The thing that befell at Bethlehem, in the stable of the inn, was a
commonplace and insignificant enough event looked at from the
outside: the birth of a child to a young mother. It had its elements
of pathos in its occurring at a distance from home, among the
publicity and discomforts of an inn stable, and with some cloud of
suspicion over the mother's fair fame. But the outside of a fact is
the least part of it. A little film of sea-weed floats upon the
surface, but there are fathoms of it below the water. Men said, 'A
child is born.' Angels said, and bowed their faces in adoration,
'The Word has become flesh'. The eternal, self-communicating
personality in the Godhead, passed voluntarily into the condition of
humanity. Jesus was born, the Son of God came. Only when we hold
fast by that great truth do we pierce to the centre of what was done
in that poor stable, and possess the key to all the wonders of His
life and death.
From the manger we pass to the mountain. A life begun by such a
birth cannot be ended, as I have said, by a mere ordinary death. The
Alpha and the Omega of that alphabet must belong to the same fount
of type. A divine conformity forbids that He who was born of the
Virgin Mary should have His body laid to rest in an undistinguished
grave. And so what Bethlehem began, Olivet carries on.
Note the circumstances of this second of these great moments. The
place is significant. Almost within sight of the city, a stone's
throw probably from the home where He had lodged, and where He had
conquered death in the person of Lazurus; not far from the turn of the
road where the tears had come into His eyes amidst the shouting of the
rustic procession, as He had looked across the valley; just above
Gethsemane, where He had agonised on that bare hillside to which He
had often gone for communion with the Father in heaven. There, in some
dimple of the hill, and unseen but by the little group that surrounded
Him, He passed from their midst. The manner of the departure is yet
more significant than the place. Here were no whirlwind, no chariots
and horses of fire, no sudden rapture; but, as the narrative makes
emphatic, a slow, leisurely, self-originated floating upwards. He was
borne up from them, and no outward vehicle or help was needed; but by
His own volition and power He rose towards the heavens. 'And a cloud
received Him out of their sight'--the Shechinah cloud, the bright
symbol of the Divine Presence which had shone round the shepherds on
the pastures of Bethlehem, and enwrapped Him and the three disciples
on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft
folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly
seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle
into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach
the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered
into the glory which He 'had with the Father before the world was.'
Such was the second of these moments.
The third great moment corresponds to these, is required by them,
and crowns them. The Ascension was not only the close of Christ's
earthly life which would preserve congruity with its beginning, but
it was also the clear manifestation that, as He came of His own
will, so He departed by His own volition. 'I came forth from the
Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go
unto the Father.' Thus the earthly life is, as it were, islanded in
a sea of glory, and that which stretches away beyond the last moment
of visibility, is like that which stretched away beyond the first
moment of corporeity; the eternal union with the eternal Father. But
such an entrance on and departure from earth, and such a career on
earth, can only end in that coming again of which the angels spoke
to the gazing eleven.
Mark the emphasis of their words. 'This same Jesus,' the same in His
manhood, 'shall so come, in like manner, as ye have seen Him go.'
How much the 'in like manner' may mean we can scarcely dogmatically
affirm. But this, at least, is clear, that it cannot mean less than
corporeally visible, locally surrounded by angel-guards, and
perhaps, according to a mysterious prophecy, to the same spot from
which He ascended. But, at all events, there are the three moments
in the manifestation of the Son of God.
II. Look, in the second place, at the threefold phases of our Lord's
activity which are thus suggested.
I need not dwell, in more than a sentence or two, on the first of
these. Each of these three moments is the inauguration of a form of
activity which lasts till the emergence of the next of the triad.
The birth at Bethlehem had, for its consequence and purpose, a
threefold end: the revelation of God in humanity, the manifestation
of perfect manhood to men, and the rendering of the great sacrifice
for the sins of the world. These three--showing us God; showing
ourselves as we are and as we may be; as we ought to be, and,
blessed be His name, as we shall be, if we observe the conditions;
and the making reconciliation for the sins of the whole world--these
are the things for which the Babe lying in the manger was born and
came under the limitations of humanity.
Turn to the second of the three, and what shall we say of it? That
Ascension has for its great purpose the application to men of the
results of the Incarnation. He was born that He might show us God
and ourselves, and that He might die for us. He ascended up on high
in order that the benefits of that Revelation and Atonement might be
extended through, and appropriated by, the whole world.
One chief thought which is enforced by the narrative of the
Ascension is the permanence, the eternity of the humanity of Jesus
Christ. He ascended up where He was before, but He who ascended is
not altogether the same as He who had been there before, for He has
taken up with Him our nature to the centre of the universe and the
throne of God, and there, 'bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh,' a true man in body, soul, and spirit, He lives and reigns.
The cradle at Bethlehem assumes even greater solemnity when we think
of it as the beginning of a humanity that is never laid aside. So we
can look confidently to all that blaze of light where He sits, and
feel that, howsoever the body of His humiliation may have been
changed into the body of His glory, He still remains corporeally and
spiritually a true Son of man. Thus the face that looks down from
amidst the blaze, though it be 'as the sun shineth in his strength,'
is the old face; and the breast which is girded with the golden
girdle is the same breast on which the seer had leaned his happy
head; and the hand that holds the sceptre is the hand that was
pierced with the nails; and the Christ that is ascended up on high
is the Christ that loved and pitied adulteresses and publicans, and
took the little child in His gracious arms--'The same yesterday, and
to-day, and for ever.'
