Acts 1:1-11
On top of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is a very small Crusader-era church called “The Chapel of the Ascension.” Unlike the overwhelmingly popular Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which marks the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, this little chapel sees a lot fewer visitors. This little church, which has been administered by Muslims since the end of the crusades, marks the traditional site of the events we just read about: Jesus’ ascension into heaven. The Muslims believed that Jesus was a prophet, so they maintain the site and allow Christian pilgrims to come and see what’s inside.
And what’s inside is a small area that was traditionally said to contain the footprints of Jesus—the place where he stood right before he was taken up. Christian pilgrims in the medieval period would take home dust from this little spot as relics of their Holy Land visit but, like the pieces of the “true cross” we talked about a few weeks ago, if you took all that sacred dust and put it together, Jesus footprint would be about size 500.
It’s interesting, though, that this little chapel is often not on the main tour route for visitors to the Holy Land today. Maybe that’s because the ascension of Jesus has been a downplayed story in many Christian churches. Visitors flock to the Holy Sepulcher and the site of the Upper Room – representing Maundy Thursday, Easter, and Pentecost—but the ascension gets skipped.
I want to argue today, however, that that missing piece is vitally important to our understanding of the story of Jesus and the story of the church. Forty days after Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus tells his disciples what they are to do next with that reality. There on the Mount of Olives, Jesus gives his disciples a strategy for implementing the resurrection life of the new creation in the present. He has spent three years instructing and training them for this moment and now, as he ascends to take his royal place with the Father, he commissions his disciples to carry on his work until he returns to bring it to completion.
Remember that the author of Acts and the author of the Gospel of Luke are the same person. Acts is a kind of part 2 to Luke’s Gospel—the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say. The end of Luke and the beginning of Acts thus overlap, much like in the way a movie sequel has to have a brief synopsis of what happened previously in order catch the viewer up on the action. Luke ends with Jesus instructing his disciples and then ascending into heaven, and Acts picks up the action and expands it. The point is that the ascension of Jesus is a key component in the whole story of how the kingdom movement, the resurrection movement of Jesus is going to bring the surprise of hope to the whole world.
So, how does that movement unfold, and what’s our part in it? That’s the question we need to deal with if we’re going to take the next step in understanding and living out resurrection. There are three key components here that I think we need to embrace if we as individuals and as a church are to be part of the transformational movement that Jesus is launching in the world. If we are to be resurrection people, then we need to embrace the three tasks that Jesus gives his disciples before his ascension: word, waiting, and witnessing.
First, word. In verses 1-3, Luke gives us a synopsis of what Jesus “did and taught” in the 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension. Forty is an important number in the Bible because it’s a number of preparation. Noah was in the ark 40 days, Israel was in the desert 40 years, Jesus was tempted for 40 days –all precursors to a new beginning. In those 40 days between Easter and Ascension, Jesus was preparing his disciples for their new mission by both teaching them about the kingdom of God and giving them “convincing proofs” that he was, indeed, raised from the dead.
I think it’s interesting that even after three years of teaching, Jesus spends 40 more days instructing his disciples. Maybe it’s because he knew they were guys who have a tendency to start working at things before they read the directions and wind up with a lot of spare parts in the end. Before he leaves them and before they go charging off into the world, Jesus wants them to wait and make sure that they have read all the directions.
And what were those directions? Well, Luke tells us at the end of his Gospel that Jesus primary instruction to the disciples was grounded in Scripture. Luke 24:44 – “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
Jesus uses the whole story of Scripture to place his ministry, his death, and his resurrection into context. As we’ve been saying throughout the last several sermon series, if we really want to understand Jesus, we have to understand him through the lens of the whole Bible and the story of Israel. Whatever we believe and whatever we do must be grounded in that word.
But like the disciples, we need to be willing to be immersed in that word and understand where it is leading us. The Bible does not stand for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” as someone sent me in an email this week, but rather it is the instruction and revelation of how God comes to earth and redeems his good creation. That is what is happening in the work of Jesus, and that is what the continuing work of the disciples is all about. They are to take this kingdom movement and make it viral—the word of the kingdom becoming flesh in their lives and in their work.
If we’re going to be disciples of Jesus who enact his kingdom movement, then we have to be willing to be not only students of Scripture, but allow ourselves to be immersed in it every day as Jesus was. We need to see it as a story—God’s story, God’s mission—in which we’re invited to participate. Jesus instructs his disciples in the word, and calls us to join them in making it the grounding foundation of our lives as his disciples. Daily reading, and regular study with others anchors our sense of mission.
