Great Commission

 by James McKee

LUKE 24.36–52

 

Picture the room. Jerusalem, evening. Jesus' remaining 11 disciples are gathered behind a locked door — the lamps low, the bolt drawn. They are frightened; they scattered; They are grieving. The hope they had staked their lives on died on a Roman cross three days ago, and the city outside still belongs to the people who killed him. And now someone has burst in claiming to have seen him alive.

 

Hold that picture. Because the question I want to press this morning is a simple one: when we tell the story of Jesus — when we get to the end of it in our own minds — where does it stop? For many of us, I suspect, it stops at the resurrection. Empty tomb. Risen Christ. The stone rolled away. Job done.

 

But Luke doesn't stop there. Luke won't let us stop there. The passage in front of us this morning is not a conclusion — it is a commissioning. In a few short verses we move from that frightened group hiding in a room to a community launched on a world-changing mission.

 

How does Jesus take people marked by fear, confusion, and inaction, and turn them into witnesses who will carry his name to the ends of the earth? The answer has three movements — three things the risen Christ does. He reveals himself. He explains his mission. And he empowers his people.

1.   HE REVEALS HIMSELF 

"While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'"  — v.36

 

'While they were still talking about this.' Before the discussion is resolved. Before the fear has settled. Before anyone has worked out a plan, Jesus himself turns up. Not an idea about Jesus. Not the memory of Jesus. Jesus himself, standing in the room. Alive.

 

And notice — they are terrified. Verse 37: they think they've seen a ghost. His first word to a roomful of frightened failures is not a rebuke. It is 'Peace.' He meets them where they are. But he won't let them spiritualise what has happened. Verses 39 and 40: 'Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.' And then, verse 42 — they hand him a piece of grilled fish, and he takes it and eats it in front of them.

 

Luke labours the point. The resurrection is not a symbol. It is not a metaphor for new beginnings. It is a claim about something that happened, physically, to a body, in history, outside Jerusalem, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar. The nail marks are still there. The hands that broke bread, that touched lepers, that were nailed to the cross — these are the same hands he is holding out.

 

C.S. Lewis — the stubborn atheist turned Christian — said what finally broke through his resistance was this: the resurrection accounts don't read like mythology. Myths are smooth, rounded, timeless. This account is jagged. Particular. It has a piece of fish in it. A man who wished to invent a story, he said, would not have written like this. The physical details are not an embarrassment. They are the authentication.

 

And here is the pastoral heart of it: when life is hard — and many of us are walking through hard things — we don't need a vague spiritual comfort. We need a real, risen, reigning person. The disciples' joy in verse 41 is not the joy of a comforting idea. It is the almost disbelieving joy of recognition. He is real. He is here.

 

2. HE EXPLAINS HIS MISSION

"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures."  — v.45

 

Jesus doesn't just appear and say, 'Right — resurrection confirmed, off you go.' He opens the Scriptures. He teaches. And what he explains is this: the cross was not a tragedy that the resurrection rescues. The cross and the resurrection are both necessary. Both planned. Both announced centuries before they happened.

 

Verse 44: 'Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.' That is the whole Hebrew Bible. From Genesis to Malachi — the sacrificial system, the Passover lamb, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, the cry of Psalm 22, the hope of Psalm 16 — all of it has been pointing here. And verse 45 is remarkable: 'He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.' He doesn't just give them information. He gives them capacity. The ability to see Christ in the Bible is itself a gift of grace.

 

I have a friend who always reads the last chapter of a novel first. He says he can't follow the story without knowing where it's going. The disciples had been reading the Bible without understanding that Jesus is the ending. In this moment, Jesus reads them the last chapter — and the whole story makes sense.

 

The gospel defined

What is the gospel, according to Jesus himself in verses 46 and 47? Three things. First — the Messiah had to suffer and rise on the third day. That word 'had to' matters: divine necessity. The cross is not a problem to be explained away; it is the centre of God's plan — the Son of God bearing the sin of the world, the just for the unjust. Second — repentance and forgiveness in his name. Not just forgiveness — repentance and forgiveness; you cannot have one without the other. Third — to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. The mission is universal, starting in the very city where he was crucified and moving out to the ends of the earth.