Christ's Ascension is as the broad seal of heaven attesting the
completeness of His work on earth. It inaugurates His repose which
is not the sign of His weariness, but of His having finished all
which He was born to do. But that repose is not idleness. Rather it
is full of activity.
On the Cross He shouted with a great voice ere He died, 'It is
finished.' But centuries, perhaps millenniums, yet will have to
elapse before the choirs of angels shall be able to chant, 'It is
done: the kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of God and of His
Christ.' All the interval is filled by the working of that ascended
Lord whose session at the right hand of God is not only symbolical
of perfect repose and a completed sacrifice, but also of perfect
activity in and with His servants.
He has gone--to rest, to reign, to work, to intercede, and to
prepare a place for us. For if our Brother be indeed at the right
hand of God, then our faltering feet may travel to the Throne, and
our sinful selves may be at home there. The living Christ, working
to-day, is that of which the Ascension from Olivet gives us the
guarantee.
The third great moment will inaugurate yet another form of activity
as necessary and certain as either of the two preceding. For if His
cradle was what we believe it to have been, and if His sacrifice was
what Scripture tells us it is, and if through all the ages He,
crowned and regnant, is working for the diffusion of the powers of
His Cross and the benefits of His Incarnation, there can be no end
to that course except the one which is expressed for us by the
angels' message to the gazing disciples: He shall so come in like
manner as ye have seen Him go. He will come to manifest Himself as
the King of the world and its Lord and Redeemer. He will come to
inaugurate the great act of Judgment, which His great act of
Redemption necessarily draws after it, and Himself be the Arbiter of
the fates of men, the determining factor in whose fates has been
their relation to Him. No doubt many who never heard His name upon
earth will, in that day be, by His clear eye and perfect judgment,
discerned to have visited the sick and the imprisoned, and to have
done many acts for His sake. And for us who know Him, and have heard
His name, the way in which we stand affected in heart and will to
Christ reveals and settles our whole character, shapes our whole
being, and will determine our whole destiny. He comes, not only to
manifest Himself so as that 'every eye shall see Him,' and to divide
the sheep from the goats, but also in order that He may reign for
ever and gather into the fellowship of His love and the community of
His joys all who love and trust Him here. These are the triple
phases of our Lord's activity suggested by the three great moments.
III. Lastly, notice the triple attitude which we should assume to
Him and to them.
For the first, the cradle, with its consequence of the Cross, our
response is clinging faith, grateful memory, earnest following, and
close conformity. For the second, the Ascension, with its
consequence of a Christ that lives and labours for us, and is with
us, our attitude ought to be an intense realisation of the fact of
His present working and of His present abode with us. The centre of
Christian doctrine has, amongst average Christians, been far too
exclusively fixed within the limits of the earthly life, and in the
interests of a true and comprehensive grasp of all the blessedness
that Christianity is capable of bringing to men, I would protest
against that type of thought, earnest and true as it may be within
its narrow limits, which is always pointing men to the past fact of
a Cross, and slurs over and obscures the present fact of a living
Christ who is with us, and in us. One difference between Him and all
other benefactors and teachers and helpers is this, that, as ages go
on, thicker and ever-thickening folds of misty oblivion wrap them,
and their influence diminishes as new circumstances emerge, but this
Christ's power laughs at the centuries, and is untinged by oblivion,
and is never out of date. For all others we have to say--'having
served his generation,' or a generation or two more, 'according to
the will of God, he fell on sleep.' But Christ knows no corruption,
and is for ever more the Leader, and the Companion, and the Friend,
of each new age.
Brethren! the Cross is incomplete without the throne. We are told to
go back to the historical Christ. Yes, Amen, I say! But do not let
that make us lose our grasp of the living Christ who is with us to-day.
Whilst we rejoice over the 'Christ that died,' let us go on with Paul
to say, 'Yea! rather, that is risen again, and is even at the right
hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.'
For that future, discredited as the thought of the second corporeal
coming of the Lord Jesus in visible fashion and to a locality has
been by the fancies and the vagaries of so-called Apocalyptic
expositors, let us not forget that it is the hope of Christ's
Church, and that 'they who love His appearing' is, by the Apostle,
used as the description and definition of the Christian character.
We have to look forwards as well as backwards and upwards, and to
rejoice in the sure and certain confidence that the Christ who has
come is the Christ who will come.
For us the past should be full of Him, and memory and faith should
cling to His Incarnation and His Cross. The present should be full
of Him, and our hearts should commune with Him amidst the toils of
earth. The future should be full of Him, and our hopes should be
based upon no vague anticipations of a perfectibility of humanity,
nor upon any dim dreams of what may lie beyond the grave; but upon
the concrete fact that Jesus Christ has risen, and that Jesus Christ
is glorified. Does my faith grasp the Christ that was--who died for
me? Does my heart cling to the Christ who is--who lives and reigns,
and with whom my life is hid in God? Do my hopes crystallise round,
and anchor upon, the Christ that is to come, and pierce the dimness
of the future and the gloom of the grave, looking onwards to that
day of days when He, who is our life, shall appear, and we shall
appear also with Him in glory?