Where Do We Go From Here? (Acts 1:1-11)

Our scripture for today may be one of the most baffling, most spectacular, and yet this Sunday is probably one of the least celebrated Sundays in the Christians church. Today is Ascension Sunday, the day in which we celebrate Christ ascending from Earth into heaven. We celebrate this fact every Sunday during  our Affirmation of Faith when we say, “he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty” and yet how often do we talk about it during the life of the Church. We talk a lot about the birth of Christ as we prepare for his coming during Advent and celebrate it during Christmas. We talk about Christ’s struggle with temptation in the desert during Lent and then there of course is Holy Week; we celebrate his Last Supper with the disciples, we remember his death on the cross, and of course we celebrate the good news that Christ rose again from the dead for the forgiveness of sins. Last week I lamented about how little we talk about the activity of the Holy Spirit, but at least we celebrate it once a year with the celebration of Pentecost (which is next week by the way). All of these things are important to talk about because they help us to relive the good news of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit and the Church.  Still, in the middle of this retelling of the story of Jesus Christ and the formation of the Church, why do we seem to neglect Christ’s ascension? We even talk about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and yet if we left the story at that, Jesus would still be walking the globe, or would have died again. When we think about it in those terms we start to realize how crucial the ascension truly is. So why do we so rarely talk about it? Is it because it is a difficult issue to believe? I don’t think that is the case because if we as Christians believe in the resurrection of Christ, then why would his ascension be any harder to believe? It seems as if the reason we don’t know how to address it. I have to admit as I read the scripture for this morning, as I prepared to write this sermon, I ended up staring at a blank computer screen for half an hour asking myself, What am I supposed to say about this? Where do I go from here? And then it hit me, that is one of the important questions of the scripture. Where do we go from here?

            In our scripture for today the disciples are in a crossroad in their ministry. For three years or so they have been following Jesus, listening to his teachings, following his commands, walking in his footsteps, literally.  We as Christians use the term following Jesus so often, and when we say it we mean that we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior and that we live our lives according to his will. We have to realize however that when we say that the disciples followed Jesus, they actually followed him. They followed him in deserts, the followed him into towns, the followed him up the side of mountains, and they followed him across seas. You can imagine the panic attack that happened when their leader was killed, but that panic was short lived because Jesus rose from the dead, and the disciples once again had their leader to follow. So here they are once again following their leader when all of the sudden Jesus tells them that they must stay in Jerusalem and wait. Wait? We are followers we don’t wait we follow. Then after speaking to the disciples some more, Jesus ascends into heaven, leaving the disciples staring into the clouds. Think about their confusion, their frustration, their fear, because they had been literally following Jesus for three years now, through stormy seas and dry land, and now Jesus ascends to heaven and the disciples had to come to the realization that they could no longer physically follow Jesus. So they had to ask themselves the tough question, how do we follow Jesus now? Where do we go from here?

            We can imagine that the disciples had a difficult decision ahead of them; what are they going to do now? On the one hand they could fall apart; they could throw up their hands and say, “our savior is gone, there is nothing more that we can do.” As they stood there staring at the heavens where Jesus just ascended to, it could also have been easy for them to sit there on their hands and simply wait for Jesus to come back. This is made even easier by the fact that Jesus told them to stay in Jerusalem. If the disciples were anything like me, their instinct would have been to make a plan on what to do next; where to go from here.” They had been following Jesus watching him serve and teach and I am sure that they learned that this was some of their responsibility as followers of Christ to do the same. If they were like me, they would have made a plan of action, and then tried to immediately implement it based upon our own desires and our own understanding of what we think is best. Yet this seems to be the tension that is happening here in our scripture. On the one hand Jesus is telling the disciples to stay in Jerusalem, to not try to follow him (as if they could if they tried), and to not disperse but to stay together.  On the other hand Jesus is telling his disciples to stay in Jerusalem, and we understand that this is because they have work left to do there. How are we supposed to both stay and wait, and at the very same time follow and serve? Doesn’t waiting seem contrary to everything that Jesus did while he was here on Earth?  He seemed to be always on the go, with the disciples on his footsteps, teaching, preaching, serving, and healing. Wouldn’t waiting be dropping the ball on those special ministries? At the same time, the disciples had always been followers, always just been behind Jesus watching what he did and listening to what he said, and then followed the examples. Jesus has ascended now, what are they to do? They know they should be in ministry, but where should they serve first? How should they go about doing it?  I can imagine at this time there were so many questions going on in the minds of the disciples.

