Ascention
May 2010
Just prior to today’s Gospel reading we read of what happened to two of Jesus’ followers (not Apostles) on the road to Emmaus. How they met the Risen Lord along the way but did not recognise him and how (and I quote) ‘beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’
Someone once asked me how the Jews of Jesus time and especially the religious authorities did not recognise and accept Jesus as the Messiah from their extensive and exhaustive knowledge of the Bible.
In fact it is the other way around.
It is only by recognising and accepting Jesus as the Risen Lord that the Bible makes complete sense.
Although nobody studies and analyses every word and letter and comma of the Bible as thoroughly as the Jewish people they are still trapped in a vicious circle of searching and waiting because they cannot recognise the only one who will give meaning and completeness to the Scriptures.
They have thrown away the key and are trying to open the safe by studying the blueprints only.
We have the same message in today’s Gospel reading.
‘Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day.’
The Apostles were well versed in the Scriptures but it was only now, by experiencing the Risen Lord, that the whole thing began to hang together and make sense.
Then Jesus, the Risen Lord, commissions his followers - that is, those who have experienced and accepted the Risen Lord - in these words; ‘Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’
‘Repentance’ as used here is the Greek word ‘metanoia’ which is not as we understand repentance today as sorrow for having done something wrong. Metanoia involves a total change of mind, of values, of priorities, by one who has experienced the Risen Lord.
‘Forgiveness’ as used here understands God, above all, as ‘the God of pardon, of forgiveness; from the sinner He seeks metanoia. Once God has forgiven, sin is removed, destroyed, cast behind - it no longer exists, even if man continues to remember that he has sinned.’
It was this metanoia, this understanding of forgiveness, this commission to be witnesses that so transformed those who had experienced the Risen Lord that they willingly and joyfully spent their lives, and even suffered persecution and death, in fulfilling their commission.
Then Jesus blessed them and Ascended to the Father.
To this day, this commission is being fulfilled all over the world by those who have experienced the Risen Lord.