A sermon on Acts 1: 1-11 by Nathan Nettleton
A video recording of the whole liturgy, including this sermon, is available here.
Jesus is obviously central to the story of the Ascension, and the image of him disappearing off through the clouds is so dramatic that it is easy to overlook the fact that he is not actually the only person in the story. But you know what? The story of the disciples and how they experienced the ascension of Jesus sounds a lot like our story. Did you notice that?
The disciples have spent several years as a little congregation gathered around Jesus. They’ve seen and done some amazing things. They’ve built up quite a bit of shared history. They have developed a reputation in the wider community. It’s been quite the adventure.
For a few days they had thought they had lost Jesus and it was all over, but then he was back, more alive than ever, and the adventure continued.
But now, all of a sudden, he’s said goodbye and made it clear that they are not going to be seeing him anymore. And now he really has gone.
Whether the thing about disappearing off into a cloud is literally how it happened or not really doesn’t matter. The Bible uses “going into a cloud” as a recurring meme that symbolises entering the presence of God, so the literal specifics are not the point. But the experience of the disciples, the experience of being left behind and everything being different now is very real, and literally so. They stand there, staring into the sky, rubbing their eyes, not sure what to do next.
Our experience of this hasn’t happened over a few days, but over several years. For those of us who were here when we used to gather in a building in South Yarra (and that’s now only about two thirds of us) the amount of change has been such that its no wonder we’re still staring into the sky, rubbing our eyes, not too sure what it all means for our future. We’ve left behind the experience of physically gathering each week, with all the embodied engagement and casual familiarity that went with that. We’ve left behind the neighbourhood and the relationships that were based there. We’ve left behind the building itself with the sense of history that was embedded in its walls. And now we’ve left behind even the name.
“And while they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “You Galileans, why are you standing there staring into the sky?”
Jesus has promised them that there will be a new future, and that they are going to receive power from the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. But that hasn’t happened yet, and despite that “why are you standing there staring into the sky” question, it certainly doesn’t happen immediately. Between the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost, the disciples are betwixt and between. An old reality has gone. The new reality is not yet quite in reach.
So they return to the city, and spend much of time between now and Pentecost in an upstairs room, wondering what to do. Apparently they pray a lot. And they figure they better sort out the leadership structure, so they choose a replacement for Judas; a replacement who seems to have never been heard of again. Maybe they discussed whether they needed to appoint a replacement for Jesus, but if they did, they decided not to include that idea in the minutes.
I’m guessing there were a fair few nostalgic stories told. “Remember when we used to …” Nothing wrong with that, though there probably comes a point where it prompts that question again, “Why are you still there staring into the sky?”
In the conversation after Matins yesterday morning, Jeff Wild was saying that he didn’t think we had yet really grappled with what it means to be an online church. The experience of attending a baptism in another church the previous evening had made him acutely aware of some of the embodied aspects of worship and community that we have left behind, and it prompted him to realise that perhaps we are still more conscious of what we have lost than we are of what we might embrace in its place.
I think he’s onto something there. I think that the question I raised this week about how we chat, or don’t, is probably a part of that reality that Jeff is identifying. The ways we used to chat are mostly not available to us anymore, but we are probably still in the upstairs room wondering what this new thing Jesus promised might be expressed.
There’s no reason to beat ourselves up for not having it worked out yet. The disciples were told to wait, and if we’re still in the upstairs room with them, occasionally staring into the sky out the window, that’s perfectly okay.
But Pentecost is coming, and Jesus tells us to be ready to welcome it, to be ready for that moment when tongues of fire erupt and drive us out into a new reality, a new mission.
What will that look like? I have no more idea than those disciples did in their upstairs room between Ascension and Pentecost. No doubt plenty of them had guesses and several of them probably thought they could see where things were headed. And almost certainly none of them had it entirely right. Because it wasn’t up to them. The Holy Spirit was setting the agenda. Their job was just to be ready, ready to get caught up in whichever way the wind of the Spirit blew. And so it is for us.
In our Pentecost liturgy on Sunday week, we will be enacting a wonderful symbol of what all this might mean. On this one Sunday each year, we act out the experience of the disciples on that first Christian Pentecost by trying to speak and pray in different languages, languages we only know a bit, or perhaps don’t know at all. Last year we had a new record of forty languages spoken in that one liturgy.
The wild exuberance of the Pentecost story seems to call for a bit of holy fun and foolishness, but there is a lot more to it than that. It is also a rich symbol of something that is very important about who we are and what we are called to become. We are acting out a reality in which we are no longer shackled to the ways we used to express ourselves, or the ways we used to do things, but have allowed the Spirit to take us somewhere new, to unleash our tongues in previously unimaginable ways, and to connect us to people we’d never previously thought of trying to relate to.
That’s not just about being multi-lingual. It probably wasn’t for the first disciples either. For them, and for us, the “speaking in other tongues” business is a symbol stretching beyond itself to speak of the ways the Spirit and the Spirit-empowered church are breaking through the various barriers that keep people apart, and are building new bridges of communication and relationship.
We have already recognised a number of ways in which our new online reality creates possibilities of new bridges, new connections, new relationships. But I think Jeff is right that we haven’t worked out what to do with much of it yet. And perhaps we still need some time in the upper room to work out how we can have proper conversations with one another in our new reality, let alone with anyone out there.
But if our waiting does not involve active preparation, we’ll be hearing from those angels again — “Why are you still standing there staring into the sky?”
Those ten days in the upper room were a time of genuine prayer and serious thought about who they were and what lay ahead. In as much as it was waiting, it was expectant waiting, almost like the waiting at the end of a pregnancy. Not a time of doing nothing, but of intense preparation for the unknowables that lie ahead.
As I said, this story sounds a lot like our story. And if it is our story, then right now it is about deep prayer and focussed conversation, because like the disciples, that’s how we will prepare ourselves for what is coming. For our celebration of Pentecost Sunday, that might just look like practicing the pronunciation of some unfamiliar words and bracing ourselves for feeling a little foolish anyway. But for the real Pentecost which could explode upon us at any time, it is about preparing for the birth of a whole new reality as the foolishness of God sets fire to all we thought we knew.