Acts 1:1-11

I remember thinking when I was a child about what it would be like without my grandmother.  She lived across the road from me, and she had a daily presence in my life.  I couldn’t imagine what it would be like without her.

Essentially, this is the question that Luke is answering for us: What will life be like without Jesus?  The disciples had a daily relationship with Him.  They had witnessed His love for them and for others like them.  They experienced His compassion for the poor and oppressed, the lepers and prostitutes, the up and out and the down and out.  They watched His life and learned how to live, and they watched His death to learn how to die.  Now they found themselves in a situation when the reality of the absence was going to impact their lives as much as his presence.  What were they going to do without Him?

Jesus anticipated their angst and gave them hope for the future.  In fact, things would be different, but they were going to see dramatic things continue, maybe greater than they had seen in Jesus presence.  They were going to be witnesses to things they couldn’t imagine.  How could it be better than before?

I may be over simplifying the situation, but it seems to me that I have learned more from my mentors in their absence than in their presence.  In fact, absence is not the right word.  I suppose we all have a collection of people who are now dead who influence our lives.  They may be relatives, friends, colleagues, professors, teachers or some other such acquaintances.  My point is they have influenced me  far more after their deaths than before they died.

My grandmother died in 1989.  There is still not a day which passes where she doesn’t influence me.  The reason for this is that we had a relationship.  Relationships don’t end, they change.  Often through their deaths, we are bonded to someone far more they in their living.  In fact, it is their death which seals our living relationships.  In the same way, it was Jesus’ life that was sealed by his death, resurrection and now his ascension which seals his life for us to be challenged and directed in our own lives as we live in our own worlds.  Jesus is not here.  He is ascended and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, waiting to come and judge the quick and the dead.

What are we going to do without him?  Ignore him?  Work for him?  Follow him?  It seems to me that we should struggle to find out what Jesus would do if he were  living my life in my setting with my friends, family and acquaintances with my strengths and abilities?   Based on that information, how should I adjust my life to meet his example?  Instead of looking into the sky, we, too, have things to do in the kingdom of God.

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Sermon brief provided by: David R. Tullock, pastor of Parson’s Porch, a ministry in Cleveland, TN