Luke 24:44-53
44 Then he said to them, “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.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 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, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
The Ascension of Jesus
(Mk 16.19—20; Acts 1.9)
50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
The Sunday school teacher told the class that Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb. One student raised her hand and said that she knew why. "Jesus only needed to use it three days."
Today is designated as the Ascension Sunday to commemorate the day Jesus was lifted up to heaven. People pay a lot of attention to the Easter, but few really thought much about his ascension. Luke said at the beginning of the Book of Acts, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
After the resurrection Jesus stayed with the disciples for forty days and appeared to a total of about five hundred people before he was taken to heaven. The lectionary text today focuses on his last words before the ascension.
The disciples were in shock when Jesus was arrested and crucified. They followed him mostly because they believe he would restore the kingdom of Israel as a physical king. Suddenly their three years of dream with this rabbi has exploded with the shameful and helpless death of one the cross. Three days later, they were extremely puzzled to see their master came back to life. They thought he was a ghost. Jesus proved himself that he was not a ghost by allowing them to touch his wounds and eating with them.
The condition of the disciples reveals that they didn’t have much of a clue of what they got themselves into when they signed up to follow Jesus Christ. Now Jesus reminded them of what he has taught them and what they really meant. Verse 44 said,
44 Then he said to them, “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.”
What he is saying is that everything I went through was according to what has been prophesized about me. If you read the scripture nothing should be a surprise for you because everything has been prophesized.
Verse 45 says, “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.”
This passage has two parts. Jesus said that his death and resurrection is part of the prophecy, which is now fulfilled, and the next part is for the disciples to proclaim the repentance and forgiveness to all nations.
To have our minds to understand the scripture is to know where we are in the timeline of the epic story that begins from the Genesis to Revelations. The disciples, like all of us, wanted to get to the end of the story. I have heard some people like to read a novel a few chapters at the beginning and jump to the end, and then come back to read from the beginning. All of us love to know the end of the story. It’s okay, and the Bible has already told us the end of the story, but God does not want us to skip the middle and jump to the end of the story.
In the Book of Acts, Luke told the story in a little more detail,
“So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The disciples expected Jesus to restore the kingdom of Israel right now, but Jesus didn’t want them to focus on when it was supposed to be restored. He wanted them to focus on fulfilling their part of the story. In other words, this command is also for us in the twenty first century because we also like to ask the same question, “Lord is this time when you will restore the kingdom?”
Jesus said in Acts 1:7, “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Instead, Jesus gave us the assignments when we wait for him to come. Let us look at these assignments today.
Assignment 1: Let Jesus Open my Mind to the Scripture
“Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures ... that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
To have our mind open to understand the scripture is not just to understand the laws and rules of the Bible, but also to understand the epic story that we are part of—the story that began from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane to the Garden of God (Rev. 2:7).
Based on what Jesus said, to understand the scripture is also to understand the prophecy that has taken placed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and to understand the prophecy that continues to be fulfilled by us. The part that we are to fulfill is to proclaim the repentance and forgiveness of sins. Notice that Jesus didn’t ask us to go and condemn people, but to proclaim forgiveness. That’s why we call it the Good News. The message of contamination is not the Good News.
Recently I have given much thought about the eschatology—the end time. Trying to know the end-time story, the prophecy, is not the same as wanting to jump to the end of the story. I want to know the end of the story so that I know how to live my life now. The Bible says, the disciples lived with joy after understanding their context in the scripture.
When we think about the end time story, we often think about the final judgment in stead of the final forgiveness. Jesus started his ministry by declaring his mission statement as recorded in the Old Testament:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
It was all about the Lord’s favor, rather than his judgment. We tend to think about judgment because culturally we want to see the good people or the victims go to heaven and the bad people or the perpetrators go to hell. The question is, who really are the victims and who are the perpetrators? With the psychology explosion today, we have found that most of the perpetrators are the victims at one point in the past.
Will the victims find themselves happy in heaven seeing their perpetrators in hell? The answer is no. The ultimate happiness comes from forgiveness and reconciliation. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has made this possible. That’s the good news that we are to proclaim.
When our minds are opened to the scripture, we find our purpose in life and understand why we are here on earth.
Assignment 2: Witness to End of the Earth
“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Act 1:8b)
In the Acts, the disciples asked him whether he would restore the kingdom of Israel now. Their interest was here and now, but Jesus interest was not the entire world. The word literally means the edges of the world. He wants us to go to the edges of the world to proclaim the good news.
Jesus didn’t call us to be a mediocre, or an average, but he calls us to go to the edges, to the extremes, to witness to the salvation of the world. He didn’t want us to sit here and wait for people to show up, but he called us to be “witnesses,” not simply seekers, students, or sages. When are minds are open to the understanding of the scripture and the significance of the prophecies, and the life, death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we find our role in this epic story as the witness to the salvation of the world.
Len Sweet wrote:
Jesus had made the extreme sacrifice. He had gone to the edge of the ledge: into death and darkness. Now it was time for his disciples to follow him out to the edges of creation, announcing his gift of salvation to all.
The generations of witnesses now extends from Jesus’ twelve disciples to the 1.7 billion disciples that populate the world today. And each one of us is still being called to go to the ends of the earth to bring people to Christ. Geographically our world is no longer a mystery. We can get satellite maps beamed into the dashboard of our cars as we travel down the highway. There are no more mysterious edges of the world to fall off, no un-sailed seas to explore. But there are still plenty of edges that require the willingness of Jesus witnesses to dip into the Well.
• At the edge of knowledge: where scientists and ethicists ponder the implications of gene manipulation, stem cell research, life-sustaining/life-ending decisions—a disciple must witness.
• At the edge of violence: where armies and terrorist factions battle over who will be most feared—a disciple must witness.
• At the edge of technology: where computers begin to think and react like humans, where the line between biological and mechanical life seems to blur—a disciple must witness.
• At the edge of wilderness: where the threat of extinction hovers over species, and the extermination of habitat endangers the entire ecosphere, making even our weather patterns more severe and extreme—a disciple must witness.
• At the edge of mission: where Jesus’ name has never been heard, where his name is used only as a curse, in the most distant corners of the earth, in the hollowed out heart of our cities—a disciple must witness.
• At the edge of hope: where people are dangling, at the ends of their ropes, their heads in nooses of hopelessness and despair, where life is being lived on the edge at the edge—a disciple must witness to the gospel’s unconditional love, unmerited grace, unlimited hope.
