great disadvantage. The centre of his message was the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14); but he meant one thing by the kingdom, and those who listened to him meant another.
The Jews were always vividly conscious of being God’s chosen people. They took that to mean that they were destined for special privilege and for worldwide power. The whole course of their history proved that, humanly speaking, that could never be. Palestine was a little country not more than 120 miles long by 40 miles wide. It had its days of independence, but it had become subject in turn to the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. So the Jews began to look forward to a day when God would break directly into human history and establish that world sovereignty of which they dreamed. They thought of the kingdom in political terms.
How did Jesus see it? Let us look at the Lord’s Prayer. In it, there are two petitions side by side. ‘Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ It is characteristic of Hebrew style, as any verse of the Psalms will show, to say things in two parallel forms, the second of which repeats or amplifies the first. That is what these two petitions do. The second is a definition of the first. Therefore, we see that, by the kingdom, Jesus meant a society upon earth where God’s will would be as perfectly done as it is in heaven. Because of that, it would be a kingdom founded on love and not on power.
To achieve that, men and women needed the Holy Spirit. Twice already, Luke has talked about waiting for the coming of the Spirit. We are not to think that the Spirit came into existence at this point for the first time. It is quite possible for a power always to exist but for people to experience or take it at some given moment. For instance, no one invented atomic power. It always existed; but it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that anyone was able to access that power. So God is eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit; but there came a special time when people experienced to the full that power which had always been present.
The power of the Spirit was going to make them Christ’s witnesses. That witness was to operate in an ever-extending series of concentric circles – first in Jerusalem, then throughout Judaea; then Samaria, the semi-Jewish state, would be a kind of bridge leading out into the world beyond Israel; and finally this witness was to go out to the ends of the earth.
Let us note certain things about this Christian witness. First, a witness is someone who says: ‘I know this is true.’ In a court of law, hearsay is not accepted as evidence; witnesses must give an account of their own personal experiences. A witness does not say ‘I think so’, but ‘I know.’
Second, the real witness is not of words but of deeds. When the journalist Sir Henry Morton Stanley had discovered David Livingstone in central Africa and had spent some time with him, he said: ‘If I had been with him any longer, I would have been compelled to be a Christian – and he never spoke to me about it at all.’ The witness of Livingstone’s life was irresistible.
Third, in Greek, the word for witness and the word for martyr is the same (martus). A witness had to be ready to become a martyr. To be a witness means to be loyal whatever the cost.
THE GLORY OF DEPARTURE AND THE GLORY OF RETURN
Acts 1:9–11
When he had said these things, while they were watching, he was taken up and a cloud received him and he passed from their sight. While they were gazing into heaven, as he went upon his way, behold, two men in white garments stood beside them; and they said to them: ‘Men of Galilee, why are you standing looking up into heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up into heaven from you will come again in the same way as you have seen him go to heaven.’
THIS short passage leaves us face to face with two of the most difficult ideas in the New Testament.
First, it tells of the ascension. Only Luke tells this story; and he has already given an account of it in his gospel (Luke 24:50–3). For two reasons, the ascension was an absolute necessity. One was that there had to be a final moment when Jesus went back to the glory which was his. The forty days of the resurrection appearances had passed. Clearly, that was a time which was unique and could not go on forever. Equally clearly, the end to that period had to be definite. There would have been something quite wrong if the resurrection appearances had just simply petered out.
For the second reason, we must transport ourselves in imagination back to the time when this happened. Nowadays, we do not regard heaven as some place located beyond the sky; we regard it as a state of blessedness when we will be with God for all time. But in those days everyone, even the wisest, thought of the earth as flat and of heaven as a place above the sky. Therefore, if Jesus was to give his followers undeniable proof that he had returned to his glory, the ascension was absolutely necessary. But we must note this. When Luke tells of this in his gospel, he says: ‘they . . . returned to Jerusalem with great joy’ (Luke 24:52). In spite of the ascension, or maybe because of it, the disciples were quite sure that Jesus had not gone from them but that he was with them forever.
Second, this passage brings us face to face with the second coming. We must remember two things about the second coming. First, to speculate when and how it will happen is both foolish and useless, as Jesus said that not even he knew the day and the hour when the Son of Man would come (Mark 13:32). There is something almost blasphemous in speculating about something which was hidden from even Christ himself. Second, the essential teaching of Christianity is that God has a plan for us and the world. We are bound to believe that history is not a haphazard conglomeration of chance events which are going nowhere. We are bound to believe that there is some divine far-off event to which the whole creation moves and that, when that final fulfilment comes, Jesus Christ will be Judge and Lord of all. The second coming is not a matter for speculation and for a curiosity that is quite out of place; it is a summons to make ourselves ready for that day when it comes.
THE FATE OF THE TRAITOR
Acts 1:12–20
Then they made their way back to Jerusalem from the hill which is called the Mount of Olives, which is near Jerusalem, about half a mile away. When they came in, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James were there. All of them with one united heart persevered in prayer, together with certain women and with Mary, Jesus’ mother and with his brothers.
And in these days Peter stood up among the brethren and said – the number of people who were together was about 120 – ‘Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold through the mouth of David about Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus, because he was one of our number and had received his allotted part in our service. (This man bought a piece of ground with the proceeds of his wicked deed; and he fell headlong and burst asunder and his bowels gushed out. This became a well-known fact to all those who lived in Jerusalem so that the piece of ground was called in their language Akeldama, which means the place of blood.) For it stands written in the book of Psalms: “Let the place where he lodged be desolate and let no one stay in it.” And: “Let another receive his office.” ’
BEFORE we come to the fate of the traitor Judas, there are certain things we may notice in this passage. For the Jews, the Sabbath was entirely a day of rest when all work was forbidden. A journey was limited to 2,000 cubits, and that distance was called a Sabbath day’s journey. A cubit was eighteen inches; so a Sabbath day’s journey was rather more than half a mile.
It is interesting to note that Jesus’ brothers are here with the company of the disciples. During Jesus’ lifetime, they had been among his opponents (Mark 3:21). It may well be that for them, as for so many
