Jeremy L. Berg

A Cliffhanger And It’s Sequel

Take a survey sometime of Bible reading Christians and ask them if they’ve spent more time reading the Gospels or the Book of Acts.  The answer is will always be the Gospels.  And it’s not even a close contest.  But why is this?

I think the answer is quite obviously because the Gospels introduce us to Jesus, the focal figure of our faith and the object of our devotion.  The Old Testament Scriptures point forward to the coming of the Messiah, and the Gospels tell us of his glorious arrival.  Thus, we should indeed spend the majority of our time studying the life, death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus.

But here’s the rub: Luke’s story of Jesus is a two-volume set. There’s a part one (The Gospel of Luke) that ends like a cliffhanger, and leaves the reader on the edge of their seat awaiting the sequel (The Acts of the Apostles).

Luke opens up his sequel saying that “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven” (Acts 1:1). In other words, the work Jesus began to do in Luke’s Gospel continues on in the Book of Acts.  The teaching ministry he began in Luke is carried forward in Acts.

This raises the curious question: How is Jesus’ work and teaching continued in Acts when Jesus appears to leave the scene before the end of the first chapter?  Let’s just say that you and I are part of the answer to that question; and a large reason I’m writing this memoir!

But this profound truth seems to be lost on most contemporary Christians.  Many of us have ignored the sequel, insisted on remaining in part one and are missing out on one of the most exciting parts of all the Scriptures.  No one would watch only part one of a two-part season finale of Lost or 24. Why would we do this with the greatest reality drama ever played out in the history of the world?

Even more tragically, when we do this we are missing out on the part of the story where we actually come in.  As I hope to show in the pages ahead, the Book of Acts is our curtain call and the place for us to find ourselves summoned to our unique role in God’s unfolding drama of redemption history.

But, alas, we find ourselves the heirs of a long tradition of seeing the Christian faith primarily as a one-time transaction made between God and Christ at the Cross.  Jesus said, “It is finished” on the cross; and many of us think that’s it.  Our sins are forgiven. We can go to heaven when we die.

This of course is gloriously true!  Yet, this is hardly the full story, and clearly not the way God has chosen to tell it. Modernity has tried its best to turn the Christian faith into merely a collection of timeless truths.  But the human heart is still looking for a Story worth giving itself to.  We long to find ourselves part of something greater than ourselves, and something more meaningful and adventurous than the American Dream.

Christians believe that our life should revolve around Christ our savior, but many of us are stuck in Part One of the story, what Luke calls “my former book.”  Some of us are still standing at the foot of the cross with the Roman centurion praising God for the forgiveness of sins saying, “Surely this was a righteous man” (Luke 23). Others of us are still standing with the women by the empty tomb praising God for conquering the grave and opening the gates to eternal life (Luke 24).  But this is not where Luke’s story ends, nor where it is ultimately headed.

Luke’s narrative marches triumphantly beyond the cross, dances joyfully away from the empty tomb, and then narrows in on two scared and downcast disciples, and the story of their curious encounter with the resurrected Christ on the road to Emmaus.

The disciples are trying to make sense of the story they have been living — a story that they thought would have a happier ending with Jesus ushering in the promises of the Age to Come.  Their hopes seem to have gone up in smoke with the execution of Jesus.

Then Jesus proceeds to open the Scriptures in a way that leaves their heart’s burning with excitement, renewed hope and purpose.  The two disciples looked at each other and exclaimed, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”  With hearts aflame we can expect these two carried this renewed excitement about Jesus’ resurrection with them as they moved from Luke 24 into the earliest days of the Jesus movement as told in the Book of Acts.