This past Thursday was Ascension Day when Jesus’ returns to his Father to take his place
at his Father’s side. It’s forty days after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead
and a lot has happened in those forty days. Jesus continued teaching his
disciples, getting them ready to take over the work of making disciples,
getting them ready for when he leaves them. Jesus restored Peter after Peter’s
betrayal the night of Jesus’ trial and calls Peter to take care of his sheep.
Jesus tells them to meet him on a mountain, echoing back to Israel’s time at Mount Sinai after the
exodus from Egypt where God meets them, giving them the law, teaching them how
to be his people. Jesus tells his disciples after they worship him, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
He’s telling them that he’s not only Israel’s king, but King of kings, giving
notice to the world, to Satan, and to his church. Jesus has been given the
authority and power to carry out his plans and vision for the world and all
creation.
Jesus leaves his disciples with these last
instructions, starting with the command, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” This
is an ongoing command and the disciples hear it as, “Go
and keep on making disciples of all nation.” This is not just for the
disciples, but for the church through all time. This is our mission statement,
the basic foundation of who we are as the body of Jesus, the foundational
reason for our being. This is what we’re supposed to be raised and trained to
do; raising our children, new members, and believers to have this as our heart
mission.
Our call to make disciples is rooted in loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves; desiring that
they’ll embrace Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and king and listen to his
voice. All of the great commandments are intertwined together; loving God and
our neighbour and making disciples all flow out of God’s love for them and us.
Peter writes in his second letter, “The Lord is not
slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient
with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Jesus is calling for this to be our great desire too.
We make disciples, as Jesus says, “baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you.” Disciples are made as we make Jesus captivating
to others through our lives; lives that give God the glory, helping them
embrace Jesus as their king, committing themselves to Jesus and accepting his
mark, his sign and seal by being baptized. We’re called to teach and train them
to obey everything Jesus has taught as a sign of their commitment to Jesus, showing
their love for Jesus and their willingness to join in being the body of Jesus
in the world.
Jesus ends his instructions with telling the
disciples, “And surely I am with you
always, to the very end of the age.” Jesus doesn’t give the disciples
their marching orders and then leave them alone to figure out how to do what
they’ve been told in their own strength, ability, and wisdom. All Jesus’ power
and authority is with them, and us, as we follow his orders. We may not feel
especially gifted or able to make disciples and share the good news. Jesus’
promise of his presence is also a promise that we’ll always have what we need
to make disciples. It comes down to a matter of obedience, not of ability or
competence. Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit just before his death, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have
said to you” … “when he, the Spirit of truth,
comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he
will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He
will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make
known to you.”
Jesus’ power and authority is with us through the presence of the Holy Spirit as we follow
his orders. We may feel nervous about sharing the good news of Jesus’ coming,
life, death and resurrection, yet Jesus’ promise of his presence is also a
promise that we’ll always have what we need in order to make disciples. It
comes down to a question of obedience and trust, not of ability; it’s about
desire, not competence. I remember one teen girl from Allendale, Michigan who
went to the public high school and wanted to share her faith in Jesus with a
few of her friends. She came to my study one day after school to talk to me
about how to have the right words to convince her friends to follow Jesus. We
looked at the Scriptures and found that it wasn’t so much having the right
words, but about having the right desire, about wanting to obey and please
Jesus and trusting that he’ll give us what we need. She came to youth a few
weeks later with two of her friends. She introduced them to me and kind of
laughed and told me that she stumbled over her words, said a couple of dumb
things, but her two friends were still interested in whatever it was that made
her do something scary because she cared so much about them. We’ll explore this
more next week.
We don’t often reflect much about how Jesus returns to
heaven. In Acts 1, Luke shows us how Jesus leaves, “After Jesus said this, he was taken up
before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking
intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in
white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here
looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven,
will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
How Jesus returns to his Father emphasizes his
divinity, giving weight to his command and promise to be with
them always. The cloud echoes back to God’s meeting Israel at Mount Sinai. In
Exodus 19, God calls Moses to enter the cloud in order to meet with him, “Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord
descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a
furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently…. The Lord descended to the
top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went
up and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force
their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests,
who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out
against them.”
The cloud’s an image of divine presence, of God’s
glory and presence. At Sinai, Israel is
taught how to live for God, with each other, and the nations. Israel’s called
to obedience and worship and is reminded of God’s presence and glory every time
they look at the pillar of fire or cloud that guides them for 40 years in the
wilderness; reassuring them of God’s power and providence. Paul points to these
images in 1 Corinthians, “For I do not want you to be
ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under
the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into
Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” Paul also points ahead to Jesus’
return with all power and authority as our king in 1 Thessalonians 4, “After that, we who are still alive and are
left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the
air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
On Ascension Day, Jesus ascends to the throne of
heaven as the divine king of the world, reminding the world
that the chaos of sin and destruction is coming to an end. It may not always
seem like it when we see what’s going on in Gaza, what’s happening in Ukraine,
when we see the poverty, the brokenness in our inner cities, in the levels of
domestic violence and brokenness in too many of our homes, it can feel
hopeless, but Ascension Day reminds us that our king wins, especially during
the darkest of times. We remember that this is why we’re here as his body, to
move against the darkness and shine his light into the darkness by being salt
and light, being Jesus’ blessing wherever he has placed us, making disciples.
It’s not easy, but Jesus is with us as we go into our communities as disciple-makers,
bringing him glory as we make new disciples.
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