Prophets, Patriots, and Martyrs

 

It's a special weekend and a way to celebrate that not many other countries truly understand or conceptualize quite like the good ol US of A can. So many men and women have given of themselves so that we can have the freedom to just be free. To sit here on a Sunday morning, in whatever denomination or group you want to align yourself with, and just sing song and worship in a way that you find find pleasing to you. 

Many folks these days do not truly understand the religious implications that went into and formed the birth of this country. I can remember my 7th grade American history teacher not even wanting to touch on it. That was way back around 1983-84. It's not the kind of story that garners the flashy, supersonic way people want to look at things. Religion is a messy, personal subject for many. It's easier to explain things without pushing God and belief and reason out to the forefront. We are America. We are independent. We are free. Lets just leave it at that. But, there's so much more and the history goes so much further back. What brings us to this weekend of Memorial Day and into July 4th and later in the year to Veterans Day is a long line of independent thinkers who weren't about to let the Monarchy of another country tell them what they needed to believe or how they needed to do it. England, in its 1500's prime. had decided for itself that following the church in Rome would no longer suit them. Instead they set up their own church government and the Church of England was born. In opposition to the leadership of the Pope, England decided to use the king or queen as their leader and the Monarchy lead the way. Whether or not this person on the throne truly understood what it meant to lead the church is really an odd ball way of having someone be in the place of dominion. And, the church in England would soon find itself in the coming centuries in a bloodbath everyone around them, as other countries would follow suit and opposition came in droves as the king or queen of this country sought to dominate and exert control over that group or this country. 

When people set out for the New World that would become the Americas, our leaders looked back at the leadership in England citing biblical violations and leading, truly blazing, a trail to independence and free thinking. It is a history many do not want to focus on or hear about. But, it's there and we need to embrace it. In a couple of weeks we will be moving into the birth of the Church at Pentecost. If birthing a country was a unimaginable thing, what did it take to get the Church of Jesus Christ off the ground? We are aiming to look at just such a thing this morning.

We are looking at the moment called The Ascension this morning. Jesus would go back to the Father. He would leave the future and the growth of this new entity known as The Church to these men who had followed him for the last 3 and 1/2 years. How did the church get going? What is the history around it's beginning? Lets venture forward and see what we know.

It is May, forty days after the Savior’s resurrection. Over that time, heaven has strewn a handful of golden moments across the floor of the hearts of those who loved him. The moments were scattered as close as Jerusalem and as far as Galilee. The sightings came suddenly, unexpectedly, like a lost coin that had been there all along but all along had gone unnoticed until it caught a glint of sun.

Like his appearance to Mary the morning of his resurrection. Or to Peter who had gone fishing. Or the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He appeared a number of other times to a number of other people. To as few as one. To as many as five hundred.

The appearance today would be his last.

To the Mount of Olives is where it is said Jesus took his disciples for one last moment with them. One last time of fellowship. Jesus leads the disciples out the eastern wall of Jerusalem and over the arched viaduct spanning the Kidron Valley. Each year on the Day of Atonement a scapegoat for the people’s sin was taken over this viaduct and relayed from one man to another until at last it was driven into the wilderness. Each man had a part in this to signify that the sins of the people truly was for all the people.

 Over that wilderness Jesus now looks.

He has stopped at the brow of the Mount of Olives on a summit sloping towards Bethany. The panorama stretches before Jesus like a scroll from the Psalter, each hillside the line from a psalm. But instead of a psalm of praise, the lines extend toward the horizon to form a psalm of lament. Where it should read “green pastures and quiet waters,” it reads “a dry and thirsty land.”

Jesus has the great ability of looking at something, at someone, and seeing what could be and just what is. He looks over the dusty, sandy picture in front of Him and knows that the Father's promises are true. The countryside is only a vestige of the land God had promised. Which is only a vestige of the land God had dreamed. What can be heard is a word, or so it seems. A softly spoken word. 

Paradise. 

 With groanings too deep for words, the Creation sighs for meadows stretching far and wide. Coveys of quail running through them. Doves winging over them. Pheasant on the ground, feeding on the grain. It sighs for woodlands deep and tall. Legions of cedar and pines. Almond trees, apricot. Sways of palms. For vineyards, lush and green. For lakes, fresh and clear. For artesian waters seeping to the surface to form rivulets to irrigate the valleys.

