Jesus is over the top. If you ask someone who Jesus was and what he taught you’ll likely get one of two answers: “Jesus tells us how to get to heaven when we die” or “Jesus, like all other great spiritual teachers told us that we have to be nice, kind, loving and accepting towards one another.” One group seems to try to offer some emotional relief to post-death uncertainty. The other has more of a “this worldly” agenda that despite the obviousness of its moral exhortation hasn’t demonstrated much ability impact things in modern history.

I would assert that according to the New Testament author Luke, Jesus’ claims are far more audacious, confusing, and possibly offensive than these two common assumptions.

We saw early on in Luke 4 that Jesus comes out of the blocks bolding announcing the end of the age of decay and the beginning of a new age. You can read it in Luke 4:18-21. The age of decay is the present condition of this world where all life breaks down, ages and dies, all relationships devolve, all institutions of promise at some point come to an end, all empires expire and life is filled with uncertainty, fear, and eventually suffering and death. He announces the end of all of this, and that he, himself is bringing it to an end.

He proceeds to announce this to just about anyone who will listen, and to embody it in a ministry of miraculous power. His use of power, it seems, was always connected with this audacious message that he was giving. His miracles were restorative, helping the blind to see, the lame to walk and the deaf to hear. He multiplied food to feed hungry masses and showed his ability to calm a storm that threatened his friends.

The political and religious powers of that day jockeyed to have him ally with them in each of their world shaping and saving agendas, but he would not do so. He not only would reject the assumptions of his day in terms of who was in charge, but he would ultimately overturn the universal assumptions of what being in charge means. The greatest is the servant of all. The good loved not just friends but enemies as well. The meek would inherit the earth, and the relational polarity of the life of God (your well-being at my expense) will ultimately triumph and yield complete joy.

Jesus’ non-participation and resistance to the religious-political struggle eventually made it either essential or expedient for all sides of the political conflict to put him to death. Throughout his trial he repeatedly insisted that his execution was an injustice yet he would not resist it even though he could stop it at any moment. To the horror and despair of his followers he was mocked, beaten and killed in the most public and humiliating way in order to make a statement.

Throughout history there have been many people who have claimed to be important and foundational for a new world order, but what happened on the third day after Jesus’ execution truly changed the world. The followers of this Jesus claimed he was raised from the dead. Throughout Jesus’ ministry the Bible claims that he restored a few people back to life from the dead. There are even stories on the Hebrew Scriptures like these, but this story is different. Jesus’ resurrection was not simply him resuming a life interrupted by his execution, but that he was resurrected out of the age of decay and into the age to come. He asserted that he was the first man of creation 2.0, the beginning of the renovation of heaven and earth. He was not a ghost, he was not a spirit, his hands, feet and side still bore the scars of his execution but he was most certainly alive to never die again. For forty days he would appear to his disciples and others until he was taken up into heaven.

Jesus ascension is in some ways the lost holiday of the American church. NT Wright, a leading New Testament scholar understand it in this way:

“The early Christians, like their Jewish contemporaries, saw heaven and earth as the overlapping and interlocking spheres of God’s good creation, with the point being that heaven is the control room from which earth is run. To say that Jesus is now in heaven is to say three things. First, that he is present with his people everywhere, no longer confined to one space-time location within earth, but certainly not absent. Second, that he is now the managing director of this strange show called ‘earth’, though like many incoming chief executives he has quite a lot to do to sort it out and turn it around. Third, that he will one day bring heaven and earth together as one, becoming therefore personally present to us once more within God’s new creation. The Bible doesn’t say much about our going to heaven. It says a lot about heaven, and particularly heaven’s chief inhabitant, coming back to earth.” http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Pentecost07.htm

Jesus’ followers stayed in Jerusalem, meeting together, gathering in the temple, waiting for God’s promise to them to be fulfilled. Pentecost was an ancient Hebrew festival celebrating the wheat harvest that had come to be associated with themes of covenant renewal of Noah and Moses. While they were meeting together, something beyond their expectations happened. You can find the story in Acts 2: 1-13

This clearly cause amazement and confusion so Peter, one of the disciples stood up to explain what was happening. What we have in the book of Acts is the first sermon given by one of Jesus’ followers. He begins his explanation by quoting from the book from the prophet Joel.

