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Ask NT Wright Anything
Ascension and Authority: Reclaiming the Power of Acts – Tom Wright Premium Seminar 1
00:21:13
Why the NT book of Acts still speaks into Christian mission, politics and unity today with Tom Wright and Mike Bird
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- [00:02]
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Mike
I think.
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- [01:36]
Mike
The Ask NT Write Anything Podcast.
- [01:44]
Tom Wright
This one's for you. Welcome to Part one of our brand new series on the Book of Acts. We're giving you this first episode completely free, but the rest of the journey is just for subscribers. For just $3.99 US dollars a month, you'll get exclusive access to every episode in this series and much more. It's quick and easy. Just head to askntright.com to sign up or hit subscribe in Apple Podcasts.
- [02:12]
N.T. Wright
Now let's dive in.
- [02:13]
Mike
Well, Tom, here we are now. I have recently returned from an epic adventure, traveling through Turkey and Greece with a wonderful group of Ridley students and supporters. I had a great time going to Tarsus, going to Colossi, going to Pisidian, Antioch, Ephesus, Thessaloniki, Philippi, Athens, Corinth. We saw it all. It was amazing. And you know what made it even better, Tom? It was having this good little book with me, the Challenge of Acts by Yourself, and it was really worked on and a few students took it with them. It was great because it's not like an exhaustive commentary. It's not a devotional resource either, but it's a great little sketch of the Book of Acts and the main themes in the major chapters and all the sort of, you know, highlights. So I felt like As I was getting a guided tour of Pisidian, Antioch, Laodicea, Pergamum, Ephesus and all those places. By reading your, your new book on, on Acts, I felt like I was also getting a guided tour through the Book of Acts. So let me, let me kick off. Why do you think the Book of Acts is important today?
- [03:37]
N.T. Wright
Acts is a page turner and it gets people into thinking through, oh my goodness, that's what happens when you start following Jesus. I mean, it again and again surprises you. You may have grown up in a church or you may be completely outside the church, but you may have ideas of what church life might be like. And then you read Acts and it blows them all away. And that's a wonderful thing to sort of give people a sense of excitement and possibilities. And maybe God does new things. But in particular, Acts shows the very first Christians navigating the difficult path of saying that we are servants of God, we are followers of Jesus, we're l in the real world. And the real world includes both people that we think are basically on the right track and are helpful and people who are definitely on the wrong track and are real pain. In other words, a world rather like our own. And particularly a world where rulers and authorities will try to impose their systems onto believers, onto people who follow Jesus, and where the church needs to learn what it might mean to say we have to obey God rather than human authorities, and then also sometimes to remind the human authorities of their job as God given servants of his purposes. And as we see the early church navigating that, I'm aware that in my early years as a Christian, I read Acts simply in terms of one paragraph at a time and looking for little lessons which might help me. Well, that's fine, that's okay as a way in, but that actually when you take it at a run, as I try to do in this book, we see that big picture of what does it mean to say that Jesus is Lord, Lord of the whole world. It's like I've often said at the end of Matthew's Gospel, the risen Jesus says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And most Western Christians are quite happy to think of Jesus having all authority in heaven. Hardly begun to think what it might mean to say he has authority on earth. Well, Acts as the answer. This is what it looks like. It means some of us may get hurt, some of us may get killed, some of us may get shipwrecked, goodness knows what. But God's purposes go ahead because actually Acts is Not the story of the early church. It's not the story even of Paul, though it obviously focuses on him. It's the story of the gospel, the work of God in, as Luke says, the word of God, that is the powerful word, the word that says Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. And that is the story that then arrives in Rome openly and unhindered. So it's a hugely encouraging as well as an exciting book.
- [06:18]
Mike
Oh, that's great. I, I remember a sermon you did. I think it was at the Lambeth Conference on Paul's shipwreck. Do, do you, do you remember that? And it was actually, it was actually.
- [06:29]
N.T. Wright
A meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council.
- [06:32]
Mike
Yeah, okay, there we go. Yeah, so, but that was like you had this great line like when Paul says, unless we stick together, we cannot be saved. Which is a great metaphor, a great image for church unity. And you know, sometimes we need to stick together. So I mean, for me that's just an off the hand example of some of the ways you can preach Acts.
- [06:53]
N.T. Wright
I remember that. And I mean the church to which you and I belong has gone through and is going through some convulsions at the moment, particularly over issues of sexuality. But actually these show up some of the fault lines that have been there for quite a long time on several other issues as well. And yeah, I was really struck there in Acts 27, where there are some of the soldiers on board the ship as it's bobbing up and down and about to be wrecked. There's some soldiers who think, ah, here's a lifeboat. If we get into that and lower ourselves down, we can get away. And who cares about the rest? And Paul says, no, sorry, you've got to stay in the boat, otherwise we're none of us going to make it. So it isn't the soldiers who are doing that, it's the sailors who are doing that. Those sailors are going to be needed on board to help bring boat in through its crash landing on the rocks. So there is a sense of the appeal for unity, but it's a hard one, unity. And it may involve shipwrecks and then fresh starts. So whole other set of questions there.
