Bible Text: St Mark 16:14–20 | Preacher: Rev. Jacob Benson
Where is God?
Where is Jesus?
Where is the second person of the Trinity?
There was a time when He was in heaven, without a body. As Saint John writes at the
beginning of his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God,” (John 1:1-2).
The “Word of God” appears all throughout the Old Testament. And it doesn’t just mean
“the words God says,” or “the speech of God,” this “Word of God” has a personality, a
consciousness. Generations after the New Testament was written, the Church would find
precise language to speak about this “Word,” namely by assigning the title “The Second
Person of the Trinity.”
We say “Jesus” as shorthand, but His name wasn’t revealed to men during the Old
Testament.
But now all has been revealed and when we read “Christ was the rock from which Israel
drank” (1 Corinthians 10:4) we know that Paul means something like “The Second
Person of the Trinity, before He took on human flesh, was the rock.”
But there was a time when Jesus, when the Christ, when the Word, when the second
person of the Trinity was in heaven.
But then something miraculous happened.
“The Word became flesh,” (John 1:14).
By the message of the Archangel Gabriel, this “Word of the Lord” was not in heaven. He
was in the womb of a virgin. He was a zygote or a clump of cells or, as humans have
virtually always called it, He was a baby.
From then on, we knew where God was – that is, the second person of the Trinity. Or, at
least Mary knew where He was. For nine months He went where she went. And then He
went to Egypt. And then He came back and grew up in Nazareth.
Mary knew where her God was – presumably – every second of every day. And if she
didn’t an aunt or uncle did.
Until the body of the Word of the Lord turned 12 years old.
Then He was lost in Jerusalem for three days.
No one knew where Jesus was.
Or, at least, Mary didn’t know. Nor did Joseph or the cousins and relatives of that twelve
year-old-God-made-Flesh.
As Jesus grew, there was always someone who knew where He was. Even if He was
alone, someone knew. His schoolmasters or friends or family members.
Until, again, one day when Jesus was about thirty years old.
He was baptized by His cousin John and then flung into the wilderness by the Holy
Spirit – the Third Person of the Trinity.
He was lost once again for forty days.
When He returned to civilization, He began His public ministry.
And, from then on, people knew where He was. Even when He went away to pray
privately, or when He walked on water and crossed to the other side of the sea, even if
people couldn’t see Him, they knew where He was.
Three years after He began His ministry, He was publicly crucified – everyone knew
where He was – and laid in a tomb – many people knew where that tomb was.
And then, do you know what the first recorded words on Easter were?
I love this, it’s so loaded with theology.
The first words in the Bible spoken on Easter day were from Mary Magdalene.
“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid
Him,” (John 20:2).
For the first Thirty-Three years of His life, there was a total – roughly – of forty three
days where no one knew where Jesus was.
When, if a theologian were to ask, “Where is the Second Person of the Trinity,” no one
on earth could answer it.
Today, we “see” Jesus most often in artwork.
Yes, we encounter Him in His Word and His Holy Sacraments on Sundays and other
feast days, but I mean really see a depiction of Jesus, wholly and completely, in His
Body with facial features and hands and feet and all that.
We “see” Jesus most often in artwork. And yet we know that the artwork is looking
through a glass dimly. Christian artwork is not literal, sometimes in any sense of the
word. We don’t know if Jesus actually put a lamb over His shoulders like this. It’s highly
unlikely that the Last Supper looked like how Da Vinci painted it.
But we get it. It’s natural to understand artwork like these.
But also Christian artwork isn’t literal in the sense that we can’t look at a piece of art and
know where Jesus is. Christian artwork isn’t a nanny-cam, it’s a snapshot.
Listen, Jesus isn’t at the Last Supper.
Jesus isn’t carrying a lamb. {reference to artwork at Mount Hope}
But, again, we get it. It’s natural to understand artwork like these and they are wonderful
teaching opportunities.
In the Church Year, as we read through the Life of Christ, we’re learning spiritual truths,
historical truths, theological and moral truths, but we’re also remembering events.
Jesus isn’t literally riding into Jerusalem on a donkey or perpetually instituting the
sacrament. His sacrifice on the cross was once-and-for-all, never repeated. And yet we
have Palm Sunday artwork and Holy Week artwork.
Jesus isn’t literally a baby, and yet we never bristle at Christmas paintings. Jesus was
born, and yet we often – and rightly – depict Mary as being pregnant, being the bearer of
God.
I mention this because the Easter season is odd, because the commemoration of events
are still true.
The tomb in which Jesus was buried is still empty. You can go look at it in Jerusalem.
And today, Christ is still ascended.
For roughly three thousand nine hundred forty three years, the “location” of the Word of
God was changing. Sometimes the “Word” wouldn’t come to prophets for years and
years, and then once the Word became Flesh, the geographic location of God was always
moving about.
But for the past one thousand nine hundred ninety two years, we know where He is.
We say it every Sunday “He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the
Father.”
That’s where Jesus is.
And at the right hand of the Father, He rules all things. He is Lord of heaven and earth
and even of hell.
At the right hand of the Father Jesus still gives His Word, He allows artistic depictions of
any and all episodes of His earthly ministry to be depicted and adored in churches.
At the right hand of the Father Jesus is and yet in a mystical and mysterious way His
Body – not a spiritual presence, not a reminder, but His real, actual body – is present on
Christian altars all around the world.
In a sense, the Word of God after Ascension is like the Word of God before Christmas.
Residing in heaven and yet instantiated when and where He pleases on earth.
But unlike the Word of God in the Old Testament, the Word in heaven now has a body.
He has facial features, fingers, toes, a heart, lungs, a stomach, kidneys. He has wounds in
His hands and feet and side.
The Word of God in heaven now intercedes for us. He prays for us. His heavenly Father
looks at Him, sees His wounds, and is reminded of the sacrifice He made for the whole
earth. Everyone in heaven now looks at Christ and is reminded that atonement is
complete. All sins are paid for. Death has been defeated, hell has even been conquered.
The Word of God will move once again, when He returns with His angels and archangels
and all the saints of old to destroy this fallen creation and establish a new heaven and a
new earth.
And then He will rest. Not resting in preparation for His incarnation, not waiting for His
triumphant return. But eternal rest.
The Word of God is still living and active.
And while the Word-Made-Flesh was here on earth, He was moving around. A lot.
He even said once that the son of man – Himself – has no place to lay His head,
(Matthew 8:20).
And so when you feel flung all around the world, when you feel as though you are
constantly on the move, constantly packing up and finding a new place to live,
constantly figuring out “what’s next,” constantly trying to reconcile your desire to rest
with the fallen world’s demands to move about anxiously.
Remember that Christ did all of that.
As Peter will tell us on Sunday, “you suffer, knowing that Christ suffered the same
things.”
Ascension is the end of the Easter Season, but it’s also a continuation thereof. And really
everything that Christians have said or done for the past nineteen hundred years has been
“in the season” of the Ascension.
The tomb is empty.
Christ is in heaven.
Christ rests, knowing there will be one last work He has been appointed to do.
Christ doesn’t even know when that is, only the Father does.
And so rest, knowing that your final rest has not found you yet.
Rest, knowing that Christ is in heaven, resting, but also preparing for the final act of
creation, in which you – who have praised the Word in heaven, heard the Word when it
is read aloud, and eaten that Word when He deigns to give you His body and Blood – the
final act of creation in which you will find eternal rest from all your labors.
Amen.