            The problem is that as humans we seem to always want the answers immediately. We can see this with the disciples, Jesus had just told the disciples, “While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said, "is what you have heard from me;

1:5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."  And what do the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?"  Jesus just gives them the command to wait for the Holy Spirit, and the disciples have to know the answer of whether or not this is the time in which Israel will be restored. We as humans have such a need to know all of the answers. We have such a need for control. When we don’t know what to expect, when we don’t know what to do, we start to freak out. Usually instead of waiting to discern what is the will of God, we try to jump in and decide what we think is best. We rush into making decisions, because we feel as if we always have to have an answer, that we always have to have the solution. But Jesus tells the disciples, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.  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." In a time in which the disciples just wanted an answer, Jesus reminds them that it is God who is supposed to know all things, not us. That we do not know the will of God, nor are we supposed to. Our job is to wait for the Spirit to tell us her will, and then go out and follow it.

            It is so easy for us to get caught up in doing what we think we should be doing, and many times we do it out of compassion and love, we do it because we truly do want to serve God. Still we often forget the importance of waiting. This reminds me of a story of a Methodist preacher who was just assigned to a church in Georgia. The pastor arrived early to the church one day full of zeal, wanting to make a difference for that church. When he arrived the first thing he noticed was an old tree that was blocking one of the side doors of the church. The pastor thought that a way to show the church how committed he was to the church would be to cut the tree down for them so that they could once again use those doors, and that’s exactly what he did. The next Sunday the pastor arrives to the horror and anger of the members, because that very tree was planted by John Wesley himself when he came and visited Georgia, and now John Wesley’s tree was gone forever. We so often try to do the right thing, but don’t realize our need to wait for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

            We however mustn’t confuse waiting for the Holy Spirit’s guidance with doing nothing. Waiting for the holy spirit does not mean inactivity, it means receptivity. It means we must find ways in which we can prepare ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  As most of you know, the past few months I have been the chaplain at the hospital once a week. I didn’t however just walk room to room talking to people, instead I had a pager that would go off whenever someone needed a chaplain. You would be surprised that this happened less than you think; usually a chaplain is only called for a crisis or for a death, so I would usually only get paged once or twice a night. And yet I was at the hospital waiting, preparing for when I might have to respond. I would eat as soon as possible so that I wasn’t caught without dinner. I made sure I drank plenty of water. At night, I would lay out my clothes on the bed next to me, even keeping my tie tied, so that if I received a call that I could throw on my clothes and respond to the call as quickly as possible. Finally the last thing I did before I went to sleep was to check to make sure the pager was turned on loud, so that I would not miss a calling. While most of my time on call at the hospital was simply waiting, it was not doing nothing; I had to make sure that I was ready to respond at any moment.

            The same is true with the Holy Spirit. Although Jesus tells us to wait, we must do all we can to prepare ourselves so that we don’t miss it. We must gather for worship, partake of the sacraments, study the Bible, and of course we must as Paul says, pray without ceasing. If we prepare to receive guidance from the Holy Spirit, then when she comes, we shall be ready to follow God’s will. Patience is a virtue, and a difficult one at that; we can’t rush into ministry, or we like the minister who cut down Wesley’s tree may actually do more harm than good. But when we are led by the Holy Spirit then we truly can make a difference in this world. So what do we do now that Jesus has ascended?  Where do we go from here?  We go where the Holy Spirit leads us.