Acts 1: Who are you playing your part for?

We all have ways of interpreting things.  What passes as a harmless remark made in jest for one person, is a deeply hurtful insult to another.  The difference between the two ways of seeing it is usually based on what experiences shape our worldview.  For the first disciples of Christ, the period surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection was a tumultuous one.  It would have been easy for them to swing on a pendulum from depression to elation and back, and at times that is probably exactly how they felt.  However, the beginning of Acts tells us that despite the variety of emotion that they undoubtedly felt, those earliest followers of Jesus sought to anchor themselves by interpreting all that they experienced through the lens of scripture, and by devoting themselves to prayer.  What is the first thing that the disciples do after being commissioned by Jesus to go to the ends of the earth?   They pray.  They have the knowledge that they need.  They have just had a 40-day intensive course with Jesus’ as their teacher, but clearly more than knowledge is needed.  The disciples have Jesus teaching, but they must also wait for his power.

This power had been promised to the disciples by Jesus, but it had actually been promised long before then.  Several centuries before Jesus’ ministry, the prophet Joel had related a promise from God concerning the time of renewal that he would bring about:

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” (Joel 2:28-29)

Jesus hinted during his ministry that the promise was near at hand, for when comforting the disciples concerning their ability to stand up to persecution, Jesus reassures them that “it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:20)  Multiple times in the Gospel of John, Jesus promises them an advocate or comforter who will strengthen and enlighten them in times of trial.  All of this is a fulfillment of what John the Baptist said concerning Jesus:

 “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke 3:16) 

So Jesus tells them that the power promised ages ago to their forefathers was about to arrive.  God is about to keep his promise and the words of John the Baptist will ring true.  Jesus sends them out with the assurance that the promise of power is about to become a reality.

But to what end?  It is not enough to know that the Holy Spirit came; we must know why it came.  The short answer to ‘why’ is because we need to play our part, and play it well, and for that we need power.  It is easy to get so caught up in the miraculous work of Peter, James, John, and Paul that we forget the Holy Spirit descended on all the followers of Jesus who had gathered together.   

Only Peter, James, and John are mentioned again in Acts, or any other New Testament book other than the gospels.  We are not even sure what happened to Justus and Matthias, the two finalists for Judas old position as a member of the twelve apostles, after Matthias is chosen.  It is not that they did not do anything; it is just that their acts were not known to the world, and in many cases their lives have been lost to history.  What a stark reminder that our deeds in this life are not done for our own glory!  Should the Lord tarry, it is likely that within a hundred years no one will remember who we were.  However, God can be glorified if the impact of our life is felt, albeit anonymously.  While it may seem that the purpose of the Holy Spirit was to work miracles through a few apostles, in reality its purpose is broader and deeper than isolated acts of miraculous healing.  The Spirit’s purpose is to work from the inside out, dwelling in the heart of every Christian, and remaking that person into the image of God.  That is why we must remember that the whole reason behind our faith is not to serve or glorify ourselves, but to serve others and glorify God.  Jesus had reminded his followers of this when he was with them:      

“You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Mark 10:45

The Holy Spirit inaugurates a kingdom where greatness is judged not based on who takes the most, but on who gives the most; and because giving is not always easy, Jesus sends the Spirit to lend us a hand.  Hopefully we will all learn something from these earliest Christians.  When speaking of them, the theologian N. T. Wright makes the observation that:

“Part of Christian obedience, right from the beginning, was the call to play (apparently) great parts without pride and (apparently) small parts without shame.”

Do you take pride because you seemingly have all the power?  Are you ashamed because you seemingly have none?  The Holy Spirit comes to convict you, to convict me, to convict all of us that none of that matters.  It comes to tell us that the question is not what part are we playing, but who are we playing our part for?   

Acts 1: This isn't goodbye

Why did Jesus leave?  It’s a question we don’t ask ourselves very often, because 2,000 years after the Ascension we just take for granted that things had to be that way.  But imagine for a minute that you are one of Jesus’ disciples.  You have seen the man you thought was the Messiah nailed to a cross; you have grieved the death of not only your friend, but also your dream of a restored Israel; and then seemingly out of nowhere your friend is returned to you from the grave, having conquered death itself.  Things seem as if they are finally going to work out the way you had hoped, and after a forty-day strategy session with the man you now know is the Messiah he tells you that…he has to leave??

There are a few things about the Ascension that we must grasp in order to understand how all of this fits into the plan.  First of all, unless Jesus leaves, the Holy Spirit will not come and descend upon Jesus’ followers.  He has told them this before, but not until now does the meaning of Jesus’ words sink in.  Back before his arrest, trial, crucifixion, and then resurrection, Jesus’ mentioned in his farewell speech that his departure was actually a good thing for the disciples:

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7)

Jesus physical presence was necessary for a certain stage of God’s redemptive plan.  Jesus had to be physically present to live among us, to teach us, and to go to the cross on our behalf.  However, in the next stage it is the Holy Spirit, or Helper as Jesus’ refers to it, that takes over as the active force in God’s redemptive drama.  For the next stage to begin, the Holy Spirit has to arrive, and for the Holy Spirit to arrive, Jesus must leave…at least physically. 

This brings us to the other aspect of the Ascension which is crucial we understand: Jesus physical absence does not mean he is not present.  In our minds we often limit the discussion of “heaven and earth” to geographic terms, but Jesus’ farewell to the disciples implies that divine presence is not limited to physicality.  When he gives them the great commission, Jesus also utters words of great hope:

“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

The disciples had spent forty days with Jesus post-resurrection, just like Moses spent forty days on the mountain with God.  Moses was being prepared to form a nation of God’s on choosing, complete with laws to govern their relationship with the Lord, and with one another.  The disciples are being prepared not to form a nation, but to take back a world that has rebelled against God.  And so it is comforting that Jesus describes his own ascension not as an upward movement through the atmosphere, but rather a transferring of himself into the heavenly realm which is always close at hand.  Jesus ascension was not something that NORAD could have tracked, much as they track Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.  Consider what comes after the aforementioned passage from John:

“And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”  (John 16:8-11)

Just as Jesus comes to us by appearing in the womb of Mary, so he leaves us by disappearing if you will, but only in the physical sense.  The apostles understood this, and often referred to Christ return as his appearing.  In writing to the church in Colossae, Paul would say that “when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:4)  John would write to Christians and encourage them with the following words, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (I John 3:2) 

As odd as the ascension might seem to modern minds, it made perfect sense to the people of Jesus’ day.  When a Roman emperor died, their soul was often said to be seen ascending into heaven.  Usually some sorcerer or magician was paid to give testimony to the fact that he had seen the spirit of the recently deceased ruler ascending into the heavens like a comet, to join the pantheon of the gods.  It sounds familiar, but there is a very crucial difference between what was claimed to have happened to the emperors, and what happened to Jesus.  Jesus upstages the emperors by ascending into heaven not just as a soul, but in a fully embodied state.  The Romans had to say they had seen the emperor’s soul, because everyone knew that his body had been cremated.  But Jesus ascends both body and soul, because his body is no longer in the tomb.  Though he has ascended he remains accessible, and the disciples continue to commune with him through prayer and worship, which connects them to the reality of heaven.   

So when we speak of Jesus’ Ascension, we speak not of Jesus leaving us as if he is now far removed from the world in which we live.  While Jesus does sit enthroned in heaven, heaven is not as far away as we think.  Indeed, heaven is within reach whenever we see the Helper that Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit, at work in our world.