 

And let's not to shrink the gospel down to merely a private transaction. When the New Testament speaks of the righteousness of God, it means more than a status handed to individuals though it includes that — it is God's own power breaking into the world to put it to rights. Repentance and forgiveness are gloriously personal; but they are the leading edge of something cosmic. God is not merely pardoning offenders one by one; he is setting right a whole world that has gone wrong. The gospel is an announcement that God has invaded, in Christ, to rescue and to reclaim and renew.

 

The implication for us as witnesses is this: the content of our witness is defined here. Not our spiritual journey, though that may be a bridge. Not our opinions on meaning and purpose though that can open a conversation. It is the crucified and risen Christ, and the call to repentance and forgiveness in his name. The message is not ours to design. It is ours to deliver.

 

3. HE EMPOWERS HIS PEOPLE 

"I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."  — v.49

 

The disciples are witnesses — verse 48. They were there. They saw the cross, the empty tomb, the risen Lord. They just watched him eat fish. They are qualified witnesses. But being a qualified witness is not the same as being a capable one. So Jesus says: wait. Don't go yet. 'Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.'

 

The ascension: the overlooked event

Then comes the most underappreciated event in the Christian calendar. Verses 50 and 51: Jesus leads them out to Bethany, lifts up his hands, blesses them — and is taken up into heaven. We mark Christmas, Good Friday, the resurrection, even Pentecost. But the ascension barely registers — even though it is one of the most important events in history.

 

The ascension is not Jesus leaving. It is Jesus reigning. He is taken up — not to retirement, but to the throne of the universe. Daniel 7 is being fulfilled: the Son of Man approaches the Ancient of Days and receives authority, glory, and sovereign power. His dominion is an everlasting dominion. This is the answer to the disciples' confusion. They expected a Messiah who would restore a political kingdom to Israel. But Jesus is inaugurating something far larger — a kingdom that cannot be shaken, a reign that will not end.

 

We live in the Time Between — between the first coming, when Christ came in weakness, and the second, when he will come in glory. The overlap of the ages. We are not waiting in an empty room; we are living in occupied territory, under the reign of a King who has already won the decisive victory but has not yet returned to make it visible to all. That is the strange and hopeful place every Christian stands knowing that this King has indeed ascended to His throne.

 

The Spirit: power for witness

And from that throne, as Acts 2.33 says, 'exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.' The Spirit is not a vague spiritual warmth. The Spirit is the presence of the reigning Jesus, at work in and through his people. When the Spirit comes, the disciples are no longer cowering behind a locked door. Peter — who wept by the fire, who denied his master three times — stands up and preaches with such power that three thousand people repent and are baptised. What changed? Jesus happened. The ascended, reigning, Spirit-sending Jesus.

 

Most of us know the experience of an ANZAC Day dawn service. Standing in the dark and the cold, watching the light come up, listening to the Last Post. And you will know there is something almost unbearably moving about it. The photographs. The medals laid out. The names read aloud, one by one. The silence.

 

ANZAC Day does something important. It preserves memory. It holds before us the reality and the cost of sacrifice — young men who got on ships and never came home, fathers who left families behind, sons whose mothers waited years at the gate. And in more recent conflicts, daughters too, wives, mothers. People who gave everything. That memory matters. It is right and good to honour it. And it should remind us not only of the beauty of sacrifice but of the sheer horror of war — the waste, the grief, the generational damage. We must never let it become merely ceremonial. Those were real people. Real families. Real losses that echo down to today.

 

The dawn service names the dead. But it cannot defeat the thing that killed them. It cannot break the power of Death. It remembers the fallen — but it cannot raise them.

 

And that is precisely what the New Testament dares to claim Jesus has done. On the cross he did not only bear our sin — he disarmed the Powers. And walking out of the tomb, he broke the grip of Death itself. Which is why a memorial, good and necessary as it is, can only ever take us so far. Because a memorial is, in the end, a photograph. A beautiful, important, carefully preserved photograph. It calls us to remember — and remembering is good. But a photograph cannot speak to you. It cannot help you carry today's grief. It cannot reach into the present. It preserves the past — but it cannot act.

