Bible Commentaries

Parted From Them

Luke 24:50

That is what he is always doing. In the case of the text the incident was personal and local, tut it contains a principle of very wide and gracious adaptation. There is a point in life at which visible leading ceases. It may be at Bethany; it may be at eighteen years of age; it may be at nominal and legal manhood. It may vary according to individuality, but there is the principle:—Now I have brought you out so far, go on. This is education, this is providence. We are almost conscious of the moment when we felt our feet squarely upon the earth, with no one near at hand on whom we could rest for a moment. That was a crisis; that was a fine point in life-education. Some people seem never to get out of leading strings. They have no faith, no courage, no spiritual consciousness that says, I can do it; I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Where is thy Christ? Taken up into heaven. Canst thou trust an unseen Leader? It is there, at that very point, so vital and so sensitive, that faith comes into full fruition and gracious operation, and man feels that he is no longer dependent upon visibleness and tangibleness, that he has entered upon a higher level of life, that he breathes the air of an infinite and sabbatic climate. Some are farther on than others. This is the difficulty of conducting a thousand men all at once through the same line of argument, because one man is saying, I am not so far on, why do you hasten on? And another man says, if we begin to slow down for those who are weary and weak, Why do you not make more haste in your argument? We have left that point half a century ago; we feel the budding wings, we are about to fly. What is the poor speaker or teacher to do? He must ask his contrastive hearers to throw themselves together and strike an average line, that they may meet for the moment at one common point and receive the impulse and edification of one common thought.

"He led them out as far as"—Walking. Is there a more interesting exercise than to teach a little child to walk from one chair to another? The journey is not a very great one to the observer, but it is like going through all Africa to the little traveller. We look upon the exploration with a genial and sympathetic smile, but there is no smile on the child's face; that is about the most solemn moment that has yet taken place in its history. See how it wavers, how it walks, partly with its hands and shoulders, and how it balances itself, and overbalances, and at the last just touches the other shore! Then we say the child can walk by itself; we turn over a leaf in the family book and write that on such a day at such an hour Acts 1:12) that it took place on Mount "Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey." There is no contradiction between the earlier and the later statement of the evangelists. Bethany lay on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, and the way from the village to Jerusalem lay across the mountain. A portion of the mountain may have appertained to Bethany, and may have been called by its name. And St. Luke speaks here with a certain degree of vagueness; he does not actually assert that the apostles were led to Bethany, but "as far as" (meaning near) "to Bethany ": and his words are therefore satisfied by supposing the Ascension to have taken place somewhere in the neighbourhood of the village. Bethany and the Mount of Olives are similarly associated in Mark 11:1, as well as in Mark 11:11, compared with Luke 21:37. The traditional scene of the Ascension is one of the four summits of the Mount of Olives, overhanging, and in full view of, the city of Jerusalem, and now covered by the village and mosque and church of the Jebel-et-Tur. The site, however, is too far from Bethany and too near to Jerusalem to satisfy the conditions of the narrative. "On the wild uplands which immediately overhang the village, he finally withdrew from the eyes of his disciples, in a seclusion which, perhaps, could nowhere else be found so near the stir of a mighty city; the long ridge of Olivet screening those hills, and those hills the village beneath them, from all sound or sight of the city behind; the view opening only on the wide waste of desert-rocks and ever-descending valleys, into the depths of the distant Jordan and its mysterious lake. At this point, the last interview took place. "He led them out as far as Bethany;" and they "returned," probably by the direct road over the summit of Mount Olivet. The appropriateness of the real scene presents a singular contrast to the inappropriateness of that fixed by a later fancy, "seeking for a sign," on the broad top of the mountain, out of sight of Bethany, and in full sight of Jerusalem, and thus in equal contradiction to the letter and the spirit of the gospel narrative.""—(Stanley, Sinai and Palestine.)