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What are the things that give you joy? Where is that joy grounded? Those are important questions in the light of our present situation (and you probably feel it very keenly in terms of a minister’s place as a role model within the church, setting the tempo and the tone of joyful worship).
But so much that has been taken from us or denied to us were legitimate sources of our God-given joy. People we have known and loved, whose absence we have felt keenly. In some cases that separation is now permanent.
Places that have been sacred spaces of fellowship and support. Not just church buildings but conference spaces and the regular haunts for coffee and prayer with a brother.
You get the feeling that this kind of thing is behind the struggles expressed in Psalm 42/43 - “I remember…how I used to go to the house of God…among the festive throng” - perhaps as the leader of the procession. And now? “My tears have been my food day and night…”
There is something right and proper about the joys of people and places, something entirely good about the praise to God it yields. Which makes the separation and the loss all the harder to bear.
So whilst it’s entirely proper to lament those absences and not for a moment would I want to limit the agonies that we have all experienced, it’s really interesting to notice that we find Jesus’ disciples rejoicing in his absence.
They had spent 3 years in his company, in his love and in the joy that radiated from him. His death was a wrenching experience, collapsing their joys and closing their hopes. Which made his resurrection the most sublime re-birth of the deepest joy - their Lord and Saviour was alive!
Death had been overcome; he was back with them and nothing had the power to steal him from them ever again.
But in the final verses of Luke's gospel we see him leaving them once more, by his own choice, and for a far longer period. We might expect to see them perplexed and even inconsolable; was this one more unexpected denial of their joys?
In the most emphatic terms it was not: let me read the verses to you (Luke 24:50-52)
"When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God."
They rejoiced that he was absent from them. After he was taken from them, hidden from them, no longer physically present, no longer within reach and completely out of sight, they were filled with great and inexpressible joy.
That isn't, in any sense, a lesson in stiff-upper-lip emotional shutdown. We do those we serve a great disservice when we model that kind of response - we aren’t advocates of Greek stoicism. When loved ones and life's blessings are lost to us it is entirely proper to grieve.
Of course their joy wasn’t rooted in Jesus’ absence but in what that absence meant - and that meaning is ladled into these few short verses in generous measure.
He lifted up his hands and blessed them - he stands as the authentic High Priest who has authority to bless, beyond the provisions of the Law. The High Priest of a new covenant, pouring-out grace upon grace. Arms raised in triumphant, joyful blessing.
When John was given that wonderful vision of our Lord Jesus in Revelation 1, the One he sees is dressed in High Priestly garb - the One who stands to bless.
Well, having raised his hands to bless them, “he left them and was taken up into heaven” - that’s where their joy is rooted. So let’s think about what that means.
i. He went into heaven and remains there as the Priest whose sacrifice for sin was lastingly effective.
As Hebrews expresses it, “When he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven”. Every mis-step, every mistake, every foible and fall, every sordid thought and sinfully-warped motivation - all were answered for, atoned for, by this great High Priest.
He had gone from them, into heaven itself, there to plead for them, to demonstrate the wounds of his all-sufficient sacrifice. Through the eternal Spirit he had offered himself unblemished to God and so his blood cleansed their consciences from acts that lead to death, that they might serve the living God in the power of his Spirit.
How much we need to remember that and allow our hearts to be filled with serious, solemn joy: our sins, forgiven. Our hearts, cleansed.
Maybe these past months have exposed aspects of your heart you wish you hadn’t seen - under pressure, things happen to us and within us. Not just, as Queen & David Bowie said, “the terror of knowing what the world is about, Watching some good friends scream, ‘Let me out!’” but knowing what you’re about, in the long and lonely struggle of temptation and yes, maybe screaming, ‘Let me out’.
Our Lord Jesus Christ offered a full answer to all our sins. Nothing excluded, nothing unatoned for.
That’s a cause for a truly humbled joy.
ii. He went there as the High Priest who is deeply touched by the infirmities of his people and prays for them.
For us, dear friends, with such tenderness of feeling, such discerning insight into our hearts, our needs; with such wisdom and compassion that his prayers are never inappropriate, never unthinking.
He knows you, your heart and all that is in there. All your anxiety. All your sense of failure (‘If I was a better minister/elder the church would have weathered this crisis a lot better than it has done….’). All your complex personality and emotional confusion.
I guess you’ve seen the research and read the articles:
There’s a prediction of a Protestant Apocalypse (Carl Trueman’s most recent article) where 30% of previous attenders aren’t expected to return to church. But, closer to home, there’s research that suggests large numbers of pastors will exit the ministry this autumn onwards, because of the pressures they’ve borne.
We know how to deal with that kind of stuff: it’s the US, not the UK. But maybe in your heart of hearts you feel the weight of it. Perhaps you’re seeing a fall-off. And maybe you know that, for yourself, the edge is a lot closer than it’s ever been.
You read stuff like the latest Carey Nieuwhof article where he talks about the 5 types of leader we’re currently seeing - Deniers, Reverters, Resigners, Adapters and Innovators. You know it makes sense to aspire to be the last of those but there’s such a pull in your soul to being one of the others.
We need to pray for each other, talk to each other, as never before. But we also need to know this, as never before: our great High Priest prays for us.
He knows us, far more than we ourselves do; and in that knowledge he prays, from his heart, for you. He prays for us by name - not intrusively but in order to raise us into his vibrant life of joy, to fill-out our weaknesses with his strength.
iii. He went there as the priest who is King over all and from where he would continually govern all things for the sake of his people.
He’s a priest in the order of Melchizedek - the Priest who is also King. And so we joyfully affirm and sing, He is Lord, he is Lord, he is risen from the dead and he is Lord - the ascended, reigning King.
And glory radiates from his face - John said it was like the sun shining in all its brilliance!
He is Lord, not our circumstances, not our government, not the forces of social media, not big business, not disease. Listen to his words: “I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”
Those are the words of a King.
All of which means that his purposes of grace for the world stand. They have not been revoked and they have not been negated by anything that has happened or anything that will happen.
Do you know what these next months will look like? These next years? He does. And do you know what?
- He is going to continue to see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.
- He is going to enlarge the borders of his kingdom.
- He is going to grow his family: the hopelessly sorrowful who live in a land of deep darkness, in the shadow of death, will find their mourning changed to joy and will find themselves clothed in garments of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
Because he is the Lord who saves.
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All of this is why they were able to rejoice in his absence. If you knew these things, wouldn’t you stay continually at the temple, praising God?
The meaning of his absence would never change - despite all the changes in their circumstances, despite all the challenges they would face, despite the hard choices they would need to make in following their Lord, even to the shedding of their blood.
And it retains its meaning, its sweetness and its power today.
The present, high-priestly reign of King Jesus has the capacity to enter our experiences with real power - not as a denial of our sorrows and anguish but as the living presence of our loyal and loving Lord. And as the certain promise of his consummated victory over all powers of chaos and darkness.
As we give thanks to God for every good and perfect gift that comes from him, and as we mourn their absence, our joy is founded upon and rooted in our ascended Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who raises his hands in blessing over his people. He is the risen Lord, enthroned at the right hand of the majesty on high. The hope we have in him has entered the inner sanctuary, behind the curtain, because that is where he himself is, on our behalf.
And from there, from the very throne of God, flow rivers of inexpressibly glorious joy.
