Church: Sky Gazing or Grounded?
Acts 1:1-14
Sometimes, I feel bad for the disciples. They are the butt of every joke, they are set up as if they understand nothing that is happening in the time that Jesus was walking the earth. They are everyone who didn’t get to experience Jesus first hand, ask questions, trying to understand, working out what this whole thing means. But in the Gospel stories, because we’ve heard them so many times, we look at them as if they are just… dumb.
Take today’s story for example: They are have watched Jesus be taken up in the clouds and they stand there, staring up at the sky, mouths hanging open, eyes wide. Were they shocked? Were they waiting?
This story in Acts is a transition moment. Acts is generally accepted to be have been written by the same author as Luke. Luke tells the story of Jesus. Acts tells the story of what happened t,o the church in the first years after. How did they get up after this? How did they keep moving? How did the powerful respond? Who would be the leaders that would rise up? Some of the answers were surprising. The story of Acts comes with some twists and turns. But it starts here, saying good-bye to Jesus, again. Remember we’ve done this a couple of times, before he was arrested, after he was raised, he’s been hanging out for 40 days. Jesus was telling them, again, about the Kingdom of God, proving, once again, that the disciples hadn’t gotten it and didn’t understand. Because they still thought that this kingdom was about the overthrow of Rome, they still thought it was about this moment, they thought it was about power as the world had been defining it. They were looking for might and swords and upheaval and instead, Jesus tells them about the power of the Spirit, which I’m sure, at the time, didn’t seem like much. When they were standing with Jesus in the midst of the Empire.
He tell them that they will tell the story, be witnesses of all that has happened. That they will tell all those who are like them, and their enemies, and everyone else. It is bigger than just the nation of Israel they wanted re-established. It was bigger than just them. This was everything. Jesus told them all the next steps that they needed to do.
When they were talking, and they were still asking questions, and they were still trying to understand, Jesus disappears. Taken away in the clouds, ascending, just gone. And they stand there, confused, afraid, filled with the old questions and a hundred new ones because what just happened? Because he said he would return. Because he had just returned to them 40 days ago. Because he took a long time to say good-bye. As much as we think the disciples stood there looking dumb, we probably would have done the same thing because What?
I’ve been thinking about this moment. Were the disciples thinking about heaven? Thinking about some perfected future with Jesus? Maybe. Were they hoping Jesus would come back right now. Probably. Were they thinking about what to do next? Maybe. Were they thinking about the past? Probably.
I imagine that moment. It’s the moment where everything really changed. And this time they know it. They’ve had 40 days to prepare this time. They had to know that Jesus being with them these last days was not permanent. They probably asked questions like: Tell me again the story about the son who went away and what that has to do with God. What do you mean about mustard seeds? Teach me how to pray again. This was the last minute study group before the exam.
I imagine at least one of them was wondering if they had learned enough, remembered the right stories, understood any of the lessons.
And one of them was thinking, how do we make the experiences we had the same for the next people? How do we make the future like what we know?
When I was young, I attended Church summer camps. Those were the first moments I really experienced the presence of God. We had vibrant worship, intense bible studies, deep conversations, while we are all surrounded by the amazing-ness of creation. I know it was designed to get an emotional response but I was in. I longed for that feeling, that closeness to God, to be with me always, at home, at school, at my home church. I attended worship, read my bible, had conversations and prayed, but I lived in the disappointment that I couldn’t make that feeling return, I couldn’t make God be that close to me in the way that I wanted, that I thought was the best way for God to be close to me, the most true version of God, the most true version of me. I was staring at the sky, hoping for God to show up in the way I remembered.
Last week we thought about how we get through this with the Spirit, but what does that mean?
We know how to do church. We know what it means to worship together. We know what it should look like because we’ve been doing it. And it’s been good. It’s been understandable. It’s been something we know well. We might have even met God there. We might have experienced moments of great joy, community, and hope.
We’ve heard the stories, asked the questions, heard the instructions, debated the meaning, pondered the future, but most the time, we’ve done it safely from the place where we know God will show up.
But the world has changed around us. And it’s not that God doesn’t show up anymore, it’s that maybe we can’t show up like we want. And other people aren’t showing up like we want. And even if we could get back to what we know, something will be missing. When we can go back and meet together again, can we sing together? Can we have communion? Can we have coffee hour? How do we share peace if we are 6 ft apart? And that all only matters when it’s safe to gather. Which isn’t today. Maybe, like the disciples, we’re staring at the sky, hoping for things to be as they had once been.
The angel asked the disciples “why?” Why are you staring at the sky? Why are you just standing there?
They went to the place that had become their home in Jerusalem, as Jesus told them to do, and they waited. These men and women, they waited. But this wasn’t a passive waiting, they didn’t just sit there and stare at each other as they had the sky. They didn’t just reminisce about the past. This was an active waiting. They prayed.
This is the first way that we become church when we are in a world that is changing around us, when what we thought would be is turning out to be different.
We find a safe place, we connect with those who know us, we pray. Praying is not a passive. Prayer is opening ourselves up to God. Prayer is a conversation that gives us an opportunity to be changed. Prayer is surrendering, a reminder ourselves that we are not in charge of much. Prayer is a reminder that we are part of something greater than just us. Greater than our families, church, towns, we are part of something cosmic.
Prayer opens our hearts to love those who God loves. Which is everyone but remember that God has a special place for those who are usually not loved by the world, those who are outside, forgotten, neglected, poor, lonely.
Prayer prepares us for the Spirit that Jesus promised, the spirit that comes in like a wind and like a comforter, like a voice and like a dove, like an advocate and like new life.
The disciples didn’t find what they were looking for in the skies, in looking back. In fact, they didn’t find what they were looking for at all. When they gathered in prayer, they were opened up to all the potential of the Spirit. Their futures didn’t look like anything they could have imagined. How could they have imagined traveling beyond the empire, to places unknown and maybe unheard of! How could they have imagined their great foe becoming their most ambitious preacher? How could they have imagined the way the world would be changed?
We are looking week by week and month by month at the what we can do and when. We are considering what church will look like and learning to be honest with how different things will be for much longer than we’d like. But we have to be careful about sky gazing, hoping to go back. The call of Jesus has rarely been to go back. The call of Jesus to the church is to pray, to prepare our hearts, dream dreams and to have visions. To allow the Spirit to give to our open hearts all the possibilities of what could be.
So things aren’t going to be exactly the same. That’s hard and sad and disappointing. But we are grounded people, open to possibilities that we haven’t even imagined yet, open to the leading of the Spirit to a world yet unknown.
