Sermon: “Step 1: Wait,” May 16, 2021

The Ascension of Jesus, Drogo Sacramentary, 850AD.

Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: Acts 1:1-11

Today’s scripture reading begins where Easter leaves off. After Jesus was raised from the dead, our text tells us, he showed up alive to his disciples, showing them “many convincing proofs.” He sticks around for forty days. During that forty days he gives them a seminar on the “kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God being the way the world set right, the world as it is when God gets God’s way. Forty days imparting knowledge, teaching essential spiritual practices, getting them ready for the mission ahead of them. A forty-day Jesus bootcamp.

Now, at this point we might expect something like the movie Rocky, or the Karate Kid (or Cobra Kai if you wanna be more contemporary)—rigorous training and exercise leads up to the big event. The disciples are unleashed on the world to cast out demons left and right. To give the devil a holy roundhouse kick, and reclaim the world for God and God’s good purposes.

Well, not quite.

At the end of the forty days, when he’s ready to leave, Jesus orders them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. John baptized y’all with water, and y'all will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

And the disciples are confused. “Uh, Jesus, we don’t really get it. You were all gung-ho about this Kingdom of God thing. You had us praying and studying scripture with you for forty days. Like, is that happening now, or what?” They wanna get moving.

But Jesus says that the timeline belongs to God. It’s not for them to know when. All they need to know is that the Spirit will come sometime. And when the Spirit comes, they’ll receive power and then can put into practice their training from Jerusalem and then to the ends of the earth.

And with that Jesus is taken up into a cloud. Taken up into the very life of God.

So, Jesus is raised. He has them all enrol for forty days of hardcore training in his Kingdom of God dojo. And after all that training, Jesus returns to God, and their assignment is to stick around in Jerusalem and take a long pause. Wait for the Spirit’s power to come on high. They’re pumped right up, they’re living in a whole new world with a grand, new purpose.  And their very first mission is to wait. To wait.

Waiting’s never been an easy or glamorous thing to do. If there’s anything this past year has taught it’s that waiting is hard. Especially as children of the modern world, where so much is given to us instantly. Instant gratification. We’re also so used to a problem and solution paradigm, where if something’s wrong, we just need to figure out how to solve it. Which is great when it comes to stuff like vaccines. But for people unused to it, waiting can be demoralizing, painful even. Not only that, but there are so many things in our lives that need doing. We’re bombarded every day in our news feeds with soul-shaking issues and life-threatening challenges and tragedies that need addressing and are calling for a response. Waiting just sounds so passive, irresponsible, even. If we don’t act now, life will just pass us by. If we don’t do something, then the world’s gonna fall apart. Waiting for us, is wasting.

And yet, this whole mentality’s kind of exhausting, isn’t it? I mean, there’s more for us to do than ever before, and we have the means to do it. But the list isn’t getting any shorter. I mean, before COVID, a lot of us were kind of on an endless treadmill of busyness already. Didn’t wanna miss out, didn’t wanna drop the ball. A lot of COVID stuff has been absolutely ruinous. But when COVID hit and suddenly our schedules were cleared right out, you could almost hear a huge, collective sigh of relief. And that’s because rather than feeling empowered and productive, we felt like we were being swallowed by endless expectations and unlimited claims on our time, energy, and attention. And what do we wanna do? I mean getting back to seeing people and touching people, friendships is one thing. But we feel so guilty that we aren’t being productive that we wanna get back to busy ASAP.

Waiting is so hard for us because we’ve internalized the idea that waiting is wasting time, opportunity, initiative.

For us to wait is to waste time, potential, energy, power. That is, unless you believe that maybe we aren’t the only energy or power out there.

The disciples are trained right-up. An elite unit ready to bring the Good News of God’s grace to the world. And then they’re put on standby as Jesus ascended and left them. The next scene, in my estimation, is one of the great comedy episodes in the New Testament. Jesus is taken up out of sight, and the disciples just keep on starin’ at the clouds. Like, they came all this way, and Jesus is just taking off. He told them to wait, but they’re on the clock. He must be on his way back, because they’ve got stuff to do.

I mean, you picture them shielding their eyes from the sun, staring off into the blue. And just then these two “men in white robes,” it says, they sidle up to them. Now these figures are very clearly angels. Heavenly messengers.

“What you looking at?” they ask the disciples. You sort of imagine one of the disciples being like “oh, Jesus just went up that way, and told us to await further instructions. So that’s what we’re doing.”

Uh huh. “Look,” say the two figures. “Why you looking up there? Jesus, who’s been taken up into heaven, he’ll be back the same way you saw him go.” Basically, they’re saying, he said he’d be back. He’ll return to complete the mission he came for in the first place. You can bank on that. This is a promise you can trust. God’ll do what God has promised to do. You may not know when, but the Holy Spirit will come soon enough. Now, stop staring at the clouds, and go back to Jerusalem, and get back to the stuff of ordinary life. Wait, listen, pray, slow down, keep your minds and hearts open.[i] And at the right time, you will be filled with God’s power. And you will do what needs to be done.

