Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/79

Contributor - E. R. Doyle

Title - Jesus of Nazareth Passeth

Topic - Ascension

St. Luke 18: 37

Thursday, May 24th marks the commemoration of our Lord's Ascension into the Heavenly places, and St. Luke records for us the manner of His passing: "Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them. And while He blessed them He was parted from them and carried up into Heaven."

The one fact that arises most clearly from this account of the Ascension is this: The people of this earth see Him no longer as they used to see Him. He has ascended into the heavens. He is gone. He is no longer upon this earth in visible and bodily form.

The question now arises: How are we to regard this Jesus? Is He so completely gone that we can know Him no longer? Or, as St. Luke suggests in the words of our text, does this Jesus of Nazareth still pass by.

There are people who think of God as a kind of pure Spirit - a Spirit who knows all, who sees all, and who is everywhere present. God is a Spirit who was the same ages before we were born, and who will be the same ages after we are gone. And because He is this kind of God who is everywhere at all times, He seems a little vague and nebulous - a sort of all-pervading power. An idea like this can be found in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis where we find the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the formless waters. This is the God who made the heavens and the earth, and all living things. He made the sun and the moon and, like something thrown in as an afterthought, 'He made the stars also'.

Now it is true that this 'kind' of God may seem very vague and nebulous. He seems far away and untouchable. A God who can do all this simply by an act of His will, and who exists somewhere far outside the confines of the universe, how could such a Great Spirit possibly be interested in the little affairs of men.

But surely if we wish to get a true picture of God we must be prepared to read further than the first chapter of the Bible. But many people, having insisted that we should look for God afar off in the great mysteries of the universe, are apparently unwilling to look for Him in the second chapter of Genesis which lies right close to their hand. In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis we get a very different picture of God - not a God who is afar off, not a God who is indifferent to the lives of men, but a God who seeks men out for fellowship and conversation. He is not just a Great Spirit who broods and hovers over the face of His creation, He is a God who seeks men out, a God who desires to walk and talk with man in the garden in the cool of the evening.

Ever and always in His Gospel Jesus insisted that God still desired fellowship and communion with His children. Jesus taught us that we must certainly keep faith with God the great Creator and Preserver of all things, the source and sustainer of our life and being. But Jesus also taught that God is much closer than this. Men could go to see Him at Bethlehem. They could walk with Him in Galilee. They could eat with Him in the Upper Room. They could watch His agony in Gethsemane, but, above all, they could experience the balm of His forgiveness in the Blood of the Cross.

This Jesus still passes by today. We have His promise of this: "ere two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. This is the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is not gone to some far off place that is unreachable by us. This Jesus of Bethlehem, of Galilee, of the Upper Room, of Gethsemane. of Calvary, this same Jesus still passes by where we live. He still likes to walk with us in the garden of our souls.

And so without any unreality, and without any discounting of the language as merely childish, we may look forward to all the succession of the days of our lives, and say of each and every one of them: "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by."

And, as He passes, He is ready still to heal our infirmities, to strengthen our faith, to aid us in difficulty, to enter into the house of the soul and abide with us as long as we will have Him there, to be our personal friend with whom, each day, we may walk and hold conversation.

So let us never be content with the kind of absentee God that some people would fob off on us.

Let us never be content with a mere Moral Force, a Vague Spirit, an All-pervading Presence; but let us rather seek the real God, the personal God, the Jesus of the Gospels who, upon all the pathways of our lives, continues to do what He always has done - Jesus of Nazareth passes by.

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