I chickened out

Have you ever read the prophets of the Old Testament and wondered how much of that stuff they actually had the courage to say and how much they wrote but maybe skipped over it as the preached?

In the sermon that follows you will find 2 sentences in double strikeout. It is because I chickened out and didn't say it. Dang it!

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?” Seems like a stupid question for these two men in white to ask the disciples. Their friend, their mentor, their rabbi was just taken up on a cloud into the heavens – why wouldn’t they be looking up into the sky? Wouldn’t you be looking up too? And yet I believe there is something very profound in the question raised by the men in white robes. The real question they seem to be asking the disciples is “now what?” “You missed the point of just about everything Jesus taught and showed you. You freaked out when he was arrested. You hid away out of fear while he died and for the three days there after. Then, when he appeared to you in the middle of a locked room and told you to go out you sat around for another week. He promised you the Spirit of truth, spent the better part of 40 days preparing you for when he would leave again, and now he is gone. So, what have you learned? What are you going to do now?” Speechless, it seems, the male and female disciples of Jesus head back to the upper room and begin to pray. “What on earth are we going to do now,” they must have repeated over and over again in prayer, “now what?”

As the Church calendar goes today is day four of that prayer marathon. The Feast of the Ascension is celebrated forty days after the Resurrection of Jesus; or for those of us who aren’t church calendar people; it was Thursday. As we know now, the promised Holy Spirit will arrive next Sunday, the fiftieth day; Pentecost. Just try to imagine, however, what it must have been like for the group praying in the upper room. Jesus didn’t leave a schedule; he only gave them a promise.

I think I got a glimpse of that trust last weekend when Cassie and I joined three others from St. Paul’s as Cursillo Pilgrims. The first thing they did was ask us to give up our reliance on time. The God’s Time clock went up on the wall. Our watches went into our pockets. Cell phones were in the off position. Time was measured only in [this much]. We weren’t given a schedule; only a promise that we’d get more than enough to eat and just barely enough sleep. It is not easy for a severely Type-A person like myself to let go of all real notions of time and trust a group of touchy feely types to keep me on schedule. In those first few moments of panic as I checked my naked wrist every [this long] desperately hoping that the time might appear on my arm that I think I got a glimpse into the feeling in that upper room. As the disciples huddled together they must have reflected on what had already happened.

Jesus had predicted that he would die and be raised on the third day, and it happened. So there was at least some past experience upon which they could base the hope that the Holy Spirit would actually come. Still, those ten days must have felt like an eternity. “Now what” takes about a second to say, having repeated it some 864,000 times, they must of thought the Holy Spirit was never going to arrive. And what if it did?

There was that the second half of Jesus’ promise; “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Spirit is coming, someday, and then the expectation of proclamation begins. You can imagine that half of the group might be praying for the Spirit to come soon so that their fears might be eliminated and the other half was praying for the Spirit to take its sweet time because the ends of the earth sounded awfully frightening. The time of waiting, which ever camp one may have fallen in, must have been unbearable. “Now what?”

And lest we think we got off easy because we know that the Spirit did arrive, the question still remains. “Why do you stand here looking into the sky?” Or perhaps more to the point; the men in white robes are standing here looking at me asking, “you’ve got the Bible, the teachings of Jesus are in plain English, God’s passion for justice hasn’t changed, you have committed yourself to a life of discipleship, why are you looking into the sky for Jesus to come back and magically fix things? What are you doing for the Kingdom of God in the here and the now?” You’ve heard me say this before, and no doubt you’ll hear it again, but a life of faith in Jesus Christ is not about going to heaven when we die, but about how and for whom we live our life here and now.

We find ourselves today in the midst of another indefinite period of waiting. In probably every generation there has been a person or some people who have, for whatever reason, read the spiritual dice such that Jesus’ return could be predicted in their lifetime, and up until today each of those people has been wrong. We have no way of knowing when the promise of Jesus and the two men in white robes will come to fruition. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes. Did the Holy Spirit come with great power and glory on the disciples? Yes. Will Jesus return to earth on the same cloud he rode into the sky? Most assuredly. In the mean time, we find ourselves in year two thousand and eight or so of the prayer marathon for his return. And the prayer for this period of waiting is the same as it was while the disciples waited on the Spirit, “God, What on earth are we going to do now? Now what? Amen.”

The specific answer to that prayer will be different for each of us. In general, however, we already know the answer. “Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This commission has not changed in over 2000 years. We are still called to testify by word and deed the good news of God in Jesus Christ. That’s what this eternal life thing we’re all hoping for is all about. Jesus himself said in John’s Gospel, “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life has nothing to do with pearly gates and harps of gold, but it is knowing, intimately, in the Biblical sense, the only true God. And knowing God is very different from knowing about God. I have a master’s degree in knowing about God, and I could spend hours on end telling you about God. In reality, however, it is only through living out our baptismal covenant together that we come to know God. Through prayer, proclamation, and the service of others we develop our relationship with God; we get to know God.

Men and women of St. Paul’s Foley, why are we looking into the sky? Let’s turn our attention to the here and now, and strive to be the answer to the real underlying question, “now what?” Amen.