Ascension C
May 13, 2010
Luke 24:44-53
Sermon
There’s a way to learn a lot about a person without asking questions about their life. There’s a way to
read a person’s life without opening up a book. There’s a way to get a general sense about the work that
somebody did for a living without asking or looking up employment records. There’s a way to tell a lot about a
person—by looking at their hands. In many cases your hands tell the story of your life. If you have hands that
are rough—you probably have a physically demanding job. If you have hands that are rough and stained with
grease—you probably are a mechanic. If you have soft and dainty hands you may have worked in an office
environment. If your hands are all gnarled up you probably have arthritis due to hard work or a repetitive
motion that you had to do for a long time. If you have cuts and bruises all over your hands you might be some
type of bare-knuckle brawler or just a hard worker.
Do you see what I mean when I say that your hands tell the story of your life? Your hands may not give
away too many specifics but they help to give people a general sense of what your life was like. The same
holds true for Jesus. His hands tell the story of his life—and his death. As we see those hands with the eyes of
faith we are given great joy and peace because we see the hands of the one who accomplished our salvation. As
Isaiah says, “He was pierced for our transgressions.” As we celebrate the ascension today we take a special
look at the hands of Jesus which he showed his disciples just before he ascended into heaven. See the hands of
Jesus. His hands bear the battle scars. His hands give the blessing.
I. His hands bear the battle scars
Jesus’ hands bear the scars of his battle and so does his body. Have you ever thought that you bear
battle scars too? You bear scars on your body due to your battle with things like sickness, disease, surgery,
accidents, motherhood, childhood, and, let’s face it, we bear the scars of our battles with youthful naïveté and,
dare we say, youthful stupidity.
Many of you bear the scars of these battles on your body. Your hands and your joints have arthritis in
them. Many of you mothers bear the scars on your bodies from C-sections. Many of us bear the scars from
when we did something foolish without thinking through the consequences. Sometimes we bear the physical
scars that others have inflicted upon us. Other times we bear the consequences of our sinful words and actions
on our bodies. The scars on your body tell a story about you. Those scars can tell a story about a heroic, brave,
and strong person. Those scars can also tell a story about a person who has gone through much hurt and loss.
Some scars can be funny while other scars can bring back very painful memories.
That brings us to another point today. We not only bear physical scars but we also bear emotional scars.
God has made us to also be emotional beings. We can bear emotional scars due to the loss of loved ones. We
can bear emotional scars due to something that wasn’t our fault at all but was inflicted upon us by somebody
who wanted to hurt us. We can bear emotional scars that actually cripple our lives due to being abandoned by
somebody or due to some poor parenting.
As you are all well aware of, the emotional scars are often intertwined with the physical scars. But the
amazing thing is that the emotional scars are much harder to get over than the physical scars. The physical
scars heal on their own but the emotional damage inflicted by them sometimes never heals—at least not
properly—without the help of a loving God. If we let these emotional scars go untreated it very often leads to
broken relationships and abnormal personalities.
Allow me to give you some examples. There have been studies done in regards to why some women are
very promiscuous. What is very often the reason for women being promiscuous is because they never had a
close relationship with their fathers. And so those women go out seeking the male attention that they never
received from their fathers and, too often, because of the pigishness of men, the only attention that they give
women is sexual.
Here’s another example. If a person has been abandoned by just about everybody they loved in life then
that person is not going to be very good at trusting others. That person is going to have problems in their future
relationships.
I could give you numerous other examples of how human psychology helps us to understand the reasons
why some people are the way they are but you get the idea. We all bear scars that affect us.
This is especially true in the spiritual scars that we bear. These spiritual scars come from our battle with
sin, temptation, and all the forces of evil around us. Just like our physical and emotional scars map out our
lives, so also our spiritual scars map out our spiritual lives. Some of us have had a long and winding spiritual
journey while others of us have had a fairly easy and straight spiritual journey.
