It is to Your Advantage that Jesus Goes Away
Mark 16:14-20
May 16, 2021 anno Domini
One of the strangest things Jesus ever said to His disciples was “It is to your advantage that I go away.” (John 16:7) When is it to your advantage that someone you love goes away? Is it advantageous when your parents go away in death, when your children go away to school or work, or a good friend moves away.
This is what makes Ascension strange. Jesus has gone away and we celebrate. Imagine a voters’ assembly where someone says, “All those in favor of Jesus going away say ‘Amen.’”
“It is good for your god to go away.” Good. God. Go Away. Those are the three words of the Lord for you today.
Good. Jesus doesn’t define good the way you do. For Jesus something is good when it benefits your faith. Good events bring you to a greater knowledge of the truth. Good is when you trust in the true God and don’t trust yourself. What is good or advantageous for you has nothing to do with what your eyes see or your heart desires. A large Dairy Queen blizzard looks good and tastes good, but the 1440 calories are not good calories for you.
God works good in suffering and death. He worked His greatest good for you in the suffering and death of His Son. You would not have felt good had you been standing in the crowd at Golgotha. You would have been sickened by Jesus. Hanging there, naked, his lungs filling up with blood and water until he suffocated. But God’s Word proclaims that the greatest good in all of human history is the death of Jesus of Nazareth. The most advantageous event of your life is to believe that He died for you. His sacrifice cancels your debt of death and hell. His blood atones for your sins. His death is so good we consider His corpse on a cross to be a beautiful piece of artwork, worthy to adorn God’s house.
From good we go to god. There are two kinds of gods – false gods and the true God. It is good that both go away, but they need to go away in different manners.
Your false gods need to go away in death never to rise again. It is good for you to lose your health, to come under attack by the devil, to experience hatred for confessing God’s truth about marriage or gender or the one way of salvation. It is good when our children fail or we have marriage problems or the government turns against us. Why is it good? Because then our false gods stumble, fall, and die. We worship health. If you don’t believe me look at the largest temples in Saint Cloud – the hospital, the plaza, the ever-expanding clinics. The god of health attracts far more worshippers and offerings than does the true God. You don’t think anything of calling the ambulance for a $2000 ride to the hospital, but a rainy morning or a sunny weekend will keep you from God’s house. Look at all the Credit Unions and Banks under construction in Saint Cloud. Don’t tell me we don’t worship money! When’s the last time you saw a new church under construction? Health and money and children and freedom and government are all good gifts from God, but when they become our idols, when our hearts fear, love, and trust in them they need to be crushed, killed and never resurrected for our good.
Jesus, the only true God, did go away, but unlike all your false gods He needed to come back from death. Jesus went away in suffering and death so you could come back to your Father. Jesus came back to proclaim His death worked. His death sufficiently paid for your sins, sufficiently satisfied God’s anger, and sufficiently died death.
On a side note this is another good distinction between a false god and the true god. When a false god dies He takes even more away from you. When Jesus dies He gives you more than you deserve. When a false god goes away He doesn’t come back. Jesus always comes back – first from the grave and then on the last day from heaven. He comes back for you, to give you more than you have and more than you deserve.
This, then is the strange Kingdom of our strange Lord. By going away Jesus draws near to us. By sending the Spirit, Jesus doesn’t give us more of the Spirit, He gives us more of Himself. Jesus gave His men and the Church the means for you to have more Jesus than they had. Read Mark 16:15&16. You have Jesus’ death and resurrection in your baptism. You have Jesus and His forgiveness declared in the words of absolution. You have Jesus’ risen, living, ruling body and blood, along with life and salvation in His Supper. You have heard the Gospel and received His New Testament which bequeaths to you His victory over sin, death, and the Devil. You have more Jesus than the people who lived in Jesus’ own day.
After the last presidential election half of the nation was joyous that their man was in the White House. Their guy ruled and he would rule as they would rule – expand abortions, open the boarders, fix the climate, fight the white oppressors. In the 2016 election, the other half of the nation was joyous that their man was ruling because he would rule as they ruled. Stand up for life, close the borders, cut back Government intrusion into our freedoms.
Your brother, Jesus, now sits at God’s right hand and rules all the world, but don’t think He will rule as you would rule. He’s better than that. He’s better than you. He will rule for your advantage – for your faith and trust in God. He’ll kill your false gods so you lose your faith in them. Even though He sits at the right hand of God He is near to you – as near as Your baptism, His Word, His body and blood under the bread and wine. He rules your life with forgiveness. He rules the devil with the declaration of your righteousness. He rules death with His (and your) resurrection.
Happy Ascension – a strange Holy day in the Kingdom of God. Jesus has gone away and that’s to your advantage, because He rules all the world for you and your salvation. In the name of Jesus. Amen.