Readings
Acts 1:6-14
This passage is a sort of ‘story so far’ that picks up in more detail the action from the close of Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel finishes by saying:
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.
While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:50-53)
Luke’s Gospel is a journey from the countryside of Galilee to Jerusalem, the centre of the Jewish world. In that closing Luke has given a preview of what is to come and returned the disciples to Jerusalem.
There they will be commissioned as Apostles by the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost festival and sent out on the Acts journey which the Risen Christ makes through his apostles from Jerusalem to the centre of their world—Rome.
Barclay notes that throughout his ministry Jesus laboured under the disadvantage that his message was that the kingdom of God was at hand, but his Jewish audience always saw that in terms of them being the favoured people who would be given world domination by God.
Jesus sees the kingdom of God as society here on earth functioning the way God intended and. no matter how haphazard history appears to be, it is working out some divine purpose. Therefore, we should not speculate when it might come to an end but play our part in living the divine purpose into reality.