The Making of the Church

Acts 1-2: Ascension & Pentecost

Some of us here heard a guest speaker last week at a presbytery meeting, tell all about how we need to grow our churches—the right kind of churches with the right kind of beliefs, that is. He was articulate and persuasive about it, but if I were boiling down his message into a super simple summary sentence, I’d say it was, “Hey, we PCUSA Presbyterians have a really special product here, a great religious perspective for today’s problems, and we need to sell that product well.”  

He was careful to say he wasn’t talking about growth for growth’s sake, and I believe him. I really think he believes we have a better religious product than most other ones out there.  One that can do good in the world and help people, that includes people who feel excluded by other religious products. We should be trying to impact more lives.

Then, as proof that this was our job, he used the Pentecost scripture, the beginning of the church, saying that on the day of Pentecost, they grew the church, in faith and in numbers, and that is what we are called to do. (Notably, our paraphrase today didn’t seem to think the numbers part was important to include, but the original says their 120 people grew to 3000 that day).

I am not faulting this individual. What he was saying is what any good leader of an organization should be saying in our competitive, capitalist world. It only makes sense. If you have something good for the world you should promote it well and get it to as many people as possible.
If the world were only what we can see and touch, and our lives were entirely about what we make of them, then I might agree with him. And I’m a person who needs outside structure and appreciates community, so I would find a good enough religion to commit to so that I could do some good with my life. Because in the whole sum of things, some kind of ethical system and higher power thinking is both good for my personal self-improvement project, and good for helping the world be better.

In fact, I am going to have to talk to some high schoolers about Christianity in a couple of weeks for their world religions class. I’m on the Abrahamic religions day, after Judaism and before Islam. It would be really easy on that day to slip into this role: defender of the faith, peddler of the goods, recruiter for my team. What make your religion good (subtext: better than others)? What beliefs is it shaped around? What ideals direct you?  I would possibly even fall into arguing how my kind of Christianity is better than other kinds, (even though we are all, technically, the Church, I would have to break it down into ‘churches’ so I could parse out which ones are better), and one way we’re better is that we are more welcoming of other religions than those other Christians are, so that’s why my version of my religion better than other versions andother religions. It’s complicated. And exhausting. Frankly, the whole thing is exhausting, and if I am really honest, it’s boring. 

And when I really let my mind go there, as if this is how it all is, as if this is all there is, life becomes flat and tedious. Then, just behind that, the pain of this world begins to feel scary, terrifying, even overwhelming, because the things that are supposed to be strong and hold us together, like our government, and our leaders, and our laws, and our freedoms, and our morals, feel weak and paper thin, and I am not sure where to put my feet or my heart. 

And if God is just this great idea or good thing I can get my hands around to pass off to people, then God is not bigger than the evil that threatens to undo us, or even more powerful than the ordinary human selfishness and stupidity that, like a snowball down a mountain, has picked up so much destructive momentum and force it will inevitably wipe us all out.

And by this point in the mind game, I am so very far from Jesus, and the stories of resurrection we’ve been hearing from one another. I am unmoored from the deep gratitude that’s been washing over me lately watching you all love one another, and care for your neighbors, and listen to deep stories of lives wrapped up in lives through love. And I can no longer find the joy I had just yesterday, digging in the dirt in my yard marveling that by the grace and wisdom of a God I can’t understand, microscopic things I can’t see, in this enormous earth I can’t direct, under this vast sky with sun and rain, will make these tiny plants grow and all I did to join into this miracle of new life was dig a hole. 

Life is miraculous, and the things that are the most real, the deepest, truest things, are not things we can control, we can only receive and participate in them. This is how God most often moves: in the small, the ordinary, the unnoticed; the possibly of God's act exists in everything, anything even, especially in nothing.

But this all depends on a real God, who so far beyond us, that all we can say truthfully is ‘God is God.’ (Barth)
Which brings us back to Pentecost and the “beginning of the church.”

Except, this is not actually the beginning of the church.  Where it starts is where we started our reading today: Jesus telling the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit to lead them into what is next and then disappearing. 

In fact, this moment we call the ascension is so powerful and central to the making of the church, that it shifts the nouns used for the humans. Luke actually tells it twice: it’s the finale to the book of Luke—his narration of God coming embodied into the world in Jesus—where the humans are called disciples, which means ‘followers.’ Jesus is the subject and the disciples are oriented to him. 
But when the same moment again opens of the book of Acts, which is Luke’s narration of Jesus embodied in and through the Church, making us the Body of Christ, now they are called apostles, or ‘sent ones.’  This does not mean, however, that they become the subjects. The subject remains Christ; the power and story is still in the hands of the one doing the sending. 

This is the moment the Church begins, when two things happen. First Jesus tells sent ones what they’re sent to do: they are to wait and watch for what God is about to do next. And second, the flesh and blood Jesus vanishes from their sight. This is so jarring and confusing that they stay rooted to the ground, staring up into the sky for so long that God has to send in some follow-up messengers to prod them on, and tell them to get to it: go back where you were and wait for God to act. 

Now, they had some trouble just waiting, and I get it. They felt like without Jesus right there verbally giving the orders, surely they should do something.  It’s on them now to lead this thing! So, they hold a committee meeting, and pray, and ask God to choose for them, and draw straws to replace Judas in the 12 disciples with a new leader, Matthias. Which is sweet and honorable, and shows just how wide their imagination could reach and no further. Matthias is never mentioned again in the Bible. Immediately after he gets the gig, the Holy Spirit descends and all holy mayhem breaks loose, and the 12 disciples wasn’t even a thing any more after all; they have already become 120 sent ones, about to be 3000 and counting, because God is creating the Church God’s way.  

And God’s way, on that day, was to give the faithfully waiting ones words to speak right into people’s lives the good news of God’s redeeming love and the new life Jesus’ resurrection brings to us all. God chose a day when the city was filled with people from all over, and then gave those new apostles  words to say that they couldn’t even understand. (Maybe that made them a little braver right out of the gate). When they obeyed the Spirit’s promptings and spoke those words, even though they made no sense to their own ears, passers-by, strangers and foreigners heard through the open windows and the mouths of these country bumpkin Galileans truth that set them free. And God grew God’s Church. 

For the first 40 days after his resurrection, before Jesus disappeared again, only these 120 people knew the whole world had changed – they knew it not by their own great wisdom but because they kept running into the risen Lord in all these ordinary places of their ordinary lives. Here he is again! until they began to trust that indeed this is Jesus, and indeed we are in a new thing. But their imaginations are not completely ready for this new thing.  (Do you notice, just when he’s about to leave, those dear ones bring up their old misunderstanding of him! “Wait, when, again, Jesus, are you going to restore Israel? Just so we can know when to expect the salvation we assumed you were about. Even though you told us it was different. And then showed us. For the past 40 days). When Jesus gave them a new identity as sent ones, and then sent them to wait for what God would do next, and then left, it was made clear: the resurrection did not just bring back a private, embodied, singular Jesus just for them to follow and obey. Jesus now lives in the Body of Christ sent into the whole world. 

God is not a product we rate highly and recommend widely.  God is God. Our very imaginations are not capable of accessing God. And so certainly, our words and ideas, our efforts and goals, our church-making and religion-building can’t begin to capture or even hope to say anything substantive about God. This is the God who holds us.
 
Only God can reveal Godself. And God reveals Godself to us in Jesus. Jesus is still the subject. Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.  This has been the Church’s shorthand for the whole sum of the gospel for thousands of years. Christ has died: There is no death, loss, evil or suffering into which God does not go with us and for us; death does not get the final word. Christ has risen: bringing life out of nothingness, hope from despair, newness from impossibility is what God does, is doing, will keep on doing. And Christ will come again: the story is ongoing, the end to which this is all heading is the love that came from God’s being, brought all life into being, and will return all things in love to the very heart of God, and nothing can derail the trajectory of things.
 
The Church begun Jesus told them to wait for the Spirit is happening right now still, in every place in the entire world among the people who have surrendered their life into the Life of Christ lived in and through us.  God is forging a new community whose imaginations keep expanding, and whose lives take on the shape of the love that makes up God’s own being and bears witness to the resurrection life of Christ moving in the world even now, right in the places of brokenness, fragility and death.

And if the terribly uncontrollable feeling of surrender doesn’t suit us, and the waiting is so uncomfortable that we fill it with tasks and build our idea of what the church is and should be, at least we are in good company. The apostles do it in the first minutes of being Church, and the whole book of Acts and Paul’s coming letters to the Church will be filled with this back and forth between imagination-busting astonishment at what God is doing through them by the Holy Spirit, and falling back into misunderstanding, self-sufficiency and well-laid plans. Then being reminded (sometimes by a quite grumpy Paul) and redirected again to what this whole apostle and being Church is really about, then, when God does something through them that defies the limits of their imaginations, they’re astonished anew, humbled and awed, and so it goes. 

So, Church, while we keep running into the risen Lord in all these ordinary places of our ordinary lives, and telling our resurrection stories Here he is again!, first and foremost, we will wait together for the Holy Spirit to draw us into the most real, deepest, and truest things in ways that rewrite our imaginations for what God can do, and teach us to trust in what God is up to in the world, and make us ready to join in, ready for what God will do next. 

Amen.

The way we decide

 Acts 1:1-17, 21-26

Things have been a little weird and intense for the disciples since Jesus was murdered by the state and came back from the dead. Judas has died by suicide.  The community has been pretty much in hiding.  Then the risen Lord started popping up places.  He’s kind of the same but different, both unrecognizable and completely familiar, both available and not. For a little over a month, he’s been showing up here and there, walking along with some of them down a road, coming through locked doors and eating fish, hanging out with them day after day and teaching again like before. And now, he has just literally vanished into the sky before their eyes.  
 
This weekend we celebrate the Ascension – the day Jesus disappears into the clouds and leaves the disciples staring up into the sky with their mouths hanging open. They can feel his absence where his presence once was. And yet he promises he will be there with them in a different way, guiding them nonetheless.
  
So now a new adjustment, a new assignment: Jesus said to Stay Put and Wait for the Holy Spirit, whatever that means.  That’s their job.  So that’s what they are doing. Constantly devoting themselves to prayer, it says, coming together, helping each other learn to trust that God is here now, and God will lead them into what is next. 
 
And then we are given a bizarre and delightful illustration of this trust in action. They are trying to decide who should replace Judas in their leadership.  And they have two good options before them, Justus, and Matthias, both followers of Jesus, who knew Jesus in the flesh, both men of integrity, both willing to serve. Whom should they choose?  
 
Do they make pros and cons list? Debate with Robert’s Rules of Order?  Launch campaigns and take a vote, the 120 or so of them?
 
No! They draw straws! They flip a coin, roll the dice, “cast lots.” They use a game of chance to take things out of human hands.  
 
There is nothing intrinsically spiritual or holy about this.  We don’t think flipping a coin at the beginning of a football game is asking God to choose which team should start. We don’t think God is involved when we play paper, rock scissors over who has to put the kids to bed.  Casting lots was just used by the soldiers two months before to divide up Jesus’ clothes among themselves while he hung dying on the cross, so it’s not like lot casting is some inherently God-seeking process.  But when it comes time for the followers of Jesus to pick a leader in witnessing to Christ’s resurrection, they roll the dice.
 
They don’t ask themselves WWJD – What would Jesus do if he were here?  Because Jesus is here!  He’s as real among them, among us, as when he walked the earth in the flesh. They’re learning to trust that this is so.  So why not ask Christ to pick and then flip a coin? 
 
The Ascension means that Jesus can’t be captured and boxed up, marketed, claimed, or relegated to the past as a venerated historical figure we make reference to but never address directly.  Jesus is risen and ascended.  Now the community has to learn how to live in the paradox of our faith: that Christ is not here but is HERE. They have to look for Christ, learn to be present to the presence of Christ, listen for the voice of Christ, in and through, and alongside one another. We can’t see him, we can’t touch him, and yet, when we are present with each other, acting with and for one another, Jesus Christ is right here in that space, energy, connection between us.  We are the body of Christ.
 
How do we hear God?  Sometimes it feels like a quiet little nudge that leads us just the little next step, or the wisdom that sinks into our soul when something in us says, “Yes. That is right.” But mostly, we hear God by listening together. By surrendering together.  Waiting for the Spirit to direct us. And then acting.  
And then surrendering and waiting again.
 
This way of discernment is brazenly different than the world’s way – which is fast and decisive.  Wayne Muller reminds us (in his book Sabbath), 
 
"The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception. But Sabbath says, Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink, and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed." 
 
We talked this week in catechesis class about trust – how trust is the core of it all. Our security in life or status with the divine not about cracking a code, earning a prize, or figuring out the rules. To be in relationship with a living God must begin with trust—that God is real, and that God wants to lead us all toward love, toward healing, toward forgiveness, toward righting wrongs, and bringing justice, and birthing hope right in the places of utter despair.  
 
So maybe God makes the coin flip one way and not the other.  God is certainly capable of that.  May we too have such trust in God.  
 
Or maybe God thinks it is cute that they are so intent on replacing Judas, as though having 12 disciples like Jesus had originally chosen when his ministry began, a reflection of the 12 tribes of Israel, is essential for what is to come. As though their structures and containers are vital. Of course they have no idea that just days from now that wild Holy Spirit is about to bust the gospel out of its confines and jumpstart it’s spread to the ends of the earth through witnesses who have never seen the human Jesus with their own two eyes, nor heard his voice speaking in a language they wouldn't understand anyway, but who will definitely hear the message their hearts recognize beyond all else, and see the risen Lord transform their very souls.  And they don't know it yet, but the 12 are actually the 120 of them, and about to become 3,000 in one day, and Matthias is never mentioned again in the bible.  
 
So perhaps when they cast lots God chooses for them.  Or maybe it doesn’t matter one way or another to God, but God appreciates their intention just the same.  God is with them even now, as they faithfully seek to do God’s will, and that in itself is beautiful and holy. Whether their decision has any effect on things or not, that they would surrender and seek is shaping them all the same.  
 
Their imaginations can’t begin to grasp what is to come, and so they faithfully make their decision, and then suddenly the whole landscape shifts, and then they will seek God’s direction for the next thing. What more faithful way to live is there than that?
 
We are not building a movement, standing up for values, or shoring up an institution. We are joining in the Kingdom of God. We are witnesses to resurrection, learning to recognize and share in the healing work of the living Christ that is happening right now.
 
Yesterday the youth cleaned out the sanctuary, or got started, at least. After 14 months of emptiness and clutter, regular dust and construction dust, and spiders gleefully given free reign, it was a big, big job, and the youth made a big dent in it. When they peeled down the images of the bible characters we began journeying with in Advent 2019, and unpinned the Psalm river hanging on the back wall from not last summer but the summer before that, I was struck by the ways we’ve grown in our own faithfulness and discernment.  There are things we thought mattered a great deal that turned out not to be important at all. And there are things we had no idea would be significant that have turned out to shape us considerably. 
 
We are not the same congregation we were when we last sang and prayed together in that space. Case in point, when we left the building we had only just discerned, after a year of prayer and listening, that our building was indeed part of our mission, and we would say Yes to the preschool.  Now we will return to their presence already among us.  And we ourselves are different. We have lost beloved members and gained beloved members.  Our ways of feeling connected have changed and, in many ways, even deepened.  
 
When the whole landscape shifted we never, ever could have imagined what was to come, so we had to seek God’s direction, surrender and wait for the Holy Spirit, and then act. And here we are again, on the cusp of another huge shift, a new adjustment.  And our imaginations can’t begin to foresee what is coming.  But as witnesses to resurrection, who know the power of the risen Lord to bring new life into our lives and our world, we will keep helping each other learn to trust that God is here now, and God will lead us into what is next.  And we will keep learning to recognize and share in the work of the living Christ that is happening right now. 

And what more faithful way is there to live than that?
 
Amen.
 

Stay here until...

"Waiting" by Degas

Luke 24:44-53

Stay here until... 

Stay here until what is coming next comes. 

What has been is ending. What will be is coming. 

Until it does, stay here.

Luke uses this story of the Ascension to end part one of his letters, the part that talks about Jesus being here in body, the book of Luke.  And then in his second letter, Acts, he tells this encounter again to open part two, the part that talks about us being Jesus’ body, the part that tells the beginning of the church. From Christ in flesh to Christ enfleshed in community, the Ascension is the end of the story of God alongside, with and for, and Pentecost is the beginning of the story of God in and through and between. 

And in between those two is this important command, Stay here until…

Waiting sucks. It can make us feel so helpless and awkward. 

Stay here until… 

We’d so much rather just jump in and do, than sit still and be. Any day.

Stay here in the quiet house until your kid gets home late with the car.

Stay here by the bedside until he takes his final breath.

Stay here in the maddening unknown until you finally know what to do next.

Saying stay here and wait is like saying, stop moving and remember that that you are vulnerable and life is unpredictable, and you have very little control of any of it. 

And it’s true. When we stay here until, we are surrendering to reality.

And ironically, it is only when we surrender, that we discover we are free. Free from the need to run it all ourselves, free from the need to be strong and able, free from the need to never fail. Then, when God finally does arrive with power from on high, we will know for certain that it is not our power, it’s not own work, wit or wisdom, that saves the world, but only the one who holds all, even us, and we’ll be ready to receive it.

When we surrender in the stay here until, we grow the kind of restraint only staying somewhere until can produce – the restraint that keeps us from rushing at it and grabbing hold too soon –taking out the half-baked dough, digging up the planted bulb tearing open the unresponsive cocoon.  

This waiting cultivates a discipline in us to accept what God brings, to go where God leads, and to participate in God’s intentions.  When we’ve surrendered we are opened to being used in whatever ways God dreams up – which is often far beyond what our limited imaginations and rampant insecurities might have concocted for our own futures. 

Staying here until is also a way of arriving in our own lives, to await the God who arrives.  It’s honest. The truth is that being human is kind of one big stay here until.  We’re born, we live and we die stuck between what has been and what will be. We live longing for more, sensing we’re made for something greater.  We love wishing we could guard our beloveds from pain and yearning for the end of evil.  We act for justice and pray for peace right in the midst of violence and cruelty, craving the true and final justice and redemption of the world.  From our first breath to our last, we exist and pass our days and years inside a promise, waiting for its fulfillment.  

Our own lives are the place God arrives, they are the place we’ve been called to stay and await the arrival of God’s Spirit, over and over again.

As Jesus prepares to leave the disciples, he raises his scarred hands up and blesses them, these people he loves so deeply, and says to them:

Now I am going back to the heart of the Father I am returning to the source of love, having loved you and been loved by you.  I take with me all this heart-breaking, pain-sharing, flesh-bearing life. I take with me all the tears and the bruises and the breathing and living and the gut-splitting laughing and soul-wrenching suffering I have been privileged to share with you in this life. It all goes with me into God.

And I am sending on you what the Father promised, so stay here… until you are clothed with power from on high. 

And while he was blessing them he was taken into heaven.

At this point when Luke tells this scene again at the beginning of Acts, the disciples are a little more discombobulated and skeptical, and an angel has to show up and tell them to stop staring at the sky.  But in this version, even though they’re left in total unknown and undefined waiting, when all that has been is over and all that will be remains a mystery, they return to the temple and hang out celebrating.

Because perhaps after a 40 days like they’ve just had, eating and talking and walking and learning and living on the other side of death with the Resurrected source of life, after hearing what they’ve just heard and seeing what they’ve just seen, they’re ruined for anything other than the Real. 

They’ve died to the old. So as witnesses to resurrection, waiting to be resurrected themselves, they do the only thing that make any sense, they stay here until…  

Where are you being asked to stay here until...?

What honesty does the experience invite you into?

How have you experienced surrender? Or, where do you feel resistance to it?

Learning to Listen in the Liminal

Acts 1

Sometimes when we don’t know what to do, when we’re face to face with mystery, or something unknown, vast, greater than ourselves, we clean.  When we’re expecting a baby, we nest, when the Titanic is going down, we rearrange the deck chairs, when that dissertation or thesis is looming, we refinish the basement. 

Turning to details, to tasks and duties gives us comfort.  

Creating societies and structures, being effective and logical, gives a kind of security and order to our worlds.

The whole book of Acts is a hilarious back and forth between wild Holy Spirit encounters of pulling people out of their security and comfort to things they’ve never done before in ways they’ve never done them, things that might involve fire and strange languages, prophecy, miracles, public speaking and touching strangers, and then tidying up, figuring out logistics and details, creating order and structure, assigning KP duty.

In fact, most of Paul’s letters throughout the rest of the New Testament are people figuring out the nitty-gritty of how to be church, with the piddly details of messy human beings seeking order, and Paul continually calling them back to this cosmic, big-picture mystery that has transformed the entire earth and claimed them individually for a life that transcends death. And also, quit fighting at dinner, you guys.

But I love this story because of that. Before anything else starts to happen, they must replace Judas to round out the 12 apostles. It only makes sense. Getting a 12^th Apostle nailed down feels like the pressing job at the moment. Very imperative.

So they pick between these two people, Joseph, aka, Barsabbas, aka Justus, on the one hand, and Matthias on the other. It’s down to these two because both of them have been around from the beginning, and they want someone who can witness to the resurrection with them.

Jesus didn’t tell them to replace Judas; they came up with that one all on their own. Because what else should they do after they see dead and risen Jesus float off into heaven right after telling them to wait for some kind of “baptism of the Holy Spirit?”

There is a move coming here, Pentecost is around the corner, when they will, as biblical scholars like to say, go from being disciples to being apostles. In other words, they will are in the midst of shifting their identity from followers to sent ones.

But right now they are in the in-between.  The not yet. The liminal space. 

And oh, how God loves liminility! It’s the 9-month pregnancy of the thing!  It’s the Sabbath shift! This pocket of space in-between is so important that God likes to use it a lot.  The Israelites in the wilderness, Jesus in the wilderness, for that matter, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Ruth, Esther, Moses’ stint as a shepherd, the Apostle Paul – knocked down, his sight taken from him, at the mercy of those he came to kill while he waits to find out what God will do next…

Liminal space - on the threshold of change becomes a kind of waiting, like Advent or Lent, or being engaged or in hospice, or unemployed, widowed, or released from prison, adjusting to some new reality that is coming but you haven’t figured out what it will mean or how to live in it yet -

these times are God’s rich soil in us where something dies and something new is born, when most of what you knew before gets taken away, and what is coming has not yet come, when you are stuck in the awkward middle, trying to figure out how to stay still and move at the same time. 

In these times we are redefined, life is redefined. 

Tectonic plates are shifting, and we feel suspended – what can we expect? 

Or do, Or hope for? 

How do we just be?

And now imagine this - not since the garden, as in, the very beginning of it all, or since Noah, perhaps, has there ever been a time in all the human living and God-following throughout countless centuries, when the people did not have a flesh and blood mouthpiece for the divine – someone right there in front of them telling them what to do, what to believe, how to act.  God had a representative, a priest or prophet or judge or king. Rabbis and teachers interpreted scripture – talked to God on the people’s behalf, and to the people on God’s behalf. They made sense of things, told the people what it all meant. 

And Jesus had fit into this model for these disciples.  

When God came and walked among them in the flesh, they followed him as students to a rabbi, disciples of a beloved teacher.

But when the teacher is killed everything crumbles. 

And then it all crumbles again in an even bigger and more impossible way when he doesn’t stay dead.  Now they are disciples of a resurrected God-with-us who has thrown the definitions of life and death up in the air; now heaven and earth are kind of mixed up, and all bets are completely off. So they have about 40 days of getting used to that, except now he’s leaving again. So, now, they are followers of… what, exactly? 

So they stand, stunned and staring up into heaven after Jesus, and what are we supposed to do again?

So God gives them a gentle nudge in the form of two figures in white.

“Hey, you, men of Galilee? What do you think you’re looking at, standing there with your mouths open? Go back where you came from and wait like he told you to…”

So they do. 

Only now, there is no one between them and God. 

No rabbi to follow, no teacher to listen to, no mouthpiece or ambassador. 

Nobody is telling them how this is supposed to go, what they are supposed to do, or believe, or do.

They are on their own, but also clearly not, somehow.

They are witnesses, they remind themselves: we are witnesses now. This is the only thing they know so far – we are called to tell each other and whoever else will listen, about what we’ve experienced. And beyond that, they’ve got no idea what else is next.

So they tidy! They organize. Fix a problem; mend a structure. We’ve got to fill the empty session seat! 

But since Jesus had picked the rest of them, how would they know how to pick Judas’ replacement? 

So they do it in a really unique way. 

They don’t take resumes or ask the two to make campaign speeches. They don’t vote or argue for their favorite candidate.  There are no Roberts Rules of Order here. They figured out a way to let God choose. 

Here we see the very first, baby steps into trusting God in a new way that comes to be called Church, or Christianity:  Jesus is between us and God, breaking down that barrier and opening up that relationship, drawing us right into connection to God. We can’t see Jesus, but he’s there, somehow bringing us right up close to God. So we are going to try to listen to God. All by ourselves without someone doing it for us; we are going to ask God to lead us.

So they choose the 12^th apostle by saying, Lord, you know everyone’s hearts. You know who would be best for this. Show us who it should be.

And then they draw straws. They literally cut a piece of hay or break a stick shorter than another, pray to God to guide them, and then draw straws. 

The Lord will show us, they trust, and then they go with it. 

Matthais it is, then!

Because of this story, today there are some traditions that do this when they choose leaders- for example, I’ve heard of a Mennonite practice of placing certificates in a few hymnals, shuffling them, and then those who select the hymnals with the the certificates in them are appointed to leadership.  It isn’t meant to be a game of chance, a random gamble; it is meant to take human error out of it and leave the decision up to God.  

It’s a way of listening to God.

There are lots of ways of listening to God – maybe as many as there are people in the world- and as the church became the church, and spread throughout the world, more and more ways of listening to God as Christians come to be practiced.  But right here at the beginning, in this in-between time, before the Holy Spirit has come and the preaching has started, but after Jesus has died and risen and left them, these people took their job as witnesses seriously.  They sought, even in the midst of a lot of unknown, they sought as faithfully as possible, to follow this God who was calling them, Them! Ordinary, regular old them! – to lead, to witness, to tell others what they’ve experienced of Jesus, to speak for God to the people and to the people for God. 

And they sought, as faithfully as they could figure out how, to live in this new, unknown, upside down reality they find themselves in, where God’s voice really speaks, and God’s hand really acts, and life and death and limits and boundaries do not hinder God’s plans, and you  - you! - are part of this great big thing you are just barely starting to get your mind around.

We believe we are in a liminal state right now, like, humanity is, all of us, suspended in an already, but not yet. Christ has come, Christ has died and risen; Christ will come again. 

We wait for the day when the promises of all things returned to God and life as it was meant to be – the triumph of love and life over destruction and death – when that is fully realized.  We wait in this time when we know it is coming, because Christ has broken the bonds of death, but we often stand gazing up into heaven with our mouths open, not quite sure what we’re supposed to do in the meantime.

The space between. Where life leaks in from the future, and hope is hidden but real, when the Kingdom of God has come and is here, but we miss it so much of the time because it is not all in all yet.

And in this in-between time, where we are not face to face with God, we still say God’s hand really acts and God’s voice really speaks and our lives really are part of God’s plans that cannot be stopped or hindered by life and death and limits and boundaries. So how, then, do we listen?

This summer we are going to practice some ways of listening to God.  In our worship we are going to gather and try out different ways of praying, of listening to God, of connecting to God, ways that someone thought up and tried out a long time ago and generations of Jesus-followers have been doing ever since.  And we are also going to talk about how, in our own lives, we find ways of listening to God that make sense for us – things that help us hear from God, see Jesus in the world, share in ministry with others, draw us closer to God, in the transcendent things and the practical, ordinary things.

Sometimes I think we tell ourselves we should have this down, somehow; or that church or faith should go a certain way and we are messing up if it doesn’t look that way for us.

But remember, these first witnesses began “in joy, still doubting and disbelieving.” 

They let themselves be in the awkwardness and the newness, in the bumbling and the trying. 

They told each other when they saw Jesus. 

They sat in the discomfort of waiting for God, embracing the liminal and all its mysterious promptings and newness. 

And they trusted God to lead – even in the very practical tasks and details, even more than they trusted themselves.

We aren’t supposed to do faith right or perfectly; Jesus already brings us right up close to God.  We are supposed to live right where we are, in whatever in-betweens we may find ourselves, to seek God’s direction and to listen, in whatever ways we might learn, or try out for the first time, or fall back on again and again. 

And in the midst of both the great spiritual mysteries, the life-changing encounters that draw us up and out of ourselves, and the everyday, organizing tasks, structures and details that ground us, together we get to practice trusting God, however that might look for us today, and tomorrow, this moment and the next.  

And if in doubt about how, we’ll do like they did, and try to get out of the way.

From the time when all will live

Ascension pictures are so terrible they are awesome.
(Don't believe me? Google "Ascension of Jesus.")
This is one of my favorites.

Jesus entering the Heavenly CT Scan Machine.
Or an egg yolk.
Or diving into a bowl of Lemon Tapioca custard.
Yum.

Can you see the wires?  Also, he always leaves his shoes behind. Always.
And he never pencil dives either - arms out or not at all.

Acts 1:1-11

It’s interesting how a season can wear out. Snow in November makes us giddy and nostalgic, but by April it makes us surly and weepy.  Christmas at first is thrilling, and then several weeks later with a brittle tree dropping needles on your floor and more sweet cookies everywhere you go, you are pretty ready for it to be over. 

I am feeling that just a little bit about Eastertide.  I’m not a very patient people, and we’ve waited seven weeks to see what happens next. 

Since Easter we’ve joined the disciples in the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus- the times he appeared to people, upsetting knowledge of death with the terrifying prospect of eternity and new life again and again. 

We’ve seen them react in all sorts of ways, doubt, devotion, astonishment, ecstatically throwing themselves in a lake.  We’ve seen reconciliation, teaching and learning, scripture being opened, and lots of sharing the news with each other.  Sitting tight and waiting like he said to do, fleeing back home to do what you know how to do instead. 

And we’ve seen lots of meals and hospitality extended in all directions- and the reoccurring pattern that when they really do recognize Jesus, it is in the breaking of the bread, the sharing of a meal, the caring for one another that comes in serving and being served.

And all that raw, alert, attentive wrestling to make sense of what is happening has a huge place in our life of faith, but we can’t stay there forever – it wears on the nerves and keeps us in a holding pattern. 

That holding pattern breaks today for the disciples, in a pretty dramatic fashion, that leaves them staring at an empty sky, and told by angels to move on, (that ship has sailed, so to speak).

The ascension ends the cliffhanger of Easter.  It doesn’t get much airtime usually, but frankly, it’s pretty important to the whole story.  Where is Jesus’ body? He rose from the dead! What happened next?

Now, I don’t know if we think the resurrection itself trumps everything, or that it doesn’t matter what happens to Jesus’ body, or that the knowledge that he just kind of whisks up to heaven in front of his gobsmacked followers is common knowledge and not worth mentioning much?  Maybe it’s just too weird to linger on. 

But I suspect Ascension doesn’t  get much airplay because we like our story to have a happy-ending, triumphant climax, and Easter fits that bill so well that we act like Easter is the end of the story of Jesus, and Pentecost is the beginning of the story of the church, and everything that happens in between is kind of irrelevant. 

But what happens in between is vital.  What happens in the times in between are always vital.  And this one big continuous story without end even yet, has a very important transition occurring in the time between Jesus’ resurrection and the beginning of the church at Pentecost.  Something is happening within and between the disciples that is preparing them to become the Body of Christ, making them into witnesses of God’s love and salvation.  But it turns out that it can’t happen without watching Jesus disappear, alive, from their sight. 

For one thing, without the ascension, they would not be ready to let go of wishing things could be the way they were when Jesus was here, like in the old days.  And they need to quit going back to old boats and staring up at empty skies so they can do the fruitful work of waiting for the power of God that is coming, when the Holy Spirit will turn them into witnesses in all the earth.

Shortly after Easter, while it was still very much on our minds, Owen asked a bedtime question. Now, here’s the thing about bedtime in our house- for whatever reason it’s the time the questions come.  I don’t know if it’s a stalling tactic or that when the body tired out the mind wakes up or what, but bedtime turns my children into theologians, philosophers and scholars. I often end up standing bedside in long conversation, but Andy, who happened to be doing bedtime on the night this question came, had a different tact.  He said, “Write down your question, Owen, and tomorrow at dinner, we will talk about it as a family, so we can all learn from your question.” (GENIUS)

Now, our theological discussions at dinner are something I wish we could record for posterity.  They usually involve scrunched up faces and furrowed brows and me translating technical terms into easier words from time to time, but every once in a while, it all clicks together and the whole bunch of us is momentarily alight with insight.  This was going to be one of those.  It was also to be the first time a full-on diagram would appear at the dinner table. (Theologian Daddies are the coolest.)

So the next night at dinner, Owen brought down his piece of paper with his question on it. The question was this, “If God can raise people from the dead in the bible, why doesn’t God still do it today?” 

What a great question.  First of all, Andy said, people don’t only rise from the dead in the bible.  There are several in the bible-  the little girl Jesus healed, Lazarus, Jesus himself, and a few others, but people claim that it happens today too.  (Here I interjected and mentioned the movie some of you saw a couple weeks ago together, based on the book “Heaven is for real” about a little boy who died and came back, as an example).  Sometimes, from time to time, back in bible times and today as well, people do come back from the dead.

But they all have one thing in common. Do you know what that is?

They die again.

They don’t keep on living.  It’s a brief reversal of death – an interruption, but they still end up dying like the rest of us.  Nobody doesn’t die. 

So Andy drew a diagram on the paper below Owen’s question.  On one side of a timeline he put the words, “the time when all die.” 

“We live here,” he said.

He drew a huge gap and barrier in the middle, and on the other side he wrote, “the time when all live”.

“We all will die,” Andy said, “because we live in the time when all die.”

“But there is one exception to this – and that is Jesus.” 

Then he made a little stick figure, hopping over from the one side to the other.  “Jesus is the one who comes from God’s future – from the time when all live, and comes into this time when all die to be there with us.  Jesus died, but when Jesus rose from the dead, he does not die again.  He comes to take us with him into a future that waits for all of us.  The time is coming when life will win out,  “the time when all live,” and Jesus breaks into “the time when all die” carrying the future within himself and bringing us into that future.”

We sat there a minute while this soaked in, forks still, and mouths open.  Finally, nodding heads, soft, “oh”s, and one, “Cool, Daddy!”  And then somebody asked, “What about zombies?” and the spell was broken.

But I have been stuck on that conversation ever since, because I’ve been stuck with the disciples each week who are stuck in the “what is happening and what comes next” of Jesus’ resurrection.

If we’ve learned anything in this lingering resurrection season, it’s 1- that we recognize Jesus among us in the moments of hospitality and shared humanity, and 2- that we are meant to tell what has happened to us, we are meant to share the stories of Jesus meeting us.  We don’t get experiences of God just for ourselves – these moments are for us, yes, but they are for the whole community.  They are for the whole world.  Faith is a shared thing – I will tell you what God has done for me; listen to what just happened to me! From Carolyn’s “Godipity” moments, to the ways Jesus is saying to us, Follow me, we are meant to tell one another about what God is doing in our lives, and in so doing, to remind each other where this is all going.  This is being witnesses.

Now, about those people Andy brought up who do, from time to time for whatever reason – medical, mystical or otherwise, come back from the dead.  Their resurrection is this momentary miraculous sign, really, a gift to them and their loved ones, to be sure, but miracles are never meant for one – they are always always meant to be shared.  Their story belongs to all of us, it becomes a promise to us, a reminder that the time is coming when death doesn’t win.

So – resurrections in our lives, whether physical or emotional, relational or spiritual – however it happens that hope is born from hopelessness and joy comes out of despair – they are signs meant for all of us, that announce that even though we live in the time when all die, in Jesus we are being brought into the time when all will live.  Just look at the life springing up inside me, around me, between us, near us!  That is a sign of the life that is to come, the life that has already come and cannot be quenched!

So here is the answer to the cliffhanger of Easter, and the reason why the Ascension matters. Jesus is still out there, alive -  showing up in whatever way we most need to be met.

A friend recently shared a story of a preacher who, like me, often writes her sermons in a coffee shop. And there are opinionated, unaffiliated people in her regular coffee shop, so she is bold to ask them questions she may not necessarily ask her parishioners.  On this occasion, just before Easter, she was chatting with a particularly verbose guy, who often liked to engage her in theological conversation, sometimes outrageous, always animated.  She knew he’d respond, so she asked him, “Jack, where is Jesus’ body?” And he answered in brevity and truth, “Wherever we need it to be.”

We are Jesus’ body.  He lives in us- between us, through us, in spite of us.  He comes to us from “the time when all will live,” into “the time when all will die,” and reminds us of what’s coming.  In all life and resurrection, we recognize our Risen Lord and receive the promise that life will prevail.

So we get to sit at dinner and say to our children, yes, our dog died, our great grandma died and our friend’s baby died, and the people in that earthquake or that car accident or that terrible war died, and you and I will die too, because we live in the time when all will die.  And we have a God who came to earth and died too – so we are not in this time when all will die alone, God is here in it with us and carries all our grief and sorrow and suffering and death into the heart of God. 

But also, my darlings, hear this: we have a Messiah, a savior, who comes from the time when all will live, and rises from the dead, and ascends into heaven and even now, is busy getting involved, bringing life, bringing us toward life, and showing up where we most need to be met, and you and I get to join in and be witnesses of that life.

So the faithful response, the one the disciples are given to do, is to wait for the Spirit. Wait for the power of God to move in the reality that you now carry within you the life of the one whom death cannot defeat, and even while you and I will die, and our institutions will crumble and our dreams disappear and our goals change and hopes waver, we are held in the love of the God of life, living in new life and resurrection that happens again and again as a sign of what is in store for the world.  You and I are witnesses of life, we are harbingers of newness and hope.  So let’s get busy waiting for the Spirit to lead us once again and not spend another second gazing at an empty sky.

Amen.