The book of Joel in the Old Testament is probably unfamiliar to most. It is not the sort of book that people today look to for inspiration or a quick spiritual “pick-me-up”. The first part of the book seems to dwell on a locust plague that ravages the land and the second part talks about God judging the nations and bringing his people into a age of peace and prosperity. The main theme of the book is a broader Old Testament theme of “the day of the LORD”. This was the day in which the LORD, the creator God who rescued Israel from Egypt would revisit his people in both judgment and deliverance.

The portion that Peter quotes from Joel includes some stock images from “the day of the LORD”. There is fire and darkness and smoke and blood. You find these kinds of images throughout the Bible in various places talking about what it looks like when God returns. Those who know their Bible well will in fact recognize these images as part of the Sinai episode when God gathered his people around the mountain after he rescued them from Egypt to give them the law. If you remember the story you know it didn’t go so well. When God spoke to them directly all they wanted was for him to be quiet and talk to Moses instead. When Moses went up on the mountain they panicked at his absence and with Moses’ brother made statues of golden calves to worship. You might also remember that a little later in their desert wanderings when Moses was tiring under the burden of leading this people alone, God sent his Spirit upon the elders but two elders were missing from the tent of meeting and prophesied in the camp. Moses’ loyalists were concerned by this but Moses was not. He said “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

Why did Peter use Joel here? He is saying that the Day of the LORD has come. That God has visited his people in Jesus Christ. Judgment has come down. The age to come, God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven has started and that the renovation of heaven and earth, creation 2.0 began with the resurrection of Jesus.

NT Wright says that this is what Pentecost means:

“The disciples, filled with the Spirit, begin the work of Jesus’ sovereign and saving rule over the world, whose Lord he now is, by their shared common life, their works of healing, their proclamation of him as Lord and King, and their bold witness against the authorities who try to stop them. And that just about sums up the whole book, all the way to when Paul arrives in Rome and announces God as King and Jesus as Lord right under Caesar’s nose, openly and unhindered. So Pentecost is about the powerful presence of Jesus with his people; about the implementation of Jesus’ healing, saving rule through his people; and thirdly about the anticipation, in and through that work, of the final day when heaven and earth shall be one. It isn’t just that the Spirit is the ‘down payment’ of what is to come for us as his people; the Spirit is the advance sign of what God is going to do for the whole earth, the entire created order.”

Now this message by Peter and the disciples is so audacious it immediately draws two protests.

The first protest would hardly have been raised early on in the Roman Empire. This little group that actually believed this stuff was statistically insignificant in anyplace besides Judea and the Galilee, but today after centuries of Christians behaving badly it rings out clearly: “This is a power play by Christians to gram and wield power over everyone else.” The reason this fear resonates is because Christians have failed to embody the way Jesus triumphed and how he himself exercised power. Remember the relational polarity: “your well-being at my expense.” “The meek will inherit the earth.” “The greatest is the servant of all.”

The second protest is probably the one rumbling around in the doubts of those who at some level embrace Jesus and who he claimed to be. “Isn’t what we see a bit underwhelming?”

Christians have long read the story of the day of Pentecost and longed to experience the power and the passion of that day. We long to be publicly vindicated by the deeds of power we find in the book. We despair when we look and feel so weak, so impotent in the face of the age of decay.

Our response is the same to both protests. We hear the church is to be a lion, but when we see the church it’s a lamb that was slain. The church looks like it’s leader. We also haven’t paid enough attention to how the story will unfold in Acts and the New Testament. Jesus’ apostles will with the exception of one or two die prematurely and in poverty, like their master. The movement that they begin will grow amongst the meek and the poor and they will be noticed not by their power grabbing aspirations (that’s never the exception in this world) but by their sacrificial service in the midst of devastating loss.

You might say “where is that church today?” In 1900 80% of the church was Caucasian and 70% of it resided in Europe. Today in Africa and Asia and poorer places of the world Christian populations are multiplying. I’m not idealizing the church in those places. It’s a muddled mess there too, as it was in the places we have letters to in the New Testament. It’s a movement beyond us, not controlled by us, but spread by God pouring out his Spirit on young and old, slave and free.

How can you believe this? Remember the images of darkness and judgment in the Day of the LORD? There is nothing in Acts 2 about darkness, earthquakes or terror. Where was that part?

Jesus exemplified to the end the relational polarity of the life of God. The judgment fell on him, it was our benefit at his expense so that we would receive the blessings of the age to come. That is why those who call on him will be saved and follow him being the lion of the age to come, living the life of the lamb that was slain in the age of decay.