Brown's Daily Word 5/22/12

Praise the Lord for this new day. Praise the Lord for the way He fills the earth and the sky. May 17 was Ascension Sunday. The Church of Jesus Christ proclaims in its affirmation, "He ascended in to Heaven". For ages artists have made great efforts to depict the Ascension of our Lord in paintings. After his Resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days with his disciples. After those 40 days the disciples were starting to get a little restless. They were wondering what was going to happen now that Christ had been resurrected, so they started asking questions. They wanted to know what the next step was. They were wondering when Jesus the Messiah would restore the kingdom of Israel as God had always promised his people he would do. So, as Jesus prepared to ascend to heaven, He gave the disciples some direction.


As the disciples were waiting for Jesus to do something great, He pointed right back at them and told them it was their turn. He said, “You are my witnesses.”

Just when the disciples were busying themselves with wonder about what would happen next, just when it would have been so easy for them to get distracted by all that was going on around them, just when they could have spent the next several hours with their heads in the clouds wondering where exactly Jesus disappeared to, Jesus’ words brought them, and us, back down to earth again! “Get your head out of the clouds! You have work to do!” The terrible temptation that disciples of Jesus faced is drift into a reverie, thinking that Christ will sort everything out when he returns. It makes us unhurried and unconcerned. We even go to great lengths predicting when exactly Christ will return, perhaps so we don’t have to do any “real” work!

Jesus knew the disciples’ concerns. Jesus knew they would watch in wonder as he ascended into heaven and then begin to focus on His return in final glory, so he had one last conversation with them before His ascension. “This is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and a change of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins must be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

In a legal sense, witnesses are persons who, because of some experience they have had or something they have seen, are in unique positions to tell the truth about some important matter. Jesus commissioned his disciples to bear witness to His mighty and merciful acts in history, to proclaim Christ’s Good News in an empire that has crucified good news. He called them into a proverbial courtroom to witness about Jesus Christ amid the competing testimonies—testimonies that promise peace through violence, fulfillment through wealth, and power through exploitation! He did not expect them to do this on their own, but only through the power and the prompting of the Holy Spirit living inside them.

Jesus told his disciples, immediately before he was “lifted up”, that it was their job to take his message global—“to the ends of the earth.” This is the mission of the Church today, of which each of us is a part. Hearing this commissioning can be staggering. Bearing witness to Christ in a world that suffers is overwhelming but He said, “Look, I’m sending to you what my Father promised, but you are to stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Christ’s disciples were given a clear mission. Today, He has given us the power of the Holy Spirit, and Christ tells us to get going!

The following is a prayer that is attributed to Teresa of Avila: “God of love, help us to remember that Christ has no body now on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world. Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now. Ours are the feet with which [Jesus] is to go about doing good.” We are to be the hands, the feet, the eyes, and the voice of Christ as we reach out to a lost, broken, and dying world. There is no bigger job to be done; there is no more important job in all the world, and there is no greater privilege to which we can be called!

It would be a strange sight to see a man ascending toward the heavens. It can be more than intimidating to think about telling a scared and unbelieving world about the love and mercy of God which defies even the greatest powers. We need to get our heads out of the clouds, to stop wondering and worrying, because things are looking up. As those disciples did so many years ago, we are to go about with joy; worshipping, praising, and preaching good news to the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberation to the oppressed! May we indeed be witnesses to all nations, beginning right now, right where we live.

In Christ,

Brown

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