Readings: Psalm 47, Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, May 29, 2022
At the very end of the Gospel of Luke we find an event known as the Ascension. It is the moment when the resurrected Jesus calls His disciples together for one last time and lays down what was of the most importance in their calling to be disciples. As a faith community seeking to be faithful to the call of Jesus Christ, we do well to remind ourselves of what our mission should be.
Luke 24:48 states it plainly enough "You are witnesses.” Witnesses. In Greek ‘ma,rtuj’(martus) from which the English word martyr is derived. Sometimes translated as ‘heralds;’ a herald being somebody who delivers a message on behalf of their Master. So, our calling is to carry the gospel message to others… to witness. But witness to what? And how do we go about that witnessing?
This passage mentions three things.
1. That we are to witness to Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, who suffered and died and rose again from the dead.
2. We are to bear witness that through repentance, forgiveness and renewal is available to all people.
3. We are to find the power to witness through the promised Holy Spirit given as we wait upon God in prayer and joyful worship.
1. We are to witness to Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, who suffered and died and rose again from the dead.
Think for a moment of Christian history as a long road that stretches back to the beginning of time. Along the road are many milestones in the story. Abraham setting out to who knows where. Moses giving the law. The prophets looking ahead to a day when a new covenant would be established. Then a flurry of activity as Jesus is born, as He ministers, as He is betrayed and crucified, as He is raised from the dead, and, the event we are thinking of today, as He ascends to the Father.
These events mark the beginning of the New Covenant. Another milestone appears at Pentecost as the disciples gather in an upper room. The Spirit will come, and the church will come alive. The people of God will spread the message of Christ’s love to all nations. For the last 2000 years the milestones have continued. Some have marked tragedies when the church has lost its way, become corrupted by politics or power. Others are reforms when the people of God have been reawakened to their mission and revival has been in the air.
Luke’s Gospel (and his complementary story in the book of Acts) sees history in just such a linear way. That Christ was the One the law and the prophets were anticipating, and the Church were the people of God to now declare the message of His death and resurrection as it was witnessed to by the earliest disciples. At the center of the biblical story is Jesus Christ… all that comes before points to Him, all that comes after flows from Him.
It is for us today to witness to the centrality of Jesus Christ, to His death on the cross at Calvary and His resurrection from the dead as being the pivotal events of human history. Through His suffering and death God enters into the suffering and defeat of all creation. Through the resurrection the power of God’s transforming love is witnessed to as being one that can turn the most God forsaken situations into occasions for hope.
The hope we are called to declare, the Good News we are commissioned to share is Jesus Christ, who died and rose again. Christ crucified. Christ Risen. The Cross and the Resurrection as witnessed to in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Everything else points to these two central events or flows from them.
But why?
Why are these two events so crucial, so central?
Because without them we cannot bear witness to the second thing that Jesus calls disciples to speak of.
2. We are to bear witness that through repentance, forgiveness and renewal are available to all people.
It is Christ’s death that makes our forgiveness possible. On the Cross He prayed, “Forgive them Father, they don’t know what they are doing.” It is His resurrection that reveals to us that our lives, however compromised, however far gone we think they may have become, can be recreated, and re-made and renewed. It is as we become aware of our sorry state before God and seek to change direction that repentance happens, and our lives are turned around… which is really what the word repentance means. To repent: to turn around and start going in a different direction.
Since Peter began preaching, repentance towards God has been the way outlined for hope to come flooding back into our lives. Think of Paul preaching in Athens in the Book of Acts and declaring to the Gentiles “In the past God overlooked our (or ‘such’) ignorance, but now God commands all people everywhere to repent.” (Acts 17:30)
It is Luke who gives us the Book of Acts, the same Luke in whose gospel the parable of the prodigal son is told to us. Here is the message we are called to witness to. That no matter how rebellious a son or daughter may have become, that no matter how much heartache or waste they may have caused, that no matter how low into the pig trough of depravity they have fallen, all they need to do is to come to their senses and head back home to the Father… and the Father will run to them and embrace them and offer to them all the benefits of being a child of God.
