"What Do You Do While You're Waiting? (Ascension/7th Sunday of Easter)"
Pastor Susan Langhauser
Sunday, June 05, 2011
Acts 1:6-14
What’s the longest amount of time you ever had to wait? I realized this week how impatient I’ve become at the various levels of “wait time” we all endure. I learned this as I was installing a new computer, due to the fact that my “boot up” time had become an almost unbearable 4-6 minutes. I compared that to the wait at a drive-through, where often I will just “give up” and go inside. Or the line at the Post Office, which is usually where I start before I end up across the street at the UPS store. But worst of all is the dreaded airport flight delay or cancellation. I wondered, “at what point is there a shift, so that it is no longer waiting, but becomes doing something else?” And why is it that we seem to accept some waiting without question, like the four-week season of Advent, or a long engagement before the wedding, nine months of gestation or a three-year deployment? But waiting seems to be most difficult when we ask the secondary question from my favorite old movie, Camelot, “what do you DO while they’re doing it?”
The Ascension of Jesus – celebrated last Thursday – was the beginning of a very long wait for Christians. For more than 2,000 years, the Ascension has been the 40-day “marker” in the 50-day celebration from Easter to Pentecost. If the “point” of Jesus’ incarnation arrival at Christmas was for God to be “with us,” Ascension is the “counterpoint” - Jesus’ departure “from us” on that stairway to heaven.
The story is told twice by Luke, once in the Gospel of Luke and again in the book of Acts, (which most of you know was written by the author of Luke, so it is sort of Luke, Book II.) Acts picks up echoes of the Easter story, and extends those encounters.
Easter, in Luke: Ascension in Acts:
Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes Suddenly two men in white robes
Address the terrified women at the tomb Speak to men of Galilee
“Why do you look for living among the dead? “Why stand looking up to heaven?
He is not here, but has risen!” Jesus will come again!”
In Luke, the promised Holy Spirit will come… In Acts, the Holy Spirit is poised to drop!
“You’ll be clothed with power from on high “You’ll receive power…
You are witnesses (to these things…) You will be my witnesses…
Apparently, witnessing is expected from those of us who have received the Holy Spirit. I used to think that preaching was the way to help you know how to witness and what to witness. But Professor of Preaching Tom Long shared with us a few weeks ago at our seminar, that preaching isn’t just equipping you to be good little Christians in your lives, (nor is preaching simply “to move the heart” as I was taught in seminary,) but preaching, the proclamation of the Word of God in the story of Jesus Christ, exists “to form a prophetic community.”
Now before you get too scared about being a prophet, remember that this Word isn’t just for you – it’s for everyone. Even when you hear the sermon individually as a personal word for you, we are still the Body of Christ, and the Word calls and gathers the whole church. It is the life of the church (a prophetic community) that is the Light in the world, and when we take care of each other, when we share with those in need, when we comfort those who are grieving and when we live out our relationships with justice and trust and love, we ARE the Body of Christ that witnesses to the kingdom of God here and moving out the doors to the ends of the earth.
Last Monday, on Memorial Day, Pastor Roger and I watched the movie, Memphis Belle. It’s about the crew of a World War II B-17 bomber, an airplane known as “the flying fortress,” and its 25th and last mission over Germany. No other B-17 had made all 25 of its missions before, but if they survived, the crew of ten would be finished, and could finally go home. As I watched the story this time around I was struck by something I hadn’t seen before. It was beyond the story of the mission, it was all about the crew. Underneath their very real fear of dying, was an additional dread - the fear of going “back.” As the crew of the Belle, they were comrades. It didn’t matter where they came from or who they loved or loved them, or what job they had or where they lived. Here, together, they were known – some for the first time in their lives – and they shared an experience with each other that no one else had shared. It was the loss of this community – this band of brothers who would very probably never be together again after the mission – that was the most real loss they would face.
That is the same kind of bond that forms among God’s people in a community of faith, as we live together and learn more about each other with every shared experience – every baptism and confirmation, every funeral and hospitalization, every mission trip and ingathering, every class, every VBS, every worship.
At last week’s choir rehearsal, Tom commented about how wonderful it will be for the Choir to sing at another ordination of an Advent member into the ministry of Word and Sacrament when Janice Hawley is ordained at the end of the month. And I thought about all four of the pastors that have come from Advent (not to mention our vicars!) And I heard in my head, “You will be my witnesses in Olathe and Overland Park, with Dave in Lenexa, Ted in Lawrence, Brenda in Prairie Village and Janice in Spring Hill – in Atongo and Douglas, in Joplin, Alabama, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, in Mexico and Haiti, Ethiopia and the Dominican Republic – and to the ends of the earth!”
God’s Holy Spirit dances here at Advent, and people feel it. People feel the presence of God just like the disciples felt it when their friend and Savior ascended to heaven and back to the arms of his loving Father. And for the FIRST TIME, they obeyed. They returned to the city just as he had told them to do, and they waited. And what did they do while they waited? They prayed.
On Easter Sunday my sermon title was, “Wow, I Didn’t Expect THAT to Happen!”
When you think about it, we have a God that is constantly doing the unexpected, and we just do NOT understand it. I mean, who creates out of NOTHING - light out of darkness; babies out of virgins? Who has the courage to be fully human and to do what is not expected - crossing boundaries of race and class and gender; performing miracles and healing, casting out demonic forces; washing feet, dying on a cross, being raised from death and ascending into heaven?
Well, get used to it! We live within that God! Within the Body of Christ. But, perhaps you don’t expect God to “happen” to your life, and don’t really know what to “do” while you’re waiting, anyway. But maybe it’s not a big, flashy, life-changing experience for you – like seminary, or being a bishop, or driving a medical van to a disaster or starting a medical clinic in Haiti – but please know that you have already begun through your baptism! You are here and you are in the faith! You are raising your kids here, volunteering time in worship or teaching or leading, you are choosing to study the Bible or make music or give your money or pray. Do not discount what God is doing in you right now – for you ARE the Kingdom of God! You HAVE the Holy Spirit, and you have been clothed with power from on high…” So now we can say, (to borrow a line from Dr. Seuss,) “Oh, the places you will go!” Amen.