 

Think of the difference between a photograph of someone you love who has died, and a phone call from someone who is alive. The photograph is precious — you hold it carefully, look at it in quiet moments. But it is fixed. Static. It cannot respond to you. A phone call is entirely different. The person is present. Engaged. They can hear what you are actually going through and speak into it. They can act.

 

Some Christians treat Jesus like a photograph — a beautiful historical memory to keep close and look at fondly. But Jesus is not a photograph. He is alive, reigning, and through his Spirit in present, active relationship with his people right now, this morning, in this room. He is not the memory of a good man who died sacrificially. He is the Lord of the universe, who knows your name and is at work in your life. A memorial can call us to remember real sacrifice — but it cannot save us, forgive us, defeat death, or send its Spirit to live within us. Only Jesus can do that. And the claim of this passage is that he has. And does. And will, until he comes.

 

Because the ascension is not the end of the story. As Jesus ascends, Luke tells us in Acts 1 that two angels appear: 'This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go.' He is coming back. The reigning Lord is also the returning Lord.

 

And this shapes everything. We are not maintaining an institution or running a community organisation that happens to use Christian language. We are people who believe the risen, reigning Christ will return — and that every person we meet will stand before him. That is why witness is not optional. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 that we are Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. If Jesus is not merely a good teacher, sharing his message is a nice thing to do when convenient. But if he is the crucified, risen, ascended, returning Lord of all creation — then witness is the most important thing we will ever do. Not because we are impressive, but because we know the one who is.

 

What witness looks like.

The word 'witness' in Luke 24 is the Greek martys — from which we get 'martyr'. A witness doesn't invent testimony. They report what they have seen, heard, and know to be true. And that witness is both verbal and holistic.

 

It is verbal — we cannot escape that. Acts 2 makes it plain: the Spirit comes, and Peter speaks. There's a famous line, often wrongly pinned on Francis of Assisi — 'preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.' A lovely sentiment, but it doesn't survive contact with Acts 2. You cannot explain the cross with a smile. You cannot call someone to repentance with a casserole, however excellent the casserole. At some point, in some context, we are called to say — with clarity, warmth, and courage — what we believe about Jesus and why it matters.

 

But witness is not only verbal. Luke, more than any gospel writer, shows us a Jesus who heals bodies, restores dignity to the marginalised, eats with tax collectors and sinners. Witness is the whole of a life oriented towards Jesus — the conversation with a colleague about why you have hope; the way you use your money, time, and influence knowing you are accountable to a returning King; the broken situations you step into because you carry the presence of the Spirit.

 

And at its best, witness is not performance — it is overflow. When the risen Jesus has genuinely transformed you, it is almost impossible to stay silent. Peter and John, dragged before the Sanhedrin and ordered to stop speaking, simply say: 'We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.' That is witness. Not a duty reluctantly discharged, but an irrepressible response to a living Lord.

CONCLUSION 

We began by picturing a locked room — a frightened, grieving, defeated little band. And we asked: when we tell the story of Jesus, where does it end? Luke's answer is that it does not end at the empty tomb, glorious as that is. It continues — through the ascension, through Pentecost, through the Spirit-empowered witness of ordinary, frightened people who have been met by the risen Christ. It continues right here, in this room, today.

 

Look at the movement. Fear gives way to joy. Confusion gives way to clarity. Waiting gives way to witness. And the engine of it all is the same risen, ascended Christ, who reveals himself, speaks through his word, and empowers by his Spirit. He has not changed. He is not less risen, not less ascended, not less Lord. And he is not done. He is coming back.

 

We know how to hold a memorial in this country. We know the dawn service, the photographs, the names read aloud — and that is good and right. But this morning we have something more than a memorial. We have a living Lord — one whose own sacrifice did not merely leave a memory to be honoured, but broke death open from the inside. One who did not stay in the tomb. One who is not frozen in the past, but reigns in the present and is coming in the future.