That immersion in the word leads to the second task we need to embrace as disciples—waiting. In Acts 1:4, Jesus orders his disciples not to go rushing off into the world with their newfound knowledge but, rather, they are to “wait there for the promise of the Father” and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Waiting isn’t something that we humans tend to do well. How many of us enjoy waiting in line, or waiting in traffic, for example? The disciples were no exception. Jesus tells them to wait in Jerusalem for God to give them his promised empowering Spirit, but the disciples respond by asking an impatient, “are we there yet” kind of question. Yeah, yeah, but Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?
Now, they are right in connecting Jesus’ resurrection with the restoration of the whole world through the promise to Israel—this is what the Scriptures are about, after all, and Jesus has instructed them as such. But they misunderstand that this promise of restoration needs to be proclaimed throughout the world. They will not merely be bystanders to this project, but rather the ones who will help to bring it to reality. This is the work that Jesus has been doing all along and now it will be their work. It will not be an easy task and they will not be able to do it on their own. Jesus did not choose these disciples because they were the best and brightest and most capable people. He chose them, as God often chooses people, because God’s power can be revealed through them. They had no power of their own, only the power that God would give them. And that power will come through the dynamic work of the Holy Spirit coming upon them.
Acts 2 tells us what the work of the Spirit accomplishes in these simple people—they move from hiding out in locked room to speaking boldly in the streets. They move from being timid, unlearned men to speaking in many languages. They will challenge authorities and risk their lives for the good news of the kingdom—but first they will have to wait.
As we said last week, most people view “spirituality” as a rather passive exercise—a sense of good feelings and inner peace, if you will. That’s not the kind of Spirit that is at work in Scripture and here in the book of Acts. The Holy Spirit is none other than the Spirit of God and the ongoing Spirit of Christ—the dynamic member of the Trinity that indwells and empowers people to do the work of the Lord. There is no passivity in the Spirit, but the Spirit is always moving us outward.
At the same time, however, the Spirit is not an uninvited guest in our lives. To receive the Spirit is to cultivate an openness to God’s presence. Biblically speaking, “waiting upon the Lord” is not a passive activity, but an active one. We actively seek God’s presence and we await it anxiously with anticipation. Jesus tells his disciples that they need to wait for the Spirit’s power, and they do so—not by sitting around wondering when the Spirit would come but rather (v. 14) by constantly devoting themselves to prayer. Notice also that they don’t wait as individuals who are hoping for a personal spiritual experience, but rather as a community. When the Spirit comes they are “all together in one place” (2:1).
Besides a biblical illiteracy, one of the major problems in the church is a failure to wait upon the Lord, to wait upon the Spirit through prayer. Churches come up with lots of activities and programs to look busy, but the primary work of the church is done through the Spirit and we wait on the Spirit in prayer. Apart from the Spirit, we are powerless. When we fail to wait in prayer, we will fail because we try to do everything under our own power.
I know I struggle in this area. I am, like the disciples, sometimes apt to do things that I think God wants me to do without first waiting upon the Spirit in prayer. I can do things under my own power for a while, but that power will always fade. When I wait upon the Spirit’s power in prayer, however, those things will prosper and make a great impact on the world. There are lots of burned out pastors and burned out churches out there who thought they could do it on their own without waiting on the Spirit. I don’t want to be one of them.
I want to invite us to learn how to wait together. We will soon have altar rails here in our sanctuary where we can kneel together in prayer for each other and for the needs of the church and the world. That’s one way we can wait upon the Spirit together, but there are many others. A daily entry into the word and daily prayer are two ways we become shaped for God’s mission.
Word and waiting then lead us to the third task: witnessing. Jesus tells the disciples that once the Spirit has come upon them and empowered them, they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (v. 8). This is really the thesis statement of the whole book of Acts because this is precisely what the disciples will do. But what does being a “witness” mean?
Well, remember where we’ve been. Jesus’ resurrection is the launch of God’s new creation and the vindication of Jesus as Israel’s true Messiah and the world’s true Lord and King. In the first century world, when someone was enthroned as king or emperor, that new authority would take effect through heralds going off throughout the territory announcing the good news that “We have a new king.” This was good news indeed because a arrival of a new king meant the restoration of order and not the chaos of anarchy. Imagine, for example, a new Roman emperor coming to power and heralds being sent as far as Britain and Spain and Egypt—literally to the ends of the empire—to announce the emperor’s enthronement.
