Today is the first and last day of a new season within the Christian Church. For the last six weeks we have been celebrating, through our various readings and reflections, the season of Easter – and today, in the year of Matthew, despite most of our readings coming from the Gospel of John, today, we have come to the end of the Easter season and the beginning of the shortest season in the Church Year. Next week we celebrate Pentecost, and then enter into the remainder of the Church year, which is generally referred to as ‘Ordinary time” – as if time spent as a follower of Jesus can be called anything resembling ordinary. Today is Ascension Sunday – a day celebrated around the world in all major Christian traditions as the day Jesus ascended into Heaven. In some countries – such as Finland, Germany and Vanuatu to name a few, Ascension day is declared a public holiday with most of their major newspapers not even going to print today. Not quite sure of the connection between the ascension and the printing press, but it was an interesting association to make, and I think it demonstrates the importance of this day in the life of the Christian Church.

Our text this morning, placed in its narrative context – comes at the end of the resurrection appearances of Luke’s Gospel. You’ll recall from earlier on in the Easter cycle that two of Jesus’ followers encountered the risen Christ, although hidden from their sight on the road to Emmaus. We then read in verses 36 to 42, which is our link passage, of the second appearance of the resurrected Jesus, this time to the disciples, when he appeared in their midst as they were discussing the Emmaus road discovery. At this appearance the disciples were both filled with joy and at the same time disbelieving, and so to prove himself not a Ghost, and perhaps because he was hungry – he ate some broiled fish in their presence. Our readings this morning, both the Gospel of Luke, and then Luke’s sequel to the Gospel, The Acts of the Apostles follow on from the meal of fish. In the Gospel this story forms the end of the story, completing the ring cycle of the Gospel if you like, whereas in Acts, this story is the foundation – told slightly differently, with different emphasis, Luke uses this story as the foundation for the missional activity of the church.

After finishing off the fish, he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures – I am sure that is a common theme of prayer for Christians the world over, I know it is a recurring theme in mine. Earlier that day, by Luke’s scale of things Jesus had “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” as he walked the road to Emmaus with two of his followers. But this is more than that – rather than just interpreting, Jesus is opening up their minds, so that they can really get a handle of what his ministry had been all about. The disciples who had been front row seated witnesses to the teachings and the miracles of Jesus, had more often than not missed the general point of it all, but now the risen Jesus is opening their minds, giving them the missing pieces, granting them the tools to join all the dots together, and truly understand what the Jesus mission was all about. That be a wonderful thing to experience.

⁴⁶and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ Now how is that for a promise?

⁵⁰Then, we read, he led them out as far as Bethany – despite just telling them to remain in the city – and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, or praying for them, depending on your translation, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵²And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; ⁵³and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

And so ends of the Gospel of Luke. In a story that clearly echoes and yet exceeds the heavenly departure of the Prophet Elijah, that we read about in 2 Kings Chapter 2 – even down the gift of the spirit, Luke concludes his Gospel in the place where it began – in the temple. In Luke Chapter One, we find Zechariah – earthly uncle to Jesus – in the temple as was his duty. And then, at the conclusion of the Gospel, the disciples return to the Jerusalem temple with great joy, continually blessing God. The ring is complete. Luke then begins his second work, the Acts of the Apostles in the same place – the temple – which becomes the launching pad for the church and its mission to the world.

However, the phrase that stood out for me this week, as I was praying and reflecting over the text was “repentance and forgiveness of sins,” and I would like to explore that with you this morning. This phrase is one that comes with some conjecture and perhaps a little controversy. Now, depending on your translation – some will read “repentance and forgiveness of sins” like mine does, while others may read “repentance for forgiveness of sins.” Here is where one word makes all the difference.

Repentance is one of those words, that if you have been around churches for long enough you would have heard it spoken about at length, and most likely in a number of different ways. At its core, the English word ‘repentance’ comes from the Greek word metanoia. As with most Greek words, metanoia is made up of two distinct words and two distinct ideas. Meta is a propositional word in Greek, and has a meaning equivalent to ‘after, with, about, alter” and Noew is a verb, that means ‘to think, to understand’ – so when combined into metanoia – the word develops the meaning of change in mind, or a change in spirit. Scholars have found this word being used in ancient nautical texts, to indicate the thorough change in direction that a ship often needed to make in the unpredictable seas of the Mediterranean. Repentance is a radical, all encompassing change of mind, a change in the way you think, a change in your spirit, a change in the direction of your life, a reorientation of our lives towards God. If my life was headed in this direction, an act of repentance, and act of metanoia, would see my life now headed in this direction – where I was once headed away from God, my repentance has turned me back towards God. For many of us, this repentance is a continual journey throughout our lives. Beginning with a decision to follow Jesus, and a declaration of our faith and repentance our lives turn towards God, towards the path that leads us to the life God has always wanted for us. But as we live our lives, and get busier and focussed on other things, we can loose sight of the path, and need repentance, a time of metanoia to turn our lives back around in the direction of God, and back on the way. Fortunately for us, God is grace and love, and despite our regular wavering in direction, God never turns away from us. When we turn around, God is already there with open arms having already forgiven us.

Some systematic theologians have argued that forgiveness is contingent upon repentance; that you cannot be forgiven until you have repented, while others will argue that repentance is a result of the forgiveness; so knowledge of our forgiveness brings about our repentance. I suspect that both are equally true. I know that a large part of what lead me to make a decision to follow Jesus as a teenager was when it dawned on me that God has already forgiven me – no matter what I had done, was doing or will do – because Jesus was willing to submit himself to the unrepentant world, and to death on a roman cross – the declaration of forgiveness that Jesus offers from the cross, and the promise that God forgives brought about a repentance, a metanoia event in my life, and continues to do so. The parable of the prodigal son, clearly illustrates this point – the father had already forgiven the son before he even got a word of repentance out. Yet some traditions will dictate that you need to have repented before forgiveness can be given – this leads to the idea of penance – simple repentance was no longer enough, penance required paying for your wrong doings, your ‘sins’ so that forgiveness can be granted – this human idea, which did away with grace, was one of the contributing factors to the reformation. But I wonder sometimes whether it is in the act of repentance that we can actually embrace the forgiveness that God offers, rather than forgiveness only being offered dependant on our repentance. Do you understand what I am saying here? Forgiveness is what is offered to us by God, as a result of his love of us and the gift of Jesus Christ to the world, and this forgiveness is only dependant on our seeking it, on our believing, on our having faith. When we decide to turn around our lives as an act of metanoia, as an act of repentance and let go of the skewed path, or the thing that had taken us away from God, the block – the sin, if you like – that perhaps it is in the letting this go, in the turning away from that path, that then we are willing to accept the forgiveness as a gift of God’s grace to us through Jesus. This leads us, rather neatly to sin.

Sin is one of those things that the church has become famous, or perhaps infamous for over the last two millennia. For some reason, as I am positive it was not a Jesus reason, the church became the moral compass for society and became almost pharasaical in its development of and sticking to the letter of a law, and everything else being sin. We even managed to rank sins in our own order of importance, with sexual sin being the ultimate, and yet the one most prevalent in our society, greed and individualism ranked really low. However, at its most basic, fundamental level, sin – the most prevalent Greek word for which is – ha mar tia – means missing the mark. If you were an archer aiming at a target and missed – the act of missing is ha mar tia. In Romans when Paul writes, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” what he is saying is that all have fallen short – all have missed the mark, and come short of the glory of God. So in essence, rather than sin being a clearly defined and tangible action, ‘doing this is a sin, to do that is not a sin’ - it is rather missing the mark of living as God intended us to live – this is actually harder, because all of a sudden sin isn’t just what we do, it also becomes what we don’t do.[i] God intended for us to live in constant companionship with, and our lives always oriented towards God, and yet it is this inability of us to live this way – this missing the mark – ha mar tia – sin – that prevents us. The things that we have always considered to be sins in themselves are the very things that direct us down a path contrary to where God would like to go. And yet when we become aware of our mark missing, our incorrect path, when we wake up to the thing that is preventing our relationship with God, we can repent – we can experience a metanoia, a change in direction and receive the grace filled gift of God’s forgiveness that was already there waiting for us to receive it.

As followers of Jesus, we are witnesses to the world about repentance and forgiveness of sins that comes from an experience of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ. Now that doesn’t mean that we should go out and stand on a street corner with a bullhorn and shout “Repent, Repent.” To be a witness to this is to show in our lives and relationships the truth about repentance and forgiveness – to live in the shadow of the cross that connects us back to God enables us to be the vehicle of forgiveness. A mate of mine once preached a sermon on the things he never learnt or experienced in church – forgiveness was at the top of his list, and yet it needs to be one of the defining factors of who we are as the people of God.

We are the community of the Risen Jesus, we are to be the vehicle of God’s forgiveness – because of our Jesus Christ and the Cross we have been and are continually forgiven by God, and we need to continually show forgiveness to others. Freely we have received this forgiveness, and freely we must give. And the often intriguing thing about forgiveness, in the purely human sense of the word, is that in the experience of forgiveness, the healing, the repentance, the turning back towards God - it is experienced more by the person who does the forgiving, than it is by the person who has been forgiven.

Now we cannot simply advocate a straight forward policy of forgive and forget – which is not biblical, by the way – because often it is in the remembering of something that we can learn a very important life lesson, but the impetus to forgive comes from the God who we discovered in Christ Jesus. Because forgiveness is so contrary to the standard human condition, in a world that encourages us to seek revenge to make ourselves feel better, I would suggest that the power and strength to forgive comes from the Holy Spirit. When you hang on to a past offence, or a past hurt – when you do not forgive someone, who are you hurting really?

In Jesus parting words to his disciples, in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit he implored them to be witnesses to all the nations about the repentance – the changing in direction, the reorienting of people’s lives back to God and forgiveness of sins. The two go hand in hand, and as a church, we need to be vehicles for both. Non-forgiveness is like a prison, it is a barrier between yourself and God, non-forgiveness causes division, pain and anger, it is like holding a burning ember in your hand to throw at someone, while all the time hurting yourself. Forgiveness and repentance is a gift of Jesus to the church, forgiveness and repentance is a gift to ourselves in our relationship with each other and God, and forgiveness and repentance is part and parcel of how the Christian church is to be known in the world.

A teacher once brought a sack of potatoes to class and told each of her students to bring a brown paper bag. They were asked to brainstorm, and then for every person or event, or offence that they refused to forgive in their life's journey so far, they were to chose a potato, write on it the name and date, and put it in the bag. Some of their bags became quite heavy and were in danger of breaking.

They were then told to carry this bag with them everywhere for one week, putting it beside their bed at night, on the car seat when driving, next to their desk at work or in class.