I mean, we’re kind of like these guys, watching the skies—or more likely our smartphones, chomping at the bit for life to get busy again. There’s no time to squander. Get the diploma, roll up the sleeves, get shovel-ready now or nothing will be done. But these heavenly figures assure us, that breakneck speed isn’t the only way of living. That, actually, there is another power that sets the tempo of reality. Where we believe that we are the writers of our own story if we just try hard enough, that we are the primary actors in shaping history, this says that God is the primary actor in history, the Lamb is on the throne.[ii] This says the current of the cosmos flows towards heaven without our help. This says that there is another power surging through our universe and, though it is largely hidden, this power sets the rhythm of things, with its own interests, and divine purpose. The Holy Spirit works on her own time and schedule, drawing together all things for good.[iii] And our role, our first order of business as the church … is to wait. To slow down, listen, discern. Be prepared for the Holy Spirit to work, to receive her power and follow her and her lead. When the time comes.

Now, I realize that this fact does little to change the speed or content of most of our lives. The world’s gonna be the world. And we’ve gotta live in it, whether we like it or not. But there are a couple things from this text to help us to live counter-culturally within it. In the world, not of it, as the saying goes.

First of all, we’re given permission to wait.

One of the prime markers of the modern world is speed, acceleration, efficiency.[iv] We’ve all been socialized into believing that there isn’t enough time in the day, that we need to mold and fashion our lives at every turn and every opportunity needs to be grasped at with gusto. But the Ascension tells us that God is the ultimate master of our destiny. You know how the song goes—"he’s got the whole world in his hands,” Jesus is comin’ back the same way he came in the fullness of time, the mystery of God’s choosing. If we’re on this God’s clock, and not the driving pace of the market economy or living in the infinite algorithm of Silicon Valley, it means we all have permission to slow down without a sense of guilt. We know how the story ends so we don’t have to get anxious about how it’s going to play out. We don’t need to ensure that our lives or the world come out right, because that’s God’s job. Not ours.

We can wait because in God’s world there is a time for everything.[v] Waiting does not have to be wasting, because even the Lord took a day off of creation.[vi] We’re given permission, we can wait without guilt.

Second, because we’re on God’s time, and given permission to wait, we can step back and discern what is actually worth pursuing.

Are we torturing ourselves by keeping up with the 24 hour newscycle, fearing missing out on each event and detail as if our lives depended on it? Are we sacrificing our children’s joy, spontaneity, and their relationship with us and God by programming them and scheduling them based on our own desires for their future excellence? Are we killing our selves seeking after money, or success, or spending our days lamenting our lack thereof?

Guess what? All that stuff may seem essential to happiness, necessary for future flourishing… but it’s not.  Jesus trains his disciples in the kingdom of God. Elsewhere Jesus says “seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all this will come to you.” Being a part of what God is doing in our world, that’s the true stuff of life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.[vii] Love of God, love of neighbor. Justice, mercy. Witnessing to the new life that’s possible on account of the truth that Christ is risen from the dead. These are the things in life worth pursuing. And the funny thing about pursuing these things is they aren’t things we can just earn or accumulate or obtain. We can’t force them. They are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Gifts that come to us. All the training that Jesus gives us, prayer, weekly worship, generosity. Loving and serving eachother, and—yes—sabbath rest. It’s all about waiting on God, about getting our lives ready to receive the Spirit’s power. It’s all first and foremost about learning how to receive new life in Christ when it comes.

Because we’re on God’s time, we can step back, and discern. We can learn to take our cue from the Spirit as to what’s worth doing and when to do it, with the promise that we’ll actually be given the power, the strength to do what’s needed when the right time comes.

Waiting may be the last thing we wanna do right now. But perhaps God is using this to refresh our memories. In our fast-paced world waiting has become a vice. The good news is, though, that because Christ is risen and he reigns, we are freed to wait. In the Jesus academy we’re schooled in a whole different timetable. One where we need not be caught up in the endless cycle of exhausting busyness, but can step back and discern what truly matters, and what’s actually worth getting caught up in in the first place.

Really, you have permission to wait! You have permission to slow down, take stock of your life and the life of your family. Take a breath, and take your eyes off the clouds, and focus them on the here and now, knowing that the power of God is on its way in God’s time. Trust that Christ will come back the same way he came, and that because your timeline ultimately belongs to the Maker of Heaven and earth... you can wait. Amen.

[i] Ecclesiastes 3.

[ii] Revelation 5.

[iii] Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

[iv] Thanks to Andrew Root, channeling Charles Taylor.

[v] Ecclesiastes 3.

[vi] Genesis 1.

[vii] The fruits of the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23.