This is salvation by grace through faith. There is nothing we can do to earn it. There is no action we can perform to deserve it. It is that action of believing that in Jesus Christ God has provided all that is necessary for our salvation and allowing our heart to respond to the voice that is whispering in our ear, “Child, come home, come home.”
It is at the Cross we are forgiven. Christ died for our sins. The resurrection shows us what freedom really looks like. That though all the forces of suffering and death may fall upon us, God will raise us up. His love cannot be extinguished by hatred, His light not diminished by darkness. We are to turn towards that love.
To turn towards that light. To turn away from the manufactured gods of this age and towards the God who created us. Turn away from thinking life is just about us to the realization that God is about all of us. Turn from living to satisfy our appetite to feasting upon the Bread of Life and the new wine of the new covenant.
But how do we find the strength for such a mission?
Surely it is beyond the likes of you and me?
3. We are to find the power to witness through the promised Holy Spirit given as we wait upon God in prayer and joyful worship.
The disciples are told to wait. Wait until the power comes. Wait in prayer. To prepare to receive what God promises as they joyfully gather together in praise and worship. It is as they wait and as they worship that they find the strength to be the witnesses God is calling them to be.
The first disciples did not have a good record when it came to faithfulness. They proved themselves to be scared to death when storms came. They slept when Jesus asked them to pray. They tried to take matters into their own hands when Jesus didn’t meet their expectations. They proved unsuccessful when commissioned to heal and cast out evil. They argued about which one of them was the greatest.
They consistently misunderstood what Jesus was teaching them and had to ask for more clarification. They ran away when Jesus was betrayed. One of them stood around the fire of the enemy and denied Him. Another sold Him out for thirty pieces of silver. They do not believe the word of the women’s testimony when they declared they had seen He was alive. One had to put his hands in the marks of the nails and the spear before faith returned.
As the church grew, things were not easy. There was persecution. Many died for their convictions. Their witnessing constantly put their lives in danger. What was it that kept them going, that transformed them and gave them courage? We find a clue in Paul’s words to young Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:17; “The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, in order that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that all the Gentiles might hear; and I was delivered out of the lion's mouth.”
Paul’s life was one filled with the acts of the Holy Spirit. He of all the first apostles felt himself ill-equipped and ill-suited for the task of being a witness. He was well aware of his infirmities, but he made his battle cry that although he was weak, the strength of God’s love, shed abroad in his heart through the Holy Spirit, provided what was needed to be a witness.
As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to be a witness. That calling involves waiting upon God in prayer, praise, and worship to be empowered for our mission. The power to accomplish our calling is a power that God bestows upon us. We are not to go in our own strength, but in the strength of the Holy Spirit of God.
That the need for true and faithful witnesses is great should not be a question that needs to be asked. There are so many who are desperate for a word of hope, who do not believe their circumstances can be changed, who are unaware of what God can do when given free reign in our lives.
During the bombing of London in the Second World War, some folk arrived the morning after an air raid to discover their church had been hit during the night. As the people entered, they saw a statue of Jesus with His hands broken off. Somebody had placed a card at His feet which read “Jesus has no hands but our hands to do His work today”
If we do not make a stand to be faithful witnesses, then who will? The witness we extend should correspond to that which Christ extended.
• Lifting up the poor.
• Delivering from oppression.
• Offering a healing touch and word.
• Never seeing anybody or any situation as a hopeless case.
• Holding high the possibility of transformation, renewal, and redemption.
• Offering forgiveness and resurrection.
• Seeking for ‘turn arounds,’ (for as we’ve seen, such is the meaning of repentance).
• Seeking to be personally empowered through waiting upon God in prayer, praise, and worship.
Jesus has ascended to the Father. God watches over us and promises us the strength of the Holy Spirit to accomplish our calling.
1. We are to witness to Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, who suffered and died and rose again from the dead.
2. We are to bear witness that through repentance, forgiveness and renewal are available to all people
3. We are to find the power to witness through the promised Holy Spirit given as we wait upon God in prayer and joyful worship.
May God help us to be faithful witnesses to God’s wonderful love! Amen.
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.
No comments:
Post a Comment