I think about the young person who let his college peers and professors lead him away from the truth of
God’s Word and, because of that, lived in complete unbelief. Because of his unbelief he scorned any
“oppressive” rules from any religion. He wasted away due to the consequences of his sinful life—sexually
transmitted diseases, liver damage from alcohol, etc.
I also think about the person in last month’s Forward in Christ. He detailed how he left Christianity and
lived a homosexual lifestyle for about a decade before he turned back to God in repentance and faith.
Our spiritual scars aren’t just a battle with sin and temptation, they are a battle with God—a battle
between God’s will for us and our will for ourselves. That battle can get downright ugly, can’t it? Maybe
you’ve really felt it in your life or in the life of someone close to you. These scars can be particularly nasty and,
unfortunately, can bar us from entrance into heaven. The worst scar that we get is a guilty conscience before a
holy God. The guilt of just one sin bars us from entrance into heaven because God demands perfection.
But there are other spiritual scars that are tied into our physical scars. As much as some people think
that God wanted to oppress us with his laws the reality is that if we all obeyed his laws we wouldn’t have any of
these scars in our lives. But as it is we haven’t kept that law perfectly and what God lovingly intended for us
has been shattered by the painful consequences of sin—such as: broken relationships and marriages, family
strife, bad health (disease, and the like). God’s “oppressive” laws were meant to protect us from danger—they
were created out of God’s love and concern for our spiritual and physical well-being. God wanted to protect us
from the painful consequences of sin.
Just ask some of the great characters of the Bible about the painful consequences of sin and giving into
temptation. Ask King David what happened to him after he gave in to the temptation to commit adultery with
Bathsheba. Ask him how much worse things got when he tried to cover up his sin with even more sins when he
tried to cover up his sin by having Bathsheba’s husband murdered. As you read David’s Psalms you can see
just how horrible the spiritual, emotional, and physical consequences of his sin was.
Ask Solomon about the painful consequences of his sins as he forsook his God for sexual pleasure. God
tore the kingdom in half because of it. And Solomon may not even be in heaven because of it. The list could go
on of characters who suffered spiritual scars like guilt before God and consequences of sin. That list would also
have to include us because we’ve all battled sin, temptation, and the desires of a loving God.
Our scars are the reason why Jesus had to bear the battle scars on his body. He bore those scars for you.
His scars were the only thing that could completely take away our spiritual scars of guilt before God. His scars
were the only thing that got us away from our battle with God, sin, and temptation.
You are living proof of this reality. But not just you. Think of King David. Listen to what he says in
Psalm 32. It was forgiveness, won for him by a future Savior, that healed David’s guilt and grief—his spiritual
scars. It is forgiveness, won for you by Jesus, that heals your spiritual scars. This you have come to know and
see through the eyes of faith in him whose hands still bear the battle scars.
The hands of Jesus tell you his story. They tell you of his suffering which paid for your sins. But those
hands—lifted high on this ascension day, tell you of the blessings that he gives from them daily.
II. His hands give the blessing
This is perhaps the greatest comfort that the ascension gives us. Not only has Jesus completed his work
of salvation, but he now sits at the right hand of God the Father fulfilling his role as King and carrying out his
promises to use his position for the good of his people.
From his throne in heaven he gives you every temporal and eternal blessing. “Every good and perfect
gift comes from above.” That is the relevance of today’s celebration in your life. Today, Jesus’ ascension into
heaven gives you the confidence to trust that life isn’t just a random sequence of events but that it is much more
than that. Life, thanks to the power and promise of the ascended Savior, is a series of coordinated events that
bring you ever closer to your Savior and give you more physical and spiritual blessings than we could ever
need.
May this truth reign supreme in your hearts daily so that you can become like the disciples who saw him
ascend to heaven with their physical eyes: witnesses of the importance and relevance of the healing power of
Jesus’ battle scars. May you become witnesses of this by preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’
name to all people in your life. Amen.