Study::Acts 1:9-14

Okay, almost completely missed out on some great stuff because I thought I had nothing else to learn from this passage. I started reading these few verses and thought, “I really don’t want to start any discussions about the ascension. Don’t we all know everything there is to know about the ascension. Jesus rose, he’s alive. He beat the power of death, which (death) is the biggest stick in the enemies bag . The resurrection gives us eternal life. Learned it, got it, I’m good…thanks…next verse.”

First of all, that is a really lame view of the resurrection, I know that deep inside. I almost feel dirty writing those thoughts out. But, it is often preached that simply from pulpits isn’t it? I think we save our one resurrection message for RESURRECTION SUNDAY, WOO HOO! Put your pastel tie on ’cause it’s Easter baby and Jesus is alive. But doesn’t the fact that the resurrection message only gets preached once a year prove that we don’t get Easter at all? I am keenly aware that this lad doesn’t understand much about how earth-changing (literally) that moment was in time.

Prayer: God, thank you for still speaking into me and loving me when you know that I don’t get you at all. Seriously, how many times do you look at me and go, “kid’s an idiot…but Me I love him!”. I know you do.

Side Note: Susan is cleaning out the fridge behind me…something has to be dead in there. I am literally typing with my shirt pulled up over my nose. She just brought at plastic bowl over to me and said “Think this could be it?” (A bowl crusted over with an inch of mold…couldn’t even make out what was underneath the mold.) I just about used the Dell Warranty that covers your laptop when you vomit on it! By the way, you’re all invited over for dinner tonight…we’re having left overs!

Alright, here we go:

Acts 1:9-11 (NIV)
⁹ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. ¹⁰ They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ¹¹ “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.”

As I said before, I thought this was a “one-point” passage. However, I am beginning to see why Rabbis would say that the text is like a gem, that when you turn it ever so slightly you see something new and beautiful.

Your Thoughts Please: N.T. Wright says, “Talking about ‘heaven and earth’ is a way, in the Bible, of talking about the fact, as many people and many cultures have perceived it to be, that everything in our world (call it ‘earth’ for the sake of argument, though that can be confusing because that is also the name we give to our particular planet within our particular solar system, where as ‘earth’ in the Bible really means the entire cosmos of space, time and matter) has another dimension, another sort of reality, that goes with it as well.”…”The reality is this: ‘heaven’ is God’s space and ‘earth’ is our space. Heaven isn’t just ‘the happy place where God’s people go when they die’, and it certainly isn’t our ‘home’ if by that you mean (as some Christians , sadly, have meant) that our eventual destiny is to leave the ‘earth’ altogether and go to ‘heaven’ instead. God’s plan, as we see again and again in the Bible, is for ‘new heavens and new earth’, and for them to be joined together in that renewal once and for all. ‘Heaven’ may well be our temporary home, after this present life; but the whole new world, united and transformed, is our eventual destination.” What do you think about that?

Hang with me here on this ‘heaven and earth’ stuff because I believe our understanding of it has everything to do with how we view the church now and why she exists.

Part of the the amazing power of Jesus’ resurrection is that it was the beginning of God restoring all things (a new heaven and new earth) back to himself. Jesus’ death and resurrection then isn’t just about personal salvation (redeeming you and me), but it is much greater…He is redeeming the whole cosmos and everything in it back to Himself. Wright says it like this, “(God’s Power) could at last burst forth and produce the beginning, the pilot project, of that joining-up heaven-and-earth reality which is God’s plan for the whole world.”

Note: So if I understand correctly, Jesus resurrected body is the kind of body (and the only kind thus far) that we will inherit in ‘the age to come’. Your thoughts are most definitely welcomed on this.
So if heaven is God’s space and earth is our space then eternity, or ‘the age to come’, is when those things meet in perfection and this will be what we have traditionally (though maybe mistakenly as far as the actual word) know as ‘heaven’. This brings up and interesting point then: Where was it that ‘heaven and earth’ came together before Jesus? It was in the temple. God’s presence, his space resided in a particular place on this planet…in the temple, in the Holy of Holies. And after Jesus work was done, he claimed that we were the new temple…his church…because the Holy Spirit resides within us. Therefore it is the church (at this time…until he fully reunites ‘heaven and earth’ and his Kingdom comes in all its fullness) where the meeting of heaven and earth is displayed.

This is why he has made us a Kingdom of Priests (Exodus 19:6, 1 Peter 2:9), because we are to bring heaven to earth and put the divine on display by loving the Lord your God with all your heart (being set apart)…and loving your neighbor as yourself (being on mission).

Now this will tie us back into the purpose of worship, prayer and waiting on the Holy Spirit to come with power. Why do we then worship and pray as a church? Because that is how we reach into God’s space, heaven, while still keeping the other hand at work with the mission on earth. It is the act of worship, prayer and waiting that will allow the Spirit to yield His power to us.

A struggle (one of the very, very few) I have had with this movement of God to move his church back to being missional, is the fact that when we are in these times of transition in history we tend to swing the pendulum to far the other way. To Worship and pray without being on mission would leave us void of what God has purposed us for (this is where I have seen the North American church for as long as I have lived)… and to be only about mission (namely justice, or the bringing of ’shalom”) without being a church of worship and prayer would leave us powerless to bring God’s real restoration to anything. Therefore we are to be a holy people (set apart) who are on mission (sent out). We are to me light (set apart) in the darkness (on mission). Am I making any sense?

PATH MARKER #2

A recent truth that God has pressed upon my heart is that church has erorred in focusing solely on holiness (not being of the world) or focusing solely on mission (being in the world).  We need to be both.  One without the other falls short and is not the full gospel.

Church =  Holy + Missional

Church = Set apart + Sent Out

Church = Not being of the world + but being in the world 

So what does a local church look like when it is a pure reflection of just that?  That’s the million dollar question.

The beauty of living on this side of the resurrection is that we have the great privilege of partnering with God in a mission that has a guaranteed outcome, thanks to the death and resurrection of our lord Jesus Christ. It is the power of the resurrection that has given us a glimpse into the reality that all things will be made new, all things will be restored, there will be a ‘new heaven and a new earth’. Jesus is the first of all who will know this full reality. We will know it one day. We will receive our new bodies (1 Corinthians 15) that will be able to exist in the ‘new heaven and new earth’. Until that day, may we ever be reaching into ‘heaven’ through worship and prayer, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us, His work on ‘earth’ may continue to move toward completion.