- [07:58]
Mike
Yeah. Well, let's talk about Acts Chapter one. Now, one of the big things in Acts one is the Ascension story. Now, the Ascension, I've heard Christians feel like, oh, you know, a little bit embarrassed by the Ascension story, to be honest. I mean, you know, I've heard, heard an atheist critic call it the launching of the Lord. You know, he's going up to heaven, which is only about 600ft up there, you know, above the clouds, below the moon. And some people think, look, this, this is, this is a kind of ancient cosmology where it's three tiers, you know, what, what is the Ascension about? Is it about Jesus floating up to heaven that's only 600ft? But the ancient people didn't know any better. What do you take away as the mention or the meaning of the Ascension?
- [08:50]
N.T. Wright
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And I never really got my head around this until about 20 years ago when I was writing in my little commentary series, Everyone series. I'm doing acts for everyone. And of course, you have to begin with Acts 1. That's what's on the docket for that. And I remember I had been learning in previous years, up before that, new things about how the language of heaven and earth works in the Bible. And heaven and earth are routinely spoken of in this metaphorical spatial sense as the heavens being higher above the earth, and so great is God's mercy above those who fear him, et cetera. But actually, when you look at what the Bible says about heaven, heaven is God's dimension. It's not a geographical location within our space, time, universe. Of course, there are still some Christians who take it extremely literally and think that we have to do a vertical lift off ourselves one day and that's how we will get to heaven, which produces all sorts of nonsense. But no, heaven is the dimension in which Jesus is currently living and from which he is Lord, because heaven is not a long way away. So that if Jesus has gone to heaven, he's miles away from us. I mean, I've heard tragically sermons in churches saying that the great thing about the Ascension is Jesus has now gone away, so he's left us to do it ourselves. And so we've got to take courage and get on and figure it out. And I remember thinking, no, that's exactly what it doesn't mean the point about heaven. I mean, take the Book of Daniel, for instance, where Daniel says this is going to happen so that you may know that there is a God in heaven. Now, if that meant so that you may know that there's a God millions of miles away, then Nebuchadnezzar or whoever it is can do what he jolly well pleases. The point about there being a God in heaven is you on earth are better out because the one in heaven is now in charge. The one in heaven is the sovereign over the whole world. I've often Said heaven is the CEO's office. That's where stuff gets run from. And this runs into a different problem that people look at the world today and say, well, it's obvious God isn't in charge because none of this horrible stuff will be happening. Wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines and so on. And the answer is no, no, no. The kingdom of God doesn't mean God just sweeping everything out of the way and producing a totally beautiful world straight off. The kingdom of God is accomplished through Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit through the church. So that the lordship of Jesus, which is what ascension is all about, is then what we see worked out through the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, in the world. So that then the ascension, I think has two particular resonances which we have to take account of. One is Daniel chapter seven. Clearly that amazing image which Jesus invokes again and again in the Gospels is of the monsters, the chaos monsters doing their worst. It's rather like Psalm 2, actually. Why do the nations rage and shout and so on? And then God saying, actually, I'm installing my Messiah, he is now in charge. You better watch out. So put Daniel seven and Acts two together and the Ascension is talking about the Son of man coming on the clouds to be seated at the right hand of the ancient of days. In other words, Jesus. Jesus is now God's right hand man. He is running the show. So anyone knowing the Old Testament tradition would pick that up. It's not about him going a long way away. He's gone into what we can call God's dimension. That's why, by the way, a couple of passages in the New Testament about The Second Coming, First John 3 and Colossians 3 don't speak of him coming, they speak of him appearing. Jesus is not miles away. He's right here, but behind the visible screen in what we call in the Celtic tradition, thin places. There are places where the line between heaven and earth seems almost porous. Jesus is right there. One day he will appear. He has gone there. Of course, they use the imagery of vertical ascent because that fits with the metaphor that they're so familiar with from Isaiah 55 and from the Psalms and so on about heaven being higher than the earth. But that's not our danger, is that we read that in terms of Deism or Epicureanism, where if there is a God or if there are gods, they're a long way away. And I'm gesturing up towards the sky because many of the ancients will have just done it like that. And that doesn't mean that the ancients thought that the gods were up in the sky. Many of them thought that the gods lived on the top of Mount Olympus after all. It just means that they're in a different space, as we would say, a different dimension. So that's absolutely vital. The other dimension of the Ascension which we have to take seriously is that in the Roman world, after the death of Julius Caesar, some poor slave or some chap was bribed to say that he'd seen Caesar's soul ascending to heaven so that Caesar was now divine, so that Augustus then conveniently could claim that he was the son of the divinized Julius. Of course he was the adopted son, but that's good enough to stamp on a coin div. Feel the son of God or the son of the deified one. And many of the emperors played the same trick after their death. It's the way of legitimizing their successor. So a Roman reading this would be surprised that it was about Jesus body. Surely it should have been his soul. And the answer is no. We're talking about Judean thought, not Platonic thought, thank you very much. But they would understand that the one who is raised up now to share the heavenly dimension in some sense or other is the one who is now ruling and whose accredited agents are now taking forward his purposes, etc. So it's a way of both saying Jesus is now in charge and of saying Jesus followers are the ones who are bringing his rule to bear on the wider world.
