Homily for the Ascension of Our Lord preached at the Divine Service of the Niagara Circuit at St John's Lutheran Church, Stevensville ON, 18 May 2023

Beloved in Christ Jesus:

For you and me, going to Heaven is a really big deal, or at least it should be; at all events, it sure beats the alternative. But for Jesus our Lord, whose very name should fill our hearts with holy reverence and pulsating love, it was actually a rather minor matter. You see, the place He came from is far above what we call Heaven, and the ultimate destination He returned to infinitely transcends the Heaven of the angels, which Scripture calls Paradise or the third heaven, a place visited by Paul when he was still alive, a place which the penitent thief rubbed his eyes to behold when he instantaneously arrived there on the day he was put to death, that day when he feared in his bones that God was mad at him, that day when he was exposed to the elements on a cross, that day which ended when he choked to death sinking into unimaginable agony on his broken legs. Oh yes, Heaven was a very big deal for the penitent thief and, should we stay faithful, it will be a huge, big deal to us also, even though, if things are going well and we are not too sick or too old or too depressed we are, if we are honest, quite happy to delay going there for a few years or several decades as your age may be.

The coronation that took place in London at the beginning of this month gives us a perfect handle for getting hold of the bottom line of the Ascension of our Lord. But for some people the connection doesn’t work, so let’s deal fair and square with the elephant in the living room. Now and again I’ve heard it said, and twenty years ago this old Pharisee was loudly saying it himself, that a man who had been publicly unfaithful to his wife should not be exalted to sit on a throne. But in the meantime, the question has arisen in my heart, how do I, how do you, how do we stand if God were to put any of us under the spotlight and examine how well we’ve kept our solemn vows taken at baptism, at confirmation, in marriage, and for some of us in ordination. When a few home truths sink in, don’t we suddenly merge into the crowd around the woman taken in adultery, don’t we drop our stones to the ground and walk silently away, realising that folk who live in glass houses really should not throw stones?

I can’t forget the image of our elderly and very vulnerable-looking King still kneeling after the secret rite of anointing, clad in a white linen shirt, somehow epitomising every Christian who prays ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ The big point here is that the true theme of the historic Coronation service is not some frail man or woman who, like the rest of us, has feet of clay; no, that magnificent act of worship was really all about Christ the true King with the most capital of Ks, that act of worship was a visual proclamation of the Gospel to a United Kingdom and to a Commonwealth Realm like Canada that have gone heathen and thrown Christ into the garbage. It told people who have not a minute’s time for the old, superseded, despised, ridiculous Christian religion to order their lives to Jesus, under Jesus, with Jesus, and for Jesus. Jesus the enfleshed Word, Jesus the Son of God become the Son of Mary, Jesus knelt down in His version of a linen shirt on the banks of the Jordan and He squirmed in agony in Gethsemane as He took on His back not only the burden of a proud young prince’s adultery but also the due penalty of every transgression and offence in human history including those thoughts, words, and deeds of you and me that we would be ashamed to stand up and admit before this assembly. This Jesus stood up from the grave, ascended through the Heaven of the angels where He left the penitent thief, and then He soared way above all Heavens into God Who is above all things so that He, even the Man Jesus, should fill all things. In the Heaven of the angels and saints the Father conducted a coronation service that is still going on, a coronation that you may and do attend every time you come to a Communion service.

One of the biggest things the Christian Church has done across five continents over the last two thousand years has been to pour a big jug of the milk of human kindness into the mouths of a human race desperately thirsty for this very beverage that you can’t buy for any amount of money. Those of you around my age dimly remember a Canada where you were taught not to mock the afflicted but to be kind to the weak, the helpless, and the distressed. Don’t despise or be mean to that suffering soul, but remember that’s a man or woman made in the image of God, redeemed by the Blood of Jesus, intended for admission to Heaven. Then came the big disaster of the 1960s and all the changes we have witnessed in society over the last two or three generations. If everything that’s come out of that hopper is social progress, then I don’t know what is meant by progress.

Good God, where have we got to in the meantime! Have any of you encountered a rather good local online publication that comes out twice a week under the title The Niagara Independent? Well, it just ran a startling article on the breakdown of civil society in St Catharines, especially in the downtown where parents daren’t take their children to public parks because of drug use and its attendant debris, because homeless people are going naked down main streets, because people are engaging in intercourse in public like farmyard animals and going to the washroom and leaving excrement on tarmac, sidewalk, and grass. Just yesterday I read in the National Post how one third of Canadians think assisted suicide would be a good remedy for homelessness, and down in the States a cabinet officer recently said that the best way to help the economy is to have an abortion. I don’t know if these days are the last stretch of the end times, but public life here in Canada and in the rest of the Western world sure is a lot like Israel during the reign of Manasseh, and if you don’t know how that ended up, ask your pastor in Bible class on Sunday.

The mayor of St Catharines admitted the extent of the problems I just listed and he said the situation is only getting worse, but when asked what should be done about these things he lamely pronounced that more public money should be spent, as though Mammon has suddenly become the balm of Gilead. No, no, and a thousand times no, the answer, the deep-down answer, and the only answer is Jesus. There’s no brotherhood of man without the fatherhood of God and Jesus is the only one who can soothe your hearts by putting Our Father onto your lips. The only home that offers abiding shelter for the homeless in particular and for the forsaken in general is the Household of God in which we are assembled this evening. Instead of the hideous chaos produced by drugs, alcohol, and unrestrained exercise of sexuality we need to have a crack at enacting the template set forth in the Ten Commandments. And if we’re going to have a society any decent person wants to be part of, then we need to see in each of our neighbours not a pest to be exterminated but a fellow creature of God made in His likeness. Moreover, if we want something that can really be called progress, then people need to be called and integrated into the family of all families, the Household of God which is the Holy Church.

‘In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.’ This evening once again we can be shielded from all the conflict, rebellion, and social breakdown out there and consoled amid the turmoil of what each person might be going through by standing awhile on the fringes of the great Coronation ceremony being celebrated with great joy in Heaven. Replace God Save The King with Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord; realise that Charles is actually a feeble though well-meaning stand-in for Jesus; and let calm suffuse your soul with the realisation that Jesus is the King of Kings wielding His sceptre even where your eyes tell you the opposite.

Think of it, beloved, Charles is properly addressed as Your Majesty and Sir, and we certainly take care to observe our ps and qs when speaking with those in power who can close our bank accounts, turf us out of our homes, and make our lives miserable. But when you kneel at your bedside and at the altar rail you may exercise a tender, even intimate relationship with the King of Kings who likes you to address Him very simply and sweetly as Jesus. May He refresh your souls and strengthen your bodies this evening to return to your parishes and communities emboldened to proclaim and live under His kingship, which is the only setting in which public life can flourish in this or any land.