Acts 1:1-11 | Ephesians 1:17-23 | Matthew 28:16-20

Almighty, everliving God who willed the Pascal mystery to be encompassed as a sign in 50 days, grant that from out of the scattered nations, the confusion of many tongues may be gathered by heavenly grace into one great confession of your name through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

We’re coming to the conclusion of the story of salvation history.  We began at the beginning of this Easter season, this Lenten season, with the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, and now we end with Jesus returning to his Father and setting up the church as we know it, as we’re living it.  It’s really important for us to understand the radical change that this New Testament has ushered in, because it is so different than the way it was before Jesus returned to his Father and empowered human beings to continue his work.  So let’s take a minute to look at the Old Testament to see where its power was, how effective it was.  It’s clear that human beings at the time of the Old Testament were not in the same place they were at the time of the New Testament, meaning that the message they received in the Old Testament was essential for them to grasp first before they grew into it and understood it and then became ready and evolved enough to receive the most mystical, mysterious fullness of the story of how God plans for the world to continue to flourish, to become all he wants it to be.  

So if you go back to the Old Testament, you can see that the two things that the Old Testament worked with in terms of human beings was their intelligence, their mind, and their wills.  So what we see is the information that came into the mind was something that they needed to understand about their nature and who God is, and we know that the wisdom of the Old Testament, in a sense, is found in the law, the Ten Commandments.  Let’s imagine that God begins his work with human beings, and at some point in their history, when he’s formed them into a community and they realize that they have to live together in community, they realize that they have to give up some of their selfish wants and needs in order to share life with people.  And so God said, “Here’s what I want your mind to grasp hold of.”  It’s this.  It’s some information.  The information is you are human beings living in a world where you are dependent on and need to know a God who created you and who is guiding you.  So the first thing, the first law, in a sense, is to worship, to honor this God who is at the heart of everything.  And he says you should take his power, and it’s amazing power, and don’t ever use it in a way that God didn’t intend it.  So any gift he’s giving you, any power he’s giving you, be careful.  Use it only as he would intend it to be used for the good of others, and then spend time with him.  Those first three rules of the Ten Commandments, worship the Father, don’t take his name in vain, keep holy the Sabbath Day, that just means be in union with this God, know his power.  And then it goes on to describe how human beings should relate to each other, and it’s honor those that give you life, everything that gives you life.  Honor God.  Honor the people who gave you life, who took care of you when you weren’t able to care for yourself as a child, and also don’t lie, and don’t steal, and don’t kill, and don’t break promises.  All this is just good, solid information into the mind and gives a person an understanding of how important it is to take on these qualities if you’re going to live in community, because these are the things that you want from others.  So why wouldn’t you then first begin that kind of relationship with people by giving them?  And most every time you give something to someone, you get it back.  The last two commandments are be satisfied with who you are.  Don’t try to be more than you are.  Don’t try to have more possessions than someone else.  Don’t envy another person’s life, their relationships.  Surrender to who you are and accept that.  So connection with God, a way of being with people, a kind of surrender to reality, those are all informational pieces that are given to the mind, and the mind understands it.  So the Old Testament is fundamentally working with information, giving it to people.  Then it also worked with the will, and it needed to give you motivation.  Information, motivation, one to the mind, one to the will, and the motivation was simple.  “Do this, and I’ll be your God.  Don’t do this, and I’m not your God anymore.”  That’s the way it started.  That’s pretty dramatic.  “I demand this of you if you want to be in a relationship with me.”  

It was so hard for them to do that that God, over the centuries he worked with human beings in the Old Testament, he changed it to something like — well, first he said, “I can’t really dump you, because I just can’t be unfaithful to myself.  So even though you don’t do what I ask, I’m still faithful to you.”  And then finally he said, “I keep trying to convince you in your head of these things and their value, and I expect your motivation to be active, because I tell you it’s not going to go well for you if you don’t do these things.”  But at the same time he said, “I guess I have to do something more for you.  I have to take these rules and these laws, and I have to write them on your heart.”  What?  “Instead of information in your head, I want to put these things in your heart.”  Now, what’s the heart?  The heart’s the center of our being.  What do we learn about the heart from scripture?  Well, not only is it the center of our being, but it’s also the place in which God intends and tells his people, “I want to dwell with you.  I want to be inside of you.  I want to live in your hearts.”  Then the idea is —well, what is the heart able to do?  What can it do?  It goes beyond just simply understanding, and it goes beyond simply motivation.  But the heart is the part of human beings that is designed as the place from which comes something from one human being to another that is very mysterious.  It’s called transformation.  Information informs the mind.  Motivation stimulates the will, but the heart has this power to effect change in another person’s heart, in another person’s existence.  And so we see the seeds of all that in the Old Testament, and then comes Christ, and then Christ comes into the world, and he’s about to describe to everyone the fullness of his teaching.  And the fullness of his teaching is so simple, so basic.  He’s come into the world to awaken people to the reality that God’s plan from the beginning was that he would enter into your heart and, through connection with you there, would resonate with you for other people, a transforming power that changes them, frees them from two very major problems.  One is the fear of being who they are, so being imprisoned.  The other is not understanding the whole issue, not understanding what life is for, what it’s about.  So that would be called the truth.  So opens eyes to the truth and opens hearts to who they are, and then his basic motivation for all that is so that we can become the instruments of life that Jesus witnessed when he came into the world.

