Acts 1:1-11 - Homiletics

The recapitulation.

St. Luke is like a traveler, who, having gained a certain summit, before he proceeds on his journey through the new country which is opening upon his view, stops and looks back upon the scene which he has traversed, but which he is now about to lose sight of. He marks the sites which had attracted his attention as he journeyed—the rising knoll, the conspicuous wood, the sheet of water, the open plain. But as he looks he spies out other objects which he had not noticed before—an ivy-mantled tower, a dwelling-house, a village, a clump of trees, which add richness and diversity to the scene; and so he adds them to his journal or to his sketch. In like manner our sacred historian, being about to quit the blessed scenes of the life of Jesus Christ which had engaged his pen in the Gospel, and to enter upon the history of the Apostolic Church, casts a lingering look upon the closing days of our Lord's sojourn upon earth, marks again what he had before narrated, recapitulates the history of the days which connect the Gospel with the Acts, but withal adds some striking incidents, throws in some additional words from the lips of the Divine Master, and by a few touches of his master-pen heightens the beauty of the scene, which was the last parting of Jesus from his Church on earth. The Resurrection itself, and the many proofs thereof given to the sight, the hearing, and the handling of the apostles; the commandments to the apostles; the walk to Bethany; the parting blessing; the ascension into heaven; the return of the apostles to Jerusalem; the continual prayers and praises of the disciples while they waited there for the promise of the Father;—those had all been duly noted in the closing chapter of the Gospel. But St. Luke wished, before entering upon his new ground, to mark more distinctly that mysterious border-land between the pre-resurrection and the post-resurrection Church; that strange period which belonged neither to the life of Jesus Christ on earth nor to the history of his Church, properly speaking—the forty days that intervened between the Resurrection and the Ascension. It was important to mark more distinctly than he had done in the Gospel that those manifestations of himself to his apostles, and that converse in the course of which he had instructed them in the duties of the apostolate, were extended over a period of forty days. It was important to do this both as strengthening the other proofs of the Resurrection, and also as showing how full a commission the apostles had received for the future ordering and governing of the Church. Hence the distinct mention of the forty days, and the somewhat fuller report of the conversations between the Lord and his apostles. But the act of the Ascension also was to receive some further light. In the Gospel St. Luke had mentioned the touching fact that it was while in the very act of blessing them that Jesus was parted from them. But now he adds, his mind apparently being full of the importance of proofs of the things narrated by him, that he was taken up u as they were looking," and that they did not lose sight of him till he was enveloped in a cloud. He adds also another remarkable circumstance, of which he may not have been previously aware, that two angels had appeared to the apostles, as they stood looking with fixed gaze into heaven, and announced to them his sure return. And thus, in this recapitulation and expansion of his briefer narrative in the Gospel, he closes with the announcement of that crowning glory of the Son of man which has been the hope and joy and strength of the Church amidst all her sufferings, the second advent of the Lord in the clouds of heaven.