- [15:10]
Mike
I mean, that's, that's a completely different way of thinking about the Ascension, Jesus being exalted to rule. It's about who's in. Who's at the helm of the universe, rather than trying to figure out the actual space time mechanics of how far did Jesus go before he did this? It's interesting too, Tom, the way in the Book of Acts, the ascension and the exaltation of Jesus are actually more prominent than Jesus's death. I mean, Jesus's death is mentioned like, you know, he was, you know, crucified by Pontius Pilate, the behest of the, you know, Judean leaders or Herod. And then he's been exalted and that means Psalm 110 has been made real for us and he commands all people to repentance. And there's going to be a day when he judges the dead and the living. It's really amazing how it's the exaltation of Jesus which is premised on the Ascension, that gets more air time than the death of Jesus in, in, in, in the Book of Acts and even in Hebrews, the Ascension is called an anchor for the soul. You know, that's something you cling to that, that the Messiah has been exalted and rules at the right hand of the Father. I mean, if you went to the average, you know, sort of church and asked them, what are your top five Christological doctrines? None of them would probably list the Ascension, but it's got such prominence in the Book of Acts and in the Book of Hebrews and elsewhere. I think Colossians and Ephesians is implied too. Now, one thing you do mention in, in the book is why celebrating Christ the King Sunday is a good idea. This was something of an innovation introduced, what was it by Pope Pius XIII or something in the 90s, the 11th year in like the 1920s, around the same time that Fascist fascism is rising in Italy, Communism has taken over Russia and it's spreading. So do you think. Well, I mean, you know, Catholics and Anglicans, we belong to a church where we celebrate this. Do you think other churches as well should celebrate Christ the King Sunday, which I think is the, the last Sunday, Advent?
- [17:28]
N.T. Wright
Yeah. The idea of celebrating Christ as King is wonderful. We already do that on Ascension Day. The new Feast of Christ the King was invented in the 1920s by the Pope as a way of combating fascism and so on, but it was placed in terms of the Christian year in a bit where nothing else was going on. Whereas what then happened in as recently as 1970, which in church history is a very short time ago, is that it was moved by Rome to the last Sunday before Advent. And then my church, the Anglican Church, followed along with that without realizing what was happening. Now, the trouble is, if you celebrate the same thing twice, it looks as if you didn't mean it really the first time. And I fear that, you know, it's as though somebody came to you to be married and you married them, and then six months later they came back and said, please do marry us again. Well, didn't it work the first time? And the answer is, if you're celebrating Christ as King with the Ascension, then you're saying that Jesus is already Lord. The danger of putting the Feast of Christ the King at the end of the church year, just before Advent, is that it implies what many, many Christians have believed, that Jesus is going to be king one day. In fact, some people read the Creed like that he will come again with glory and of his kingdom. There will be no end, as though we're waiting for him to be king at the end, but he isn't at the moment. The whole New Testament is based on the belief, as I think, Mike, you said before, as in Psalm 110 and so on, that Jesus is already Lord, which is why there is a gentil mission, which is why there is a call to obedience, which is why there is a celebration precisely on Ascension Day. So beware, because more is less. Adding that extra celebration takes it away from Ascension Day, which is where it really belongs.
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Mike
That's probably a good idea. So Christ is king, especially on Ascension Day.
- [19:17]
N.T. Wright
Yeah. And thereafter.
- [19:20]
Mike
Well, that's. Well, that's basically how the Book of Acts begins. That's the kind of point you emphasize in the opening of the Challenge of Acts when you're going through it. I think next time, Tom, we'll probably have a look at Acts, Chapter two at the Day of Pentecost. So there's some pretty good things that happen on that and the Day of Pentecost. Yeah. And you know, you see the church in its ideal state. So I think that's what we'll cover in our next Deep Dive episode. So for all of our listeners and supporters, that's what you've got in store for you on the next episode. Thanks for listening for everyone. Until then, take care. God bless you. And we'll see you on the next episode of Ask NT Write Anything.
- [20:01]
Tom Wright
That was part one of our Acts series. Hope you enjoyed it. Part two drops next week, but remember, it's for subscribers only. Don't miss out. Subscribe today for just $3.99 a month at askntirite.com or tap. Subscribe if you're listening on Apple Podcasts.
- [20:20]
N.T. Wright
See you there.