“He Will Come Back”
Luke 24:44-53 [Gospel Lesson]
Acts 1:1-11 [Epistle Lesson]
Have you ever caught yourself staring at your phone and saying: “RING!” Or watching a pot of water on the stove and saying: “BOIL!” I had an uncle who could be a little impatient behind the steering wheel. If the driver in front of him lingered when the light turned green, he would yell, “That’s the only shade of green we have for today.” Needless to say, it could be a bit embarrassing to ride with him.
It is said that we Americans are the most time-conscious people in the world. We are always in a hurry. We invented fast food, instant coffee, instant messenger, express mail, express oil changes and expressways. We are people constantly on the move. As one man put it, we’re people who shout at our microwave ovens to hurry up.
Many of you probably went to a university where one of the hot issues among students was, if the professor’s late, how long do we have to wait? At one university the custom dictated that if a professor was ten minutes late the class would be canceled.
Well, a professor arrived early one morning for a 9:00 a.m. lecture. He placed his hat on his desk and went to the faculty room. Before he knew it, it was 9:10. By the time he got back to his classroom, it was empty.
The next day he let his students have it. “When my hat is here,” he fumed, “I’m here!” The following day, the professor arrived at 9:00 a.m. He was met by the sight of 28 hats on 28 desks—and no students.
Both of our Scriptures this morning, the last verses of the Gospel according to Luke and the beginning verses of the
Acts of the Apostles [the official name] were written by Luke, a Gentile, who wasn’t one of the Twelve Apostles, which forced him to rely heavily on eyewitnesses for the accounts of his stories. Scholars believe that his main source was Peter.
Today is day number 43 of the 50 days that make up the Season of Easter, or Eastertide. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to many followers over a period of forty days. This past Thursday was the 40th day after Easter so this morning we celebrate the Ascension. Next Sunday will be day 50, the celebration of Pentecost, [don’t forget to wear red] when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Have you ever had something which at the time seemed a bad thing to happen, but in the end, it turned out to be something good? You must wonder, as the disciples probably did, why did Jesus need to leave. Well, as He had told them, the only way God could send us the Holy Spirit was for Jesus to return to His Father.
In our Gospel Lesson, Jesus told the disciples, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” What He means is the entire Old Testament. In other words, the entire Old Testament points to the Messiah.
Luke wrote to a Greek-speaking world. He wanted them to know that Jesus’ message of God’s love and forgiveness should go to all the world. We must never ignore the worldwide scope of the gospel. God wants the world to hear the message of salvation.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christian community: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” [2 Corinthians 4:16-18].
Three very important things we need to remember this morning are these: (1) whatever we find ourselves in today it is temporary—(2) Jesus could and can see what we can’t put our eyes on—and (3) we are called to walk by faith and not by sight!
In our Epistle Lesson, Luke writes to Theophilus that his first book recorded all that Jesus had begun to do and teach. The last scene in Luke’s gospel is the beginning scene here in the Book of Acts—which is Luke’s history of the infant church.
The name Theophilus means “lover of God” or “loved by God,” and he is addressed as “most excellent,” suggesting he was a high-ranking, wealthy Roman official or patron who likely sponsored the creation of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
Jesus has led His disciples outside of Jerusalem, somewhere in the vicinity of Bethany, and He is saying His final goodbye. But the disciples continue with their questions concerning the future kingdom of Israel.
Our temptation today and every day is to build our own kingdoms. They may be institutional kingdoms or personal kingdoms—kingdoms of control or of might or influence. The disciples were asking for the time and date when Jesus would restore His kingdom and bluntly, He told them: “It’s not for you to know.”
I’ve had folks who ask me questions I frankly cannot answer. We all want answers—the disciples wanted answers—and we want them yesterday. But there are questions that we will have answered in God’s time and in God’s way—when we are ready or equipped to handle them. There are times when the hardest thing in the world is to do nothing, yet there are times when that is the only thing to do. There are things we can work for, there are other things we can only wait for. Life is a composition of activity and passivity. We have become experts in activity and are only novices in passivity. Yet in religion there is a primary place for passivity. It is the mood in which the soul is receptive to power from the outside—responsive to insight from above. The active and the passive mood of religion seems to be the theme of this text.
Jesus informs the disciples that they are to go back to Jerusalem and wait for their baptism by the Holy Spirit. There is no substitute for obedience—and it seems that there would be no spiritual Pentecost unless the disciples were obedient to Jesus’ instructions.
With His instructions and answers to the questions of the disciples Jesus has shifted the emphasis from speculation about the future to demonstration in the present. He shifted the emphasis from the restoration of the past to the transformation of the present. Remember, Jesus can see what we aren’t able to.
The divine commission of the disciples—when filled with the Holy Spirit—was to witness to Christ. A witness is one who gives testimony to that which he or she has seen or experienced—and of which they consequently have firsthand knowledge.
This was the commission of the first-century Christian disciples, and this is the commission to the disciples of Christ in every age and for all time. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we each have a story to tell, not just our story but the story about His life—His death—His resurrection—and His loving grace. Jesus’ story must be told, and it is up to us to see that it is!
Our task, according to Jesus, is to transform the present by our witnessing to Him to the ends of the earth.
And with that, Jesus was gone, and the disciples were left looking up into heaven. The two men dressed in white, which probably means angels, called the disciples: Men of Galilee—all of the disciples were from Galilee except Judas who by this point is already gone. The angels told the disciples that rather than standing around looking toward the sky they needed to get on with life—that they should be looking to the present and then to the future—when they would see Jesus return in the same fashion that He had just left.
There are times in life when God disappears to put us on our own. He wants people not puppets. And yet there is a sense in which Jesus didn’t go away at all. Where He once dwelt among them—He would now dwell within them! In some ways He was more real than He was before because now He could be reached no matter where they found themselves or what situation they found themselves in.
I don’t know what your life situation is. I don’t know what giant you are facing today. But I do know this. It is only temporary and you are not alone because Jesus has gone to the Father and He has sent His Holy Spirit to live within us—comforting us and empowering us. There are no assignments in this life that are impossible when God is truly with us.
Eastman First Methodist Church 