What are we waiting for?

DATE: June 1, 2014
SCRIPTURE: Acts 1:6-14 – Scripture texts printed after sermon.
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

Are we there yet?  It’s the refrain every parent has heard and every child has uttered.  30 minutes into a three hour drive; and again at 40 minutes and at 45:  Are we there yet?  How about now?  … We laugh about it, or we tear our hair out, but really:  we all recognize it: that antsy, restless feeling that leaves us at loose ends, when we are in-between times, between here and there, already left but not yet arrived.  It’s the feeling I get just before a friend arrives for a visit:  after the house has been cleaned, chocolate chip cookies baked, calla lilies set in the front hall.  When the dust has all been swept away but our guest isn’t here yet.  It seems a lovely time to relax and read a book, but all I can do is pop up again and again to look out the window:  Is she here yet?

I wonder if the apostles were feeling some of that anxious energy, on the day that the risen Christ said goodbye for the last time.  We are told in the verses just before the ones we read this morning, that Christ appeared to them several times over the course of 40 days, and spoke about the kingdom of God, instructing the women and men who had witnessed his resurrection, just in case the last three years of teaching/feeding/healing hadn’t sunk in.  He was getting them ready for…something.  They weren’t sure what, although it seemed to involve a baptism by the Holy Spirit.

So when they were all gathered in one place, the apostles pigeon-holed the Christ:  Is it here yet?  They asked him.  The restoration of Israel?  Is now when you’ll overthrow the Romans and gather in the People Israel and re-establish the Davidic reign?  Is it now?

To which Jesus said, “Hold your camels.”  “Ushering in God’s Reign is God’s business; and really, it’s a bigger enterprise than you can possibly imagine.  So what you need to do is focus on the task at hand:  Be my apostles (my teachers); tell the Story; spread the Good News.  Frankly, that ought to keep you busy, because I’m sending you to Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth…  But don’t panic; I’m also sending a powerful source of holy help.”

With that, Jesus left them, ‘was lifted up on a cloud,’ as the writer of Acts so vividly described.  And there stood the apostles, jaws slack, eyes wide with wonder, all their tasks forgotten… thinking (I’m guessing), “Now what?  Maybe this is just one of Christ’s object lessons.  A kind of 3-D parable.  Surely, he’ll come back any minute, and clear up that last bit about going to the ends of the earth.”  So they waited.   Until those two men in white (the same ones who met Mary and the other women at the tomb, perhaps?)… Two mysterious messengers arrived and said, “Why are you looking up?  Didn’t you hear what he said?  You can’t know when he’ll return; so focus on the here and now.  Tell the Story.  What are you waiting for?”

What are we waiting for?  Well, a little clarity, perhaps.  A map to the future, or an instruction manual would be good.   Someone else to take the lead?  Or Jesus to descend on a cloud like a superhero and sort it all out…  Yes.  That would be good.  Because in-between times can make us anxious, just like car rides.  Especially when we don’t know quite where we’re headed or how long it’s going to take to get there.  In his book O, The Places You’ll Go!, Dr. Seuss warns about risk of getting stuck in:

“The waiting place…for people just waiting…

Waiting for the fish to bite

Or waiting for wind to fly a kite

Or waiting around for Friday night

Or waiting, perhaps, for their uncle Jake

Or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

Or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants,

Or a wig with curls or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting…”

Sometimes waiting becomes an excuse.  It keeps us from doing the work we need to do.  We wait for the perfect conditions, the missing piece, someone else to take matters in hand and so we get completely stalled out.  At times like these, we just might need a couple divine messengers to give us a push, and help us get our heads out of the clouds.

But there is another kind of waiting, I think. An active waiting.  A purposeful waiting.

Preacher William Willimon says, “Waiting, an onerous burden for us computerized and technically impatient moderns who live in an age of instant everything, is one of the tough tasks of the church.  Our waiting implies that the things which need doing are beyond our ability to accomplish solely by our own effort, our programs and crusades.  Some other empowerment is needed, therefore the church waits and prays.”¹

Some other empowerment is needed.  The work we do, we do in collaboration with God, in fulfillment of God’s own vision.  So we pause.  We lean in.  We wait to see what God has in store.  “You will be my witnesses,” Jesus told the apostles.  And it occurs to me that the word ‘witness’ has two related meanings.  In the context of the gospel, to witness means to proclaim, to tell what you know – what you’ve seen; to spread the Good News of God’s love – to the very ends of the earth!  But witness also means to look, to notice.  Author Annie Dillard writes, “We are here to witness…That is why I take walks:  to keep an eye on things.”²

So we engage all our senses.  This, I believe, is a kind of prayer.  To walk through the world with eyes peeled, ears perked, fingers outstretched, ready to be captivated by the works of God’s hands:  To notice the ground under our feet –the force of gravity that keeps us rooted, so we don’t float away. Amazing!  To notice earthworms that till the soil, and the rustling of swallows in a nearby bayberry bush.  The man who just packed my groceries?  He took extra care with the eggs.  My next door neighbor?  She’s got the shadow of sadness behind her eyes.  To notice that the banks of the river need a good cleaning, but the herons still hang out in the shallows; to see also that the children in the next city over are struggling more than our own… to take a good look and notice beauty and neglect, hunger and hope.

“That is why I take walks:  to keep an eye on things.”  When we gaze into the clouds, just waiting for the next act, we miss what’s going on right under our noses.  When we look out and around, we are reminded that there is a world outside ourselves, an exquisite world, an aching world, a world much in need of healing.    Then, then our mission snaps into focus.

Gary Gunderson, Director of the Interfaith Health Program at the Carter Center, says this about the purpose of the church:  “If there is any hope at all, it is that God intends the renewal of the whole world.  Congregations are a tool for that greater purpose.”³

This, then, explains why the apostles, the women, Jesus’ family and followers did what they did next:  They returned to that upper room in Jerusalem and devoted themselves to prayer.  Because prayer, open-eyed, open-hearted prayer, has the power to turn our anxiety into curiosity, our curiosity into compassion, and our compassion into purpose.

Thy kin-dom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We members and friends of Saugatuck Church, we have our own version of the question, “Are we there yet?”  We ask it, and we hear it, every day.  We count the weeks until we will return to our beloved church home.  And honestly, we’ll keep asking it, even after we walk back through the front doors of the meeting house.  Because we live in the meantime.  We are always on a journey; God is always calling us out to be God’s witnesses in the world – in new ways, in new places.  Perhaps one of the gifts of this particular in-between time in the life of Saugatuck Church, is the chance we have had to wait with purpose, to lean in, like those women and men in the upper room, to take a breath, to pray for guidance and prepare for whatever God has in store.

Get ready, sisters and brothers in Christ, because the next breath we take, it might just be filled with Holy Spirit power.

Scripture Texts

Acts 1:6-14 – NRSV Translation

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. 13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.