Acts
1:1-11
Think back, if you can, into the
past. Not the far past, just two weeks
ago today. It was Sunday evening, around
8:00 or 9:00, just after dark, and the sky began to flicker. There was a strange kind of lightning, at
least in my neighborhood, that didn’t have a lot of thunder to go with it, but
that kept flickering on and off behind the clouds. Occasionally there was a bolt that shot down
to the ground or more often from one cloud to another. Mostly the sky just lit up and went dark,
over and over and over again, like somebody was flipping a light switch on and
off. All of this continued for well over
an hour.
I sat there watching it. I was waiting for it to get closer or move
further away, but the storm system seemed to have stalled. I was waiting for thunder, but it never
really went above a low rumble. I was
waiting for the first raindrops to pound down onto the roof, but they never
came. Yet for those couple of hours, I
was sure that something was going to happen.
Think back, if you can, to a summer
right after you graduated from high school.
Maybe you would be going to college in the fall. Maybe you had a brief period before you
started your first full-time job. Maybe
you had a week or two or even a month before entering the military. Remember, if you can, the strange period
where something was getting ready to happen but it was not quite underway.
Remember, if you will, some crucial
point in your life when you were balanced precariously between what was and
what could be. Think of a time when you were
eager to move forward with something but you had to wait, not like waiting for
Christmas morning or a birthday, wonderful days that come and then go, but
waiting for something you aren’t even quite sure about that will be less of a
single event than a life-change.
Robert Graves, the British poet, put
a poem called “Leaving the Rest Unsaid” at the end of his selection of his best
work. It says,
“Finis, apparent on an earlier page,
With fallen
obelisk for colophon,
Must this be here
repeated?
Death has been
ruefully announced
And to die once is
death enough,
Be sure, for any
life-time.
Must the book end,
as you would end it,
With testamentary
appendices
And graveyard
indices?
But no, I will not
lay me down
To let your
tearful music mar
The decent mystery
of my progress.
So now, my solemn
ones, leaving the rest unsaid,
Rising in air as
on a gander’s wing,
At a careless
comma,”
That’s where Jesus left the
disciples when he ascended into heaven, telling them to stay in Jerusalem until
the Holy Spirit showed up. He left them
like runners at the starting block in the moment between, “Ready! Set!” and…
They didn’t know what to
expect. They only knew to expect
something. That kind of leaves you on
edge, doesn’t it?
“Knock, knock!”
[Who’s there?]
Silence.
The
thing is, that you know something is to follow.
You might feel it as a kind of dread, you might feel it as a kind of
hope, but you feel it. You’re right
there at the top of the first hill on the roller coaster and you see nothing
ahead of you but sky and maybe you hear the sudden screams of the people in the
third car ahead of you.
The Holy Spirit would come to those
disciples. We’ll hear about that again
next week, as we always do on Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit would come and everyone would be off and running and
lives would change in a whirlwind of miracles and wonders, and there would be
discussions and arguments about what was happening and why and how to handle
it. Generations would pass until people
began to make any sense out of what it meant for the Spirit of God to be poured
out on Jesus’ followers.
“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; for John baptized you with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit not many days from now.’” [Acts 1:4-5]
In
the narrow time between Jesus’ ascension and that day, they did stay put. They did what they knew how to do. They chose a man named Matthias to take the
place of Judas [Acts 1:15-26]. They
didn’t rush things, but waited to see what God would do.
“All
these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain
women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” [Acts
1:14]
We all need those times, as much as
we like to get on with things. Maybe
it’s because we prefer to get on with things that periods of waiting and
reflection are so important. We build
Advent and Lent into the church year so that we get the full impact of
Christmas and Easter, and I’ve noticed that folks who take those periods
seriously are generally those who experience their joy most deeply. We have long engagements not just so that
couples can spend more time sampling cake and rewriting guest lists but more
importantly so that the realities and fears that can and should be part of
something as serious as taking wedding vows can sink in. It’s not always possible, but it’s a
wonderful thing when somebody making a major decision about the direction of
their life can take either a regular block of time out of each day for awhile
or maybe a few days entirely to think and pray about what they should do. Stay in Jerusalem, as it were, stay in your
life as you know it, and pray until you get the word, whatever that word turns
out to be. If you are serious about your
prayer life, you will hear. If you let
other concerns, including your own plans or your own thoughts even, interfere,
then when God speaks, you might not be listening.
God does speak, after all. What God says, quite often, is “On your
mark! Get set!”
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