The Ascension says, “He’s done it.”

“It wasn’t as though Jesus went away.” I was reminding myself this fact while sitting on a rock and looking across to the east side of Iringa, Tanzania. I had recently read the last chapter of Luke and the Ascension was on my mind. As the clouds were moving westward across the sky the scene of Christ’s Ascension became vivid. “Don’t stand here just staring up into the sky. That’s not where Jesus is for you now. Go back to Jerusalem and wait for the next thing that the Lord has in mind for you to be doing.” The two messengers reproved the disciples for it wasn’t as though Jesus went away.

In recent weeks some in our churches have been able to hear the farewell discourse of Jesus from the Gospel of John. Towards the end of this discourse Jesus basically says that His disciples were not always going to be able to hold onto Him. He says, “If I don’t go away. You won’t receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus tells them that it would be better for them if He went away. In the same way it is better for us that Jesus ascends into the bright cloud.

When we speak of the bright cloud we also speak of the right hand of God. The cloud says that He’s beyond the range of what we can figure out. In our natural way of thinking we can only comprehend one place and one time. But now when Jesus has ascended we can no longer hold on to Him for He is doing something even greater.

In the Exodus, it’s in the cloud by which the Lord locates Himself and says, “I am here for you.” The bright pillar of fire and the bright cloud that followed the Israelites was God’s real presence. He said to them that “I am surely with you. Where my glory is, that bright cloud, so am I.” The bright cloud speaks as to where the Lord is present. Therefore, Jesus moves at His ascension into the realm of the bright cloud so that He may go beyond all things. So that He may be there for us. Therefore, when we speak of the cloud that's the way we also speak of the right hand of God.

The Ascension says, ‘He's finished it all.” What Christ came to do to be our Savior is done. It is Finished. He is Ascended into heaven! And He's there now at the right hand of God. Your right hand is what you do things with, and Christ is the one who does things with the power of God. That's what we confess when we say right hand of God. He is present wherever He is using His power; that is the right hand. And the power that He now uses into our lives is located for us in a saving way. It is located in what we call the “Means of Grace.” If you want to know where Jesus is at then listen to Him speak to you through His words. Read your Bible. Listen to the Proclamation of the Gospel.

Where is Jesus? He's where He's baptizing. He does the baptizing for it says in the Large Catechism “baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That means He's doing it. And if He's doing it, that's where He's at. He’s located there and He is handing to us the gifts that are there for us in Holy Baptism.

Similarly when He gives into us His body and blood to eat and to drink that's where He is at.  We don’t have to hunt Jesus up. We don’t have to climb onto a rock in Iringa, Tanzania to find Him. We are not left trying to search for Jesus somewhere in Israel. No, rather, He has given us His name. He has given us His words and by them we take hold of Him. We take hold of Him in our prayer and in our praise. And this prayer and praise is not only talking into the blue sky. He is where His words are doing things. Where He's baptizing. Where He's giving His body and blood into our mouths. Where He forgives us our sins in Holy Absolution and where one Christian speaks to another those words of Christ that have in them the gifts of Jesus.

I suppose that’s another reason we don’t stand there looking into the clouds. We go, we go back to where the Lord tells us to go. To His Word and Sacrament so that the Holy Spirit may get to work in those words. It is the Holy Spirit who uses those words to bring to us and others as gifts all that Jesus has achieved for us by His life, death, resurrection and ascension.

The Ascension says, “He's done it.”