Sermons at Union Congregational Church
Preached by The Reverend Gail L. Miller, Pastor
May 28, 2017 Seventh Sunday of Easter
Celebration of the Ascension
Acts 1:1-11
Wait For It…
The church as you may know has its own calendar – I like to think of it as a layer placed on top of the calendar by which we mark our days, weeks and months. Just as we keep track of time and seasons of the year by using calendars that gives us opportunities to observe, commemorate, and celebrate certain events or occasions, so the church also moves through changing seasons with recurring opportunities to celebrate the Christian Faith. The church calendar or the church year is carefully and thoughtfully designed and has been in place for centuries.
While the Jewish tradition has had its own calendar for thousands of years, which revolves around the Exodus from Egypt; the Christian Church year focuses on the life and ministry of Jesus. The sequence of festivals from Advent to Resurrection Sunday becomes an annual spiritual journey for us as we
kneel at the manger,
listen on a hillside,
walk the streets of Jerusalem,
hear the roar of the mob,
stand beneath the cross, and
witness the resurrection!
During the rest of the year we reflect on the meaning of the coming of Jesus and his commission to his people to be a light to the world.
Some churches do not celebrate the seasons of the church year except for Christmas and Easter. However, observing the seasons of the church year has a long history in the life of the Christian Faith. When most of the people in the church were poor and had no access to education, the church festivals and the seasons of the church year provided a way to teach the story of God and His actions in human history.
The Christian calendar is organized around two major events – Jesus’ birth and his death:
Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany; and
Lent, Holy Week, and Easter, ending at Pentecost (next Sunday).
The rest of the year after Pentecost is called Ordinary Time, from the word “ordinal,” which simply means counted time (First Sunday after Pentecost, etc.). The themes of Ordinary Time typically focus on the mission of the church in the world.
I love following the church calendar – I like to think of it as the “Made for church mini-series of the faith.” Just like the drama series we watch on TV, each week is its own little drama which fits into the bigger drama of the entire season.
On any Sunday, you can tell where we are by the name of the Sunday printed on the front of the bulletin. And while each Sunday could stand alone, it’s a more interesting and deeper experience to follow the bigger story, week after week.
As we move through the year, we have, in a rather organized way, the opportunity to talk about, reflect upon, and respond to a huge range of themes and topics that are the heart of the Christian Faith. And we learn about the whole of Jesus’ life, rather than just bits and pieces of it.
So where are we today in this great drama of the faith? Today we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus – quite literally the “going up” of Jesus to his Father in Heaven. Ascension Day was actually on Thursday which was exactly 40 days from Easter. (The 40 days remind us of the 40 days of the Israelites in the wilderness and the 40 days of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.)
Ascension Day is like the episode they run right before a holiday where the final scene is a huge cliff hanger, leaving the story in mid-thought, making you tune in next week to see how it ends.
This whole season, beginning with Lent, which began way back on March 1, through the lengthening of days and anticipation of Jesus’ final week, has been a season of high drama. The story intensifies as we move from Palm Sunday through the Last Supper of Maundy Thursday and Jesus’ death on Good Friday.
And just when we think we can heave a final sigh of sadness, shake our heads, and return to our ordinary lives, we hear that Jesus did not stay dead, but that he lives again. And, in fact, he’s showing up at meal times and hanging out with his old friends again.
It seems too good to be true! And then, just when we are getting used to the risen Lord appearing here and there, something else bizarre happens. Jesus tells his friends to stay in Jerusalem and to wait there for the promise of the Father;
that they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in not so many days,
that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes,
and that they will be his witnesses not just where they live, but to the ends of the earth.
Then things get really weird – think “X Files” – Jesus is lifted up and a cloud takes him out of their sight. Then, as they’re looking up where he went, two men appear in white robes asking why they’re looking up, and offering a cryptic prophecy that Jesus will come again.
And after all that, the message is, “Stay and wait….”
Waiting can be so hard, yes?
Whether we’re waiting for the weekend, or a reply to an invitation,
or the big things…
like whether or not the IVF worked,
or the call back for a second interview,
or for your son/daughter/brother/sister/husband/wife to return from Iraq…
or the diagnosis to be confirmed….
Waiting is hard!
But Christians wait differently than others do. Our waiting is not a passive, couch potato waiting, rather it is the waiting of those who know who holds our future, it is the waiting of those who think and pray and hope and wonder and anticipate what the Holy Spirit will do with us.
I love the timing of how our conversations and meetings about the building project have lined up with the church calendar. This was not my design or the FaST committee’s doing. We really just looked at Sundays that avoided holiday weekends, confirmation, etc…. But I love how the Stated Meeting next Sunday has fallen on Pentecost, when we celebrate the Holy Spirit’s coming and the “birth of the church.”
Today is truly the Sunday when we “wait for it…”
Because if we try to be the church without the power of the Holy Spirit, we run the risk of expending a lot of energy and activity without really carrying out God’s mission. Or we run the risk of attributing success to our own skill, or passion, rather than to the One from whom the power really comes. The church cannot be the church without the power of the Holy Spirit, who enables us to carry out the mission God has placed on us.
The Bible is clear: we simply cannot do what God has called us to do without his help. And the enabling power for which we are waiting is not something we can generate or make happen by our own efforts.
Congregationalists are defined by this. Our very name expresses what our forebears believed – that the Holy Spirit speaks to and through the CONGREGATION – each one of us. What that means is that we – each of us – need to spend the time in prayer and in the Bible, so that we are attuned to what God wants for us, and not just projecting our own wants onto the body of Christ here.
2,000 years ago, the Holy Spirit enabled Jesus’ disciples to storm the world with the message of the Gospel. But first they had to wait. And they had to wait without Jesus, relying solely on his word and promise.
And so Jesus leaves them, ascends to his Father, so that he may send the Holy Spirit. Another way to think about it is to say that the ascension is not so much about Jesus’ absence, but about his presence in the world in a new way. Because after the ascension, Jesus is known through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Bible and the Church.
Since he’s no longer on earth, these three – Holy Spirit, Bible and Church – are the way Jesus works in the world in tangible ways.
But for now we’re told to wait – because something fantastic is promised, and it’s as close as next Sunday.
You won’t want to miss it.
Amen.
Information on the church year taken from “The Seasons of the Church Year” by Dennis Bratcher.