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."

 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.

 

Acts 1:1 – 11

 

 1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning

 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

 3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

 4 While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said, "is what you have heard from me;

 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."

 6 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."

 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.

 11 They said, "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 into heaven."

 

Now What

 

After I finally finished preaching last week, many of you commented on how relieved I must be to have that behind me, that I must have been so nervous. The truth is I was fine last week. I knew there was going to be a special energy and excitement in the air. Jon and I talked about it last Sunday evening and he described it as a vibe, I attributed it to the Spirit. It was a holy day, a day set apart from the others. We will never have that moment again. We are leaving the mountaintop and coming down into the valley of everyday discipleship. So now I faced with real nervousness because how do I follow what happened here last week? How do I make the sequel at least as interesting as the original?

So many of us know the dangers of sequels, we love the first book or movie only to be bitterly disappointed in what is to follow. It happens so many times that I’m convinced most authors and producers have no intention of writing or producing a sequel (the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series being exceptions to that rule). It’s only when the money comes rolling in that authors and producers decide to see how far they can ride the gravy train. Often this rebooting of beloved characters and story lines leads to a degradation in the story and leave the reader or the moviegoer wishing they had just left well enough alone. We’ve seen the tragic mess that the Rocky movies have become or the original Superman series or Batman (I know women find him incredibly attractive but George Clooney just isn’t the Dark Knight).

Even when the sequel is better than the original there are often little detail issues that crop up which cause fanatics to scratch their heads and wonder why the writers couldn’t remember small details from the original. Such is the case with the Star Wars series. Maggie and I have been huge fans ever since the original movie came out almost 33 years ago. I know the date because my parents to me to see it for my seventh birthday. Now we are not the dress up like a Wookie and stick honey buns on the sides of our heads to go the convention type fans, but I do have my own light saber and when a friend was instructed by his wife to get a Christmas ornament to give us the year we got married (she was think an “our first Christmas” ornament) we got the coolest little Chewbacca firing a bow caster. I said we were big fans and Eric just got something that fit our personalities. We have all the movies with special features on DVD. We have the soundtracks on CD and MP3. We have even been known to play an occasional game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuits. So it should come as no surprise when we watch the movies and occasionally get annoyed at the lack of attention to detail. By the time the series ends with the teddy bears throwing a picnic it’s become a bit creepy that Luke and Leia were so attracted or interested in each other in the first two films since we discover they’re brother and sister. George Lucas either has a bad memory or has a dark side to him.

Another possibility is that he was trying to show the many aspects of one story through different narratives. A popular tool some authors and screenwriters use is perspective. They will tell the same story through many different eyes to more authentically portray the truth in the story. As the many different storylines merge, converge, and diverge we get a clearer sense of the truth that lies within the story arc.

Yet another possibility is that he may have been trying to elicit different responses out of each of the different stories he was telling within the arc of the series. Sometimes writers have different purposes in their storytelling and even though they are using the same characters and locations in sequels, they are telling a slightly different story for a specific reason. Telling a story is not the recording of history. Writers tell stories and sometimes they aren’t all that concerned with timelines, locations, or witnesses. They are trying to convey a truth that will elicit a response in the reader or listener.

This is especially true when it come to the writers of the gospel narrative. They were a group of people spanning centuries telling stories about the relationship between God and humanity. Sometimes their stories followed the historical record and give us a glimpse of the lives of an ancient people, but more often than not they were stories with a purpose. They were stories told in an attempt to get humanity to live more faithful lives.

Where we humans sometimes fall short in our attempts to live faithfully is that we try to sort, condense, and simplify the gospel message. We mash all the stories together into one neat package that fits our worldview and then try to live according to that. There is a reason Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John recorded four different versions of the same story. They each wanted to say something about this man named Jesus and what his life means to different groups of people. The stories were recorded across two centuries in which history marched on and the experiences of the faith community were changing radically. So when Luke tells two different versions of the same event in his two books, it isn’t that he got fuzzy on some of the details or forget what he had written in the first book. He wanted to get people of faith to have a different reaction to the consequences of the events.

Luke’s gospel is a story about Jesus for the gentile. He is explaining the significance of the Messiah to a group of people who for the most part could care less about this son of handyman from a backwater town in a backwater territory of the Roman Empire. This is why Luke takes the time to tell about the miracle of his birth and does so in a way reminiscent of an imperial birth announcement. Luke is telling the non-believer that this man of modest birth is really the King of kings and Lord of lords. Luke is making the claim that Jesus of Nazareth is God in human form, the real emperor of humanity not the pretender in Rome. Thus the story of Jesus’ ascension at the end of Luke’s gospel is not just a story about Jesus leaving, but is a story about how the true king has triumphed over those who would pretend to be in charge. The Romans could execute and bury him but they can’t keep him from defeating his enemies and ascending to his rightful place on the throne of grace. When the disciples witness this and run to the Temple to worship God continuously it is the most appropriate response they can have. Messiah has triumphed.

But what should the outsider, the gentile, think about this story? After all, the disciples who celebrated were Jews not gentiles. They were outsiders, people out on the margins of society who would welcome the overthrow of the status quo which would accompany the rise of the King of kings and Lord of lords. The gentiles would approach the story with some skepticism and apathy. Who cares? Who cares that Messiah is come? What did it get you people? The Temple where the disciples celebrated was still destroyed. The Romans still rule the known world.

I believe that it is to those gentiles left staring up into the sky watching the vision of Jesus fade into the distance that Luke speaks. It is to those outside of the faith tradition to whom the angels appear and say get ready for he will come back just as surely as he left. Quit standing there wondering now what. You have heard the stories, you have been taught lessons, you have witnesses miracles, and seen the risen Lord. Go do what he commanded you to do. A day is coming when all that he said will be fulfilled. A day is coming when we will be judged not on what we say but what we do. A day is coming when the wolf and the lamb will lie together (Yes, Isaiah said wolf not lion. The lion will eat straw.) A day is coming when the Lord will make his triumphal reentry and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Will we be ready? Will we be able to say that when the question was asked, “now what?” we responded in faith and lived in love? We have been given an opportunity. We are at this moment staring at the sky on a daily basis wondering now what. It might do us well to remember what the chief end of man is but to enjoy God and worship him forever like those first disciples did upon witnessing the coronation of Jesus in both word and deed. Now what? If we asked our graduates that question the answer would be, you do what’s next. So now what? Now we make our lives a living and worthy sacrifice to our risen Lord and Savior the ascended Christ.

 

Let us pray: God of majesty, you led the Messiah through suffering into risen life, and took him up to the glory of heaven. Clothe us with the power promised from on high, and send us forth to the ends of the earth as heralds of repentance and witnesses of Jesus Christ, firstborn from the dead, who lives with you now and always in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.