Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord (Observed): The Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 12, 2024. It was also preached, slightly revised, during Morning Devotions at the Southeastern District, LCMS Circuit Visitors and Presidium Meeting, May 14, 2024

With an Ending There Is a Beginning
Acts 1:1-11 and Luke 24:44-53
(Other Reading Appointed: Ephesians 1:15-23)

With my love for watching British Television has also come a useful trove of quotations from British literature.  One particular source for these quotes comes from the Inspector Morse series, where the well-read, opera-loving, Oxford detective is known for often quoting from or alluding to various pieces of literature and poetry.  Though I cannot remember the precise episode where I heard one particular quote, it is a quotation which has long stuck with me.  In T.S. Elliot’s poem, “Little Gidding”, one finds these words: “What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from.”

In thinking about our celebration today of our Lord Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, these words seem to be a rather good summary of the event we recall in this day’s worship.  In spirit, we stand alongside “the holy apostolic band” on the Mount of Olives outside of Jerusalem with heads craned upwards, eyes fixed upon the clouds, watching as the Lord Jesus passes from view behind the clouds and ascends into the heavens.  With His risen and glorified body, Jesus rises from the earth and goes to the place where He was before He took on and shared our human flesh—to rise above all things and return to sit at the right hand of God.

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Sermon for Easter 6

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024.

Ubi Caritas et Amor Deus Ibi Est
John 15:9-17
(Other Readings Appointed: Acts 10:34-48; 1 John 5:1-8)

For those who may have either rolled your eyes or just had them glaze over because you saw that once again Pastor decided to use Latin for his sermon title, it’s OK.  It just so happens that these words come from a beautiful ancient hymn which I have listened to many times, and that quite honestly, just sound better in Latin than in English.  That being said, we have together just sung the words of this Latin hymn in an English paraphrase, so you know this hymn now too.  The words of the original hymn’s refrain, can be translated this way: “Where charity and love are, there is God.”  And this hymn by tradition is used each year on Holy Thursday in connection with the actions in that night’s liturgy of the washing of feet and the gathering of gifts for the poor.

It is in the Biblical setting of Jesus gathered with His disciples in the Upper Room on the night He was betrayed that we are once more taken back to again in the words we have heard from today’s Gospel.  In many ways, in what we have heard today from our Lord Jesus as He speaks to His disciples, both then and now, He is explaining further what that action of being a Servant and washing feet is all about—that it is in service to God and to one another that we discover what true, divine love is all about, and in our coming to know this love we also come to truly know God and His presence among us.

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