May 17, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Acts 1: 1-11 + Ephesians 1: 17-23 + Luke 24:46-53
You have just heard the final words of Jesus which Luke records for us.
Because the description of the occasion is so fascinating, I’ll bet half of you would be puzzled and pressed to repeat his final command or his last wish. Artists in every age have painted the Ascension with clouds and feet and up stretched arms, with open mouthed disciples looking up at him. But hardly anyone remembers what he said as the scene closes. For Luke in his two volumes, it is a moment of transition and revelation. He records the last instruction simply and directly. “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” In the language of Luke, that means: “Stay together and wait.” Over time it has come to mean:
“Stay in the church (stay together) and be patient.”
We have gleaned all kinds of commandments, rules, does, and don’ts out of the bible, but this one always seems to slip by un-noticed, but it’s there plain as day. For many of us, this is one of the toughest commandments: waiting We don’t practice it very well, and judging from attendance figures and a few other indicators, some have decided not to “stay in the city” as this translation instructs.
I recently read that we can easily spend up to a quarter of our lives waiting at stop lights, sitting in airport terminals, standing in line at the post office, the grocery store, doctors’ and dentists’ office. Waiting on “hold” while some voice without a body tells me that my call is important has convinced me that I have no purgatory left after recently calling my credit card company and listening to every song the Carpenters ever recorded an entering my 14 digit numbers.
We don’t like this even though we can joke about it when we are not doing it. Waiting is not our best virtue, but I believe that our identity as followers of Christ is shaped by it. “Wait” is what Jesus said to his disciples, but it was not what they wanted to hear. We would rather be proactive. It is not just children who what to know if we’re there yet? Being told to stay put and wait undercuts our self-sufficiency and suggests that we’re not quite ready – that something is lacking. But Jesus says: “Wait.” He tells us we’re not ready, that what is missing is the Spirit and we can’t do anything without His Spirit. et the waiting is difficult, and so we tire of it and want to take control: do it our way, do it now, and be quick.
People who are good at waiting have a lot to teach us. I think of mothers pregnant with life who wait and hope. I think of how they are transformed by that waiting – transformed into loving nurturing mothers. I think of old people, home bound, waiting in nursing home hallways. I think of how they are transformed by that waiting into martyrs: witnesses to the patience and suffering of Christ and how they teach us about weakness, powerlessness, and simplicity.
We have much in common with the disciples of Luke and Acts. We want power, and we seem to be saying: “Lord, is this the time when you will establish the kingdom we expect?” But Jesus says “wait.” But that waiting is not a meditative, reflective rapture. The appearance of an angel clears that up immediately. To wait upon the Lord is for the purpose of renewing our strength, not hanging around waiting for Christ to return. We are to go into the city – stay together – be church, be one.
There we shall watch and pray and in doing so we discover that God is at work. A great theologian (Karl Barth) suggests that a hand clasped in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
He also notes that the time between the ascension of Jesus and the return of Jesus is a “significant pause” in which the primary job of the Church is to wait and pray, “Come Holy Spirit.”
At the ascension the world did not look much like a new paradise. To all appearances, it was pretty much as it was when he came. If anything for those who followed him it was a bit worse as rumblings of a persecution began. But after a little waiting and a little prayer, followers became leaders, converts became missionaries, the healed became healers, and nothing was the same.
They stopped looking up to heaven, and began to look at each other, and got on with the business of being church and being love. As mothers tell us when the time comes, “it’s worth the wait.”