Text: Luke 24:44-53
Date: May 29, 2022
Event: The Ascension of our Lord (Observed), Year C
Luke 24:44-53 (EHV)
He said to them, “These are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”
45Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. 46He said to them, “This is what is written and so it must be: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49Look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
50He led them out as far as the vicinity of Bethany. He lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51And while he was blessing them, he parted from them and was taken up into heaven. 52So they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53They were continually in the temple courts, praising and blessing God. Amen.
Jesus’ Ascension Shows God’s Necessities
We will have things we want to do and things we need to do. Sometimes those things are one in the same, sometimes they are worlds apart. But things that are required, are needs, are necessities, are things that cannot be avoided, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant.
When talking about “Daily Bread” with the kids in Catechism class (or almost as often with adults in Bible class!), we have to make that distinction between needs and wants. Wants might be fulfilled or might not be, but God promises that the needs will absolutely be met. So then the question is, what are our needs, what are necessities from God’s point of view? Do they sync up with what we would say our needs or are they pretty different?
Today we are celebrating Jesus’ ascension. Technically, the day for this celebration would have been this past Thursday as Jesus ascended 40 days after his resurrection, but we are observing it this Sunday. Jesus’ ascension gives us a good opportunity to see God’s priorities, what he deems to be necessities. So this morning, as we review the simple account of Jesus’ ascension from Luke’s Gospel, let’s consider what Jesus’ ascension tells us about God and what it tells us about ourselves.
Jesus spent 40 days on and off with his disciples after his resurrection to serve as a coda on his teaching with them. Of prime importance for Jesus was that each of these followers know beyond any possible doubt that he had, in fact, been physically raised from the dead. This truth is massively important for people’s eternal comfort and would be one of the center points of the disciples’ teaching as they went out into the world. So Jesus made sure they knew that he had been raised.
But he was also teaching them a lot about the necessity of what had happened to him and the things he had done. This was not the first time Jesus had said things like this. In fact, at some point after Jesus had been teaching for a while and after John the Baptist had been executed, Jesus asked his disciples who the crowds of people were thinking he was. They knew the crowds had all sorts of answers and gave Jesus a sampling. And when Jesus turned the question to his disciples—who did they think he was?—Peter gave that famous, accurate confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
While praising that confession we’re also told “From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again (Matthew 16:21). Note how similar that is to his words in our Gospel, just prior to Jesus’ ascension: “These are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms…. This is what is written and so it must be: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.”
So, in part our answer to the question of “what is a necessity for God?” is following through on the promises he has made. He can’t make a promise and leave it undone. But that point skips a necessary question: why were these promises made in the first place?
And that gets us to the heart of God’s necessities. For God, it was a necessity that mankind not be doomed to hell for their rebellious sin. For God, it was necessary that payment be made for sins, but not by us. For God, it was necessary that we be saved from this punishment and safe with him forever.
And so here is the first necessity for God: our rescue from sin. God did not hesitate for even a moment. It was the very first conversation after Adam and Eve fell where God made that first promise of a Satan-crushing Savior. God’s nature meant that he could not and would not shrug at our sin and leave us to our doom. His love for us is so great, so profound, so deep, so absolutely-selfless, that he promised a Savior and would be that very Savior for us. Jesus’ work had to happen because God’s loving nature, his grace toward fallen mankind, demanded that.
There are times when it doesn’t feel that way. There are times where we think God must not love us very much because we have this hardship or we lack that blessing. But Jesus shows us the error of that thinking. Does God love you? Does God care for you? You know he does because he made your salvation a necessity for himself. The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that’s exactly what he did. And because he did, your sins are forgiven and you are safe with your Savior.
But the necessity is not just in God doing it. It would do no good for God to do all of this and then for no one to know about it. And so from the beginning, he let people know. He let people know what he was going to do—he made those promises in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. But he also let people know what he had done: Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in [my] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
And we’ll see this start in earnest next week as we celebrate the first Christian Pentecost day. We will see the message of Jesus go out through Peter and the other disciples in that famous day of speaking in languages they had never studied. And in that moment, God will fortify the church by adding 3,000 believers, nearly 30x the number of believers than there had been at Jesus’ ascension.
Throughout the Easter season, we’ve had bits of this history in our First Readings from the book of Acts. Jesus was with his disciples wherever they went, whomever they were talking to, sharing what he had done with the people he had died for. People were brought to faith through this preaching of the Word and through baptism. They were strengthened in their faith by this continued proclamation of the Word and their celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
All of this points back to God’s original necessity: that people be saved from their sins. There is no being saved from sin without Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. But there is also no being saved from sin without the message of Jesus being shared with people who don’t know about it yet, or who had known it and fallen away, or know it and love it but need to be strengthened in it.
And this necessity has not changed. It was needed in the apostles’ day just after Jesus’ ascension, and it’s just as necessary today almost 2,000 years after Jesus’ ascension. Because the truths are still truths. God’s necessities are still the same. He needs people to be saved from their sins. Jesus did the work that was needed, and now that necessary task of sharing that rests on you and me. We are the messengers of God’s loving necessities. We are the ones to share it with our brothers and sisters in Christ, our unbelieving friends, coworkers, neighbors, and even with people we’ve never met around the world.
What is truly needed and necessary? From God’s perspective, it’s you—your eternal safety is the driving motivator for him. His love to save you has forced his hand continually, and he will not stop working toward that goal until you and I are safe with him forever. Jesus’ ascension shows the end of a crucially important part of that work, and the beginning of the next step. May God bless our work in sharing the necessity and the reality that Christ is risen, he is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.