That’s the image we get here. The disciples are asking about the kingdom, when it will come about…and Jesus is telling them that in one sense the kingdom is already here because the king has beaten his enemies (for Jesus, the enemy of sin and death) and is taking his place as God’s Messiah and the world’s righteous ruler. And yet, his kingdom is not all the way here yet. The world is still not fully and visibly living under God’s just and healing rule. The kingdom is already here and not yet fully here, and disciples live in this in-between time. The disciples are to go out as heralds—witnesses to a crucified Lord, witnesses to his resurrection, witnesses to the transforming power of God, witnesses to Jesus as the world’s true king—and proclaim that his kingdom is at hand.
The disciples were thus to be the bearers of this good news of the world’s true king, but notice their travel agenda. They were to begin in Jerusalem—the place where Jesus had been crucified and where there were people looking for them, too. To Judea and Samaria—Samaria being Israel’s bitter enemy. And to the ends of the earth—to a Roman empire that already had a lord named Caesar and who would not take kindly to the enthronement of a rival. The disciples would bear good news, but it would be bad news to some. It’s no coincidence that the Greek word for witness is “martyreo”—from where we get the word “martyr.”
To be a witness for Jesus thus means a whole lot more than merely telling the story about how an individual gets to heaven, as it has often been understood. To be a witness is to proclaim and demonstrate Christ’s Lordship in our own lives —to tell those stories of forgiveness and transformation, to recall how God’s grace has made us new. Baptism marks us a people who have been transformed by God’s grace in Christ and his lordship over our lives. And when we ourselves have said yes to Jesus’ call to be witnesses, then we witness to Jesus’ lordship over the whole world and demonstrate what that looks like through our lifestyle, our actions, and our love for the world that is God’s good creation. It’s a witness that lifts the poor, eats with sinners, forgives sins, brings healing, and demonstrates sacrificial love. It’s a witness that is grounded in a Jesus-shaped vision of the world as God’s kingdom—a witness that compels the world to ask, who is your Lord?
Indeed, Jesus implies that his disciples will not only be his heralds and witnesses, but they will also continue his work. At the end of this passage, Jesus ascends in a “cloud,” leaving the disciples standing there gawking at the amazing sight. In Scripture, a “cloud” is very often associated with the presence of God—God guided the Israelites from Egypt in a pillar of cloud, Moses met God in a cloud on Mount Sinai, and God’s glory dwelt in the tabernacle in a cloud. Jesus thus ascends into God’s presence which isn’t far from us and will return to us as promised. Heaven and earth are interlocking realities. Luke wants us to be reminded of that reality and that Jesus has not gone far and is still present in the Spirit, empowering the disciples to carry on the work.
But there’s another kind of reference here that I think Luke is making. It goes back to the story of Elijah and Elisha in 2 Kings 2. Elijah the prophet, at the end of his life, ascends to heaven in a whirlwind—this after Elisha has asked for a double portion of his mentor’s spirit. Elisha sees Elijah go in this way and then picks up Elijah’s fallen mantle, his symbol of prophetic authority, and carries on Elijah’s work.
The ascension of Jesus acts in a similar way. Jesus is taken up and we pick up his mantle to continue his work—a work revealed in his ministry, his death, and his resurrection. In fact, in John 14:12 Jesus says,
“Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” The ascension of Jesus does nothing less than commission his disciples to do his work and be his witnesses. Living in the word, waiting on the Spirit, and witnessing to the king—these are the tasks of discipleship. And if we focus on those tasks, Jesus says, great things will follow!
I love how this text ends with the disciples still staring at the sky. A lot of Christians still do that, focusing all their attention on a heavenly destiny waiting for the sky to fall like Chicken Little. But the two angels who show up tell the disciples of Jesus that the sky isn’t their destiny. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go.” So now, they imply, pick up the mantle and go to work. Turn your gaze from the sky and toward the world that needs the message of the good news of the kingdom. Go and be witnesses.
You know, it’s interesting to me that when the Crusaders built that chapel on the Mount of Olives it was originally open to the sky, but then they put a roof on it. I’m not sure they had a theological purpose in mind (usually they had a defensive purpose in mind), but I think there’s a theological truth here. The closed stone dome and the dark interior compels the pilgrim to go outside where you see a panorama of Jerusalem before you. Word and waiting turn to witness.
May we be disciples of Jesus who no longer keep staring at the sky, but looking out into the world and seeing every day as an opportunity to be a herald of the king in what we say and what we do. Yes, Jesus will come back and we will talk about that next week. But in the Spirit, Jesus is still at work and he chooses to do that work in us and through us.
To be in the word, to wait, and to witness. That’s the mission of a disciple. What story do you have to tell? What difference has King Jesus made in your life? Where might the Spirit be leading you?