So what we have here is a radical surprise to the disciples, and I’m thinking of them a lot in this set of readings, because we have two experiences of Jesus in these two readings, in the gospel and the second reading.  One is at the end of his life when he’s returning to his Father.  The other is right after he dies.  In both cases, they’re gathered together, and Jesus speaks to them.  You have to imagine that the idea that human beings had of who Jesus was and what he was doing, what the disciples had, was an image of a person who would give them information about who God is and would stimulate them to be motivated to teach that to people.  And this kingdom that Jesus was going to establish was going to be established by the authority that was in charge of the world, and they would do the work.  And so it was like they were looking for an earthly kingdom, and they were going to be players in that.  They were really excited about the power, worldly power they were going to have, and so they gave themselves over to this mysterious figure, Jesus, and lived with him for three years, hoping for something that would be good for them.  And all of a sudden, they find out he’s leaving, he’s dying, and nothing’s accomplished.  Nothing’s been changed in the world.  The temple was still the seat of power, and it was still ruling and owning everybody by telling them what they had to do and threatening them with practically extinction, spiritual extinction if they didn’t do what the temple required.  So they must have been extremely confused, and the first thing I love about the second reading is the fact that, when Jesus first appeared to his disciples — and there are many accounts of it in the different gospels, but in this case, what we see — it’s talked about in the Acts of the Apostles, and it’s remembered that Jesus appears to them, and they’re frightened, and they’re confused.  And then — he’s dead, and now he’s talking to them.  And the first thing it says is that they doubted.  I guess they doubted their senses.  This just shows you the resistance that they naturally would have had as human beings.  They never expected this as the end, that he would come back after death and then talk about something that they could not fully fathom.  

And what did he talk about?  Well, it’s very clearly in this set of readings that he talked about a mystery, that he was going to enter into their hearts.  The experience is called baptism, which is an interesting thing, because a lot of religions have taken this final commission of Jesus telling them, “Go baptize everyone in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” as a call to missionary work.  Go everywhere where someone’s not baptized and baptize them.  Well, that’s — there’s nothing wrong necessarily with that, but I don’t think it’s as literal as that.  No, what is baptism?  It’s a power given to someone that opens them to the mystery of God’s Spirit dwelling within them, and through that power dwelling within them, they’re able to do the same things that Jesus did.  And what Jesus did went beyond giving information and motivation.  What he was doing is transforming people by his amazing affirmation of who they were and then empowering them to use who they are for the good of another person.  That’s the mystery.  That’s the awesome thing that he came to give them, and baptism is a ritual that celebrates that.  You give it to a child or someone unconscious.  We do in the Catholic Church, and we see that as a potential that’s given to them.  But if you look at the nature of baptism, it’s a kind of death, a surrender of your human capacities, let’s say, to teach, tell somebody something, motivate them to do it versus surrendering to a power that’s been given to you that is a combination of being affirmed for who you are and then the invitation to use that unique thing you are, to let God use it, enter into it.  And somehow, in some mystery, it’s God doing his work, but it’s you participating in that work.  And when that’s your intention, when that’s what you’re doing, you’re a baptized person.  So the call to ministry is to awaken people to the fullness of the teaching of this God/man Jesus, and what he asks of us is beyond — I’ve been working for him for so long, and still it’s hard for me to grasp, but that’s literally what he’s doing.  He is entering into you and me.  He is affirming us, and then he’s saying, “With you affirmed and you and I working together, we can change anyone into anything that they’re called to be.  That’s your gift that I share with you, and the joy that I have in doing it I want to share with you.  And so together we change the world.”

Father, your gift of your Spirit within us enabling us to be so much more than we could ever be on our own is so difficult at times for us to believe in and to trust in, but only you can give us the grace to be the instruments that you call us to be.  Only you can be the source of the faith that we need to have.  So we pray that you grant us these great gifts so that we truly can become the witness in the world to everything you want people to know about you and see about you and love you for.  And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.