Sermon: The Fitting Conclusion
Scripture Text: Acts 1:1-11
Quotes for Reflection
N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone
The point of the resurrection itself is that without it there is no gospel, no Deeds and Teachings of King Jesus II. There would only be the sad and glorious memory of a great, but failed, teacher and would-be Messiah. The resurrection of the Jesus who died under the weight of the world’s evil is the foundation of the new world, God’s new world, whose opening scenes Luke is describing.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.
Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
I had never before seen a real Catholic Mass and I had no idea what it was all about. I had heard that it was in Latin and that it was mysterious and incomprehensible to a Protestant, and indeed, to anyone who did not know Latin. That was all I knew about it. And I liked the idea. I liked it for the very same reason that I liked the Gregorian chant I had heard in records: because it was strange and archaic and solemn. It was beautiful. And when I went into that quiet, peaceful church, and saw the tall, old priest with his white hair, and heard him saying Mass at the altar, in a low voice, and the server answering in Latin, and the silence and the kneeling people and the candles and the statues and the crucifix on the altar, and the dim quietness and the slanting light—I was enthralled. It was beautiful. That was all I knew. And I wanted to know more, to be a part of it. I had the sense that something was happening there that was much more real than anything that had ever happened to me before.
F.F. Bruce, The Gospel of Luke
From the earliest times in Israel, God was acknowledged as king (cf. Ex. 15:18). His kingship is universal (Ps. 103:19), but is manifested most clearly where men and women recognize it in practice by doing his will.
Application Questions
1. How does the ascension of Jesus help you reimagine worship?
2. Where in your life do you need the ministry that is uniquely available in the ascension of Jesus?
3. What is one choice that you can make this week to bring your life into conformity with Christ as king?