By Geoff Bottoms
Only in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, recording the very earliest days of the infant church, do we get a timeline of the Easter events, with the ascension of Jesus into heaven happening forty days after the resurrection, and the Holy Spirit coming upon the apostles ten days later at Pentecost.
Matthew suggests the ascension took place on the same day as the resurrection, with a hint of the coming of the Holy Spirit, when Jesus promised that from now on he would be with all his disciples until the close of the age. Likewise Mark, according to some ancient authorities, speaks of the Lord subsequently working with the disciples and confirming their message with signs, although he explicitly refers to Jesus being taken up into heaven and sitting at the right hand of God, whereas Matthew makes no direct mention.
On the other hand, John speaks of the resurrection and ascension as one event, when the risen Jesus greets Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb on the first Easter morning, and tells her not to touch him as he is ascending to the Father, implying that the relationship will change with the coming of the Holy Spirit. This is confirmed later that evening when he breathes that same Holy Spirit upon the bewildered disciples for their mission of reconciliation.
Differing accounts but with the same basic message, which is spelt out so clearly In the Acts of the Apostles, when Luke refers to two men in white robes telling the awe-struck disciples, after they had seen Jesus return to the Father, “Why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus will come in the same way as you saw him go.”
The reason is that we are now to continue the ministry and mission of Jesus, but we can’t do it on our own, which is why he told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Holy Spirit who will empower them to be his witnesses. Ten days later Jesus returned in the form of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost and the rest as they say is history.
And we are part of that history, because Jesus now relies on us, just as he relied on his disciples, to be open to the Holy Spirit in bringing the good news of God’s love into a world that in so many ways has lost its heart. For Christian communists, God is believed to be present in the laws of social development as defined by Karl Marx’s dialectical approach to history, so that there is a contingent freedom to act which is both human and divine.
So when we get angry at the events unfolding in Iran, Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, when we lose trust in our political leaders to deliver, leaving the door wide open to extremists who promise the earth; and when we witness the devastating poverty of a world where the gap between rich and poor is widening, while money can always be found for war; and when we fear for the future of our melting planet, let us remember that this is still God’s world, which he has entrusted to us to be agents of that change made possible by the coming of the Holy Spirit. And it starts with us serving Christ in one another together.
When Jesus, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew’s Gospel, says that we reach out to him whenever we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick or those in prison, we are sharing in his priestly ministry as shepherds who care for each other as members of his flock.
In today’s polarised world I imagine he would be saying:
I was a refugee and you welcomed me
I was living on the streets and you stopped to talk to me
I was Jewish but you didn’t judge me by Israeli policies towards the Palestinians
I was Palestinian but you didn’t think we were all terrorists
I was a benefit claimant but you didn’t write me off as a scrounger
I was the voice of creation screaming out for justice and you stopped polluting me.
After his resurrection and ascension, Jesus ended up with just eleven apostles plus a replacement, and they weren’t exactly the perfect fit – but look at their legacy 2000 years later. And now he has us. We may not always be successful, but we are called to be faithful and then to leave the rest to him. As Karl Marx reminds us:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
