.
To that end, we receive God’s forgiveness here and now through His Means of Grace. In the First Reading, Jesus mentioned both John the Baptizer’s baptizing with water and the disciples’ being baptized with the Holy Spirit. For us, a water baptism is also a Spirit baptism, and, Jesus says elsewhere, unless we are so born from above we cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5). And, the First Reading said those baptismal mentions came while Jesus was “staying” with the disciples, another Greek verb used only there in the New Testament and one that can also be translated as His “eating” with them (confer NIV and the ESV margin). Regardless of that translation, Jesus stays, if not also eats, with us in the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is His Body given for us and wine is His Blood shed for us. His ascension to heaven did not so “confine” Him there with the result that He cannot be present with us here in bread and wine with the same body and blood that ascended into heaven!
Forgiven through God’s Word and Sacraments, our lives are transformed, as were the lives of the disciples. As the book of Acts goes on to narrate, the disciples, including St. Paul, were Jesus’s witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria—what was the Old Testament Kingdom of Israel, as I mentioned earlier—and to the end of the earth, an Old Testament expression (Isaiah 49:6), and the intended reach of God’s Kingdom, the Church. Of course, the spread of disciples’ witness of Jesus to the end of the earth did not mean then, nor does it mean now, that everyone is converted to faith in Jesus. Still, we similarly “witness” or “confess” Jesus, especially as we patiently wait and endure secular and spiritual afflictions that He in His wisdom permits us to experience, with faith that God gives us sufficient grace to endure them, that their ends will come, and that those afflictions have greater purposes than what we can think of or even imagine.
Like the disciples were, we may be anxious about “Times and Seasons”, but, with daily repentance and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness for those and for all of our sins. We confess Him as He gives us opportunity to do in our various callings in life. And, like the disciples who witnessed His ascension, by God’s mercy and grace, we can and do patiently wait, however long we need to, for the end of our afflictions and of our earthly lives and so also the beginning of our eternal lives and salvation. Notably the Gospel Reading said that the disciples returned to Jerusalem to wait with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing (or “praising”) God. Similarly, tonight’s Psalm (Psalm 47; antiphon: v.5) calls on us to sing praises to our exalted God and King, and we do so, both now and for eternity.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +