Six-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-six.  Roughly the number of days since the date of birth for one of our randomly selected seniors until the date of their high school graduation.  Hardly sounds like a big enough number to represent the significance of all that’s happened in between those two moments in time.  In some ways, it’s not big enough.  Parents know.  It seems like only yesterday, in the pre-digital early 90’s, we hoisted video cameras the size of small suitcases onto our shoulders so we could record their every step into the first day of kindergarten.  Brand new shirt and shorts just for that day.  Bleached white tennis shoes that hadn’t seen even one day on a playground yet.  Then, we took what seems like a short nap only to awaken and find that our pint sized gift of God was now a grown woman or man, ready or not (them or us), about to take one giant leap into full-fledged adulthood.  Six-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-six.  How can that little number measure the span of all that has happened? 

Kind of like Luke does when he records the history of all God has done and will do for all mankind for all time through Jesus, in only   eleven verses.  It’s all there, “all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven.”  He taught his disciples.  He suffered for sin.  He was resurrected from the dead.  He demonstrated his victory over death in multiple ways over forty days of time.  Then, this mysterious ascension.  Matrix-like, Jesus just levitates out of sight.  Except, what went up didn’t come down.  It must have felt like abandonment to the disciples.  They stood there gawking at the sky, wondering where Jesus went.  He’d come and gone, come again then gone again.  Even though Jesus had tried all along to get them ready for this moment and explain the meaning of it, they still didn’t get it.  “‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’”  After all the disciples had seen and heard, they still couldn’t unload this notion that the Messiah had some kind of agenda that was more temporal than eternal, for one small group of people in one small place in one time. 

All this information comes to us as we’re listening in on Luke as he retells this conversation between Jesus and his disciples.  Luke, as a disciple himself, would have been there when all this happened, heard it all and asked questions of Jesus, too.  But, here, like a CNN correspondent shouldering a video camera, he steps back third-party- like as if he’s only recording an event he witnessed at a distance. 

In the process, he’s sending a message to the early church and to those of us in the church to come.  And, this is it.  All that God had done up until that moment, even in Christ, was merely prologue.  Seven-hundred and thirty-thousand days later we’re still in the same time zone as the early church and the first apostles, as far as God’s work in redeeming man is concerned, what the scriptures often refer to as the “last days.”  Later, Luke quoted the prophet Joel using those exact words, “‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams (Acts 2:17).’”  We’re on the other side of what God initiated in the birth, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.  But, the redemption story isn’t finished.  Jesus had to leave, ascend to heaven, in order to make way for what God wanted to do next in sending his Holy Spirit.  These are the last days before God finishes what he started in creation, the redemption of mankind.  But, look at how exciting God intends these last days to be!  Full of life, power and hope!  The Holy Spirit!

That’s why the “two men in white robes,” angels maybe, stopped the disciples in mid-gawk and asked, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”  What God has started, God will finish.  Everything up until now is just prologue.  The last chapter has yet to be written.  The Jesus who came, will come again.  The work God has started that includes what he is doing in you, God will complete. 

Maybe that’s part of the secret to how parents survive moments like this.  I say maybe only because I’ve yet to go where some of you are going very soon, back to your empty nest.  We sometimes forget that this is one of those “it hurts so good” moments for parents.  As special as this day is for the graduates, it probably feels something for parents much like Jesus’ ascension did for the disciples.  Someone they’ve loved with their very being is going away.  Yet, if parents only spend their time only gawking at pictures of the one who just left, the one who used to be there, they’ll miss what is about to happen. 

Celebrating moments like this has more to do with anticipating what is yet to come than it does with missing what once was.  (I’m preaching to myself!)  Maybe that’s what the white robes were telling the disciples.  This isn’t the end, only the beginning of what will be.  What God has done is only evidence of what he will yet do. 

Now again, Luke is telling this story.  So far we have prologue and, jumping to the end, we have hopeful anticipation of what God will yet do.  But, what about where we are right now?  Remember, where the church was 2,000 years ago we still are now, in between, navigating the last days between what God has done and what God will yet do.  So, what about now?  Luke answers that question, too by reporting a promise Jesus made to the disciples. 

The disciples wanted to know God’s plan, they wanted to see the blueprint.  “‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’”  In graciously holy language, Jesus says, “That’s none of your business, when God is going to do what.”  “‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’”  We can’t know what God is up to in any given moment.  Most likely, if he told us, we wouldn’t likely comprehend it anyway.  But, this much we are promised.  In between what God started and what God promised to finish, we “‘will receive power’” to live lives of holy purpose.  Not just power to simply survive from birth to retirement, but, specifically, power to accomplish something of eternal worth that honors God.  “‘You will be my witnesses’” wherever you go, whatever you do.  In these last days, through the presence of his Holy Spirit in us, we have been empowered to live lives of holy, eternal purpose.

If I could challenge our graduates with one thought today that would be it.  You have been empowered, by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in you, to live a life of holy purpose by being a witness to all that you know of Jesus to those who don’t know of Jesus.  Whether your career takes you down the path of teaching, medicine, law, architecture, ministry, accounting or whatever, on that path, as you go, you’ve been given purpose for living – the greatest gift love ever bestows.  You will be, have been, empowered to do more than just make enough money to buy a bigger house every few years and a nicer car and always put aside enough so that, when you’re ready, you can retire in fine style.  You may be able and blessed to do all those, but your calling is, no matter how you make your living, to be witnesses of the Jesus you know as you go.

If I could give parents of these students one word of encouragement, it would be along the same lines.  You’ve brought these young men and women up in the church.  You’ve prayed with them, read the Bible with them.  You’ve brought them to church, and kept challenging the church to give its best to disciple these students.  Most of all, by your own example and witness, you’ve introduced them to Jesus.  The Jesus who has given them a promise that now serves to give you hope.  Wherever they go, they will never be without, in the person of the Holy Spirit, the presence and power of God in them.  They will never, ever be alone.  They will never, ever be without what they must have. 

We all know we have no guarantees.  Some of you on the backside of a very successful career bear witness to that.  You planned well.  You worked hard.  You maintained integrity and bore witness of your faith at every opportunity.  Then, within months of a well deserved retirement, the stock market tanked and the course of your life was altered overnight.  You’re having to work long after you had planned to pursue other dreams.  We have no guarantees.  We have no guarantees about our finances, our health, our families.  None. 

But, we do have this promise.  Between what God started in us and what God promised he will finish, between now and then, we will be empowered from within, by the presence of his Holy Spirit.  We will not, cannot ever be totally alone, ever again.  No matter how dark the tunnel of illness, betrayal, death, unplanned tragedy or loss, we will not walk alone and we will not ever, under any circumstances be without his power to take at least the next step.  “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God’?  Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.  He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.  Even youths grow weary and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:27-31).”

What God has started, he will finish.  A blessing the apostle Paul once wrote to some people he loved very much is so very fitting for this moment.  From parents to their children.  From this church to its graduates.  From me to you.  “I thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you . . . I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:3-4, 6).”

In you, he has started something very beautiful, very unique, a once-in-all-human-history person.  What God starts, he always finishes.  Six-thousand-five-hundred-seventy-six days.  Only prologue!  What God has done in those few days is just the beginning of what will do. 

Between now and then, power for living, power for holy living, living that accomplishes something eternally good.  What God starts, he always finishes.  Won’t it be something to see what God finally does with what he’s already started?

Last summer, we went jeeping in the Colorado Rockies.  One day, we’d driven through a mountain pass back down into a valley.  As we rounded a corner in the valley floor, I saw Telluride for the very first time, nestled between spectacular mountains on either side and one of the most beautiful peaks, I’ve ever seen in all my life, taller than the sky itself, as a backdrop.  Breathtaking isn’t a word big enough to stretch around what I saw.  I remember thinking that if this is just earth, and it’s this beautiful, there is no way to imagine how beautiful heaven will be. 

It really is true, even when we’re on top of the highest and most beautiful peak in all of creation, we’re merely standing in the foothills of what God will do in re-creation, when these last days become the first days of a whole new Day.  As 3^rd Day, a contemporary Christian rock group sings in “These Thousand Hills,” These thousand hills roll ever on, the footprints of a mighty God.  They bring me to my knees in praise, amazing love, amazing grace.  These thousand hills roll ever on, the ripples of a coming storm.  The morning star precedes the dawn, these thousand hills roll ever on.

Won’t it be something to see what God finally does with what he’s already started?