The wind blowing at the Savior's back as he walks up the Mount, the sigh is a windblown prayer. “Come, Lord Jesus. Come and usher in an everlasting spring.”

The prayer is for a time when the Savior will return and restore to Creation the splendor that has been lost. For a time when there will be no death, no disease. When there will be no violence, for the knowledge of God will fill the earth. No darkness, for the glory of the Lord will fill the heavens.

The sigh is a prayer for the dream of God at last to come true.

Knowing not just "what is" but "what can become", Jesus turns toward these men who have followed Him.  The only sound is the wind sauntering through the olive groves. All is quiet, until at last an impatient question fidgets into words.

“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

The Lord speaks as a general would to his soldiers.

It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The word translated “witness” is martures. From it we get our word “martyr.” And for good reason. To be a witness for Christ, especially where he was sending them, was to put your life at risk. The disciples knew that. He had told them that in the upper room. “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. . . . In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.” 

They knew what the world had done to their master. Yet into that world they would go, outward to concentric circles of hostility. First to Jerusalem, which was hostile to Christians. Then to Judea, which was hostile to Galileans. Then Samaria, which was hostile to Jews. On to the ends of the earth, which was hostile to outsiders.

They went into the world as witnesses.

They left the world as martyrs.

James, the brother of John, was the first of the remaining eleven to die. He was beheaded. Philip was next. He was crucified in Phyrgia. Matthew died from the thrust of a lance in Nad-abah. Andrew was crucified. Peter, under Nero’s wave of persecution, was also crucified, only upside down by his own request, as he felt unworthy to die the same way his Lord had died. Witnessing  in India, Bartholomew was savagely beaten and crucified. Thomas was killed with a spear. Simon was crucified after preaching in Britain, then one of the remotest parts of the known world. 

They went in obedience. Still it cost them their lives.

They went with his blessing. And still it cost them their lives. 

They went in power of the Holy Spirit. And still, still it cost them their lives.

Of the twelve, only John was spared a violent death, exiled by order of Domitian to the Island of Patmos. 

When the Spirit came, as Jesus had promised, these men took the seed of the gospel and sowed it throughout the land. Here and there the seeds fell on fertile ground. Little by little they took root. Sometimes in the most unexpected of places. From the Sanhedrin to Caesar’s own household. The seeds would wash upon the shores of the Mediterranean, and there they would grow. Vining their way inland to Antioch, Philippi. Their tendrils creeping down the Nile into Egypt. Up the booted heel of the empire to Rome. And westward to the Emerald Isles.

 Jesus takes a deep breath of the fragrant air and raises his arms to say a benediction over his troops. And as he blesses them, he leaves them. The disciples watch in amazement as he is taken up into the sky, into the clouds.

“Men of Galilee.”

The voice is an unfamiliar one. The disciples turn to see two men in white standing beside them.

“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.” 

The words echo those in the upper room. “I am going away,” Jesus had told them. “But I will come again. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come for you.”

The disciples crane their necks, hoping to catch a last glimpse of him. But he is gone. They turn to the angels. They too are gone. They turn to themselves, the joy of heaven spilling from their eyes, and they worship there together on that sacred ground. Then they return to Jerusalem, to pray and to wait.

Someone once said that our life here on earth is a time of waiting between the dreaming and the coming true. Into that great expansive meantime, which makes up our lives, the Savior comes. He comes to the dry and thirsty land of the human heart in its wild and desperate struggle for survival. He comes to the wilderness of our lives, and a furrow at a time he reclaims the land, restoring something of the Paradise that has been lost.

He comes to the weary heart to give it rest. To the lonely heart to give it friendship. To the wounded heart to give it healing. To the sad heart to give it joy. And if not joy, at least the companionship of someone who has known what it’s like to be sad, and wounded, lonely and weary.

The last book of the Bible was written by the last living disciple. The book ends with a prayer. “Come, Lord Jesus.” And after the prayer, a promise: “I am coming quickly.”

A day will come when Jesus will keep that promise. Literally. Angels have said so. He himself has said so.

When he does come, it will be for us. For you and for me and for all who have ever turned to him in a moment of homesickness and said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Come, Lord Jesus.

You whose name is the fairest and most beautiful in all the universe. At whose name every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth shall someday bow.

Come, King of Creation, Lord of the Nations.

Come, O Beautiful Savior, Fairest Lord Jesus.