A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Ascension Sunday • June 1, 2025

Acts 1:1-11

“Will you take us back to the good old days, Lord?”, the disciples ask. But Jesus is all about the future. Don’t worry about the past, just wait for the Spirit and then go be my witnesses.

This is the 11^th time I’ve started as the pastor of a church and there are some things I’ve learned about starting up. One is that the first thing I need to know: where is the light switch?
It sounds simple, doesn’t it?—until as a new pastor you come in on Saturday night to practice and start stumbling. Switches are pretty simple: one way is on, one way is off, on, off, no in between. But when we move on from the lights, things get more complicated; not everything is off and on. Do you know about Schrödinger’s Cat? It’s a thought experiment from the early 20th century. A scientist suggested imagining a cat placed in a sealed box which is then bombarded with enough radiation to give it a 50/50 chance of dying or surviving. He asked, “Is the cat dead or alive?” —and suggested that actually the cat is in a sort of in between state where we don’t know. Now we are in between pastors at Salem and in that sense, in between one time here and another, between our past and future. That’s also where the disciples are in the story we read from Acts today. A few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, we celebrated Jesus’ return from the dead. “He is Risen”, we proclaimed: “He is risen indeed.” I don’t know about you, but where I was, we sang “Christ the Lord is Risen today”, we decorated a cross with flowers, we proclaimed his resurrection and return to us. Today is Ascension Sunday and we celebrate his leaving. What does Jesus leaving the scene mean for us?

This text has three parts. The first part makes it clear that the author’s intention is to provide a witness to the life of Jesus Christ. He addresses ‘Theophilus’, a Greek word that translates as “God’s Friend”. The Gospel of Luke is, we believe, the first book to which he refers. Scholars believe both Luke and Acts were written near the end of the first century after Christ, and already the author can simply summarize Jesus’ ministry—“all Jesus began to do and teach” and what we know as the passion story: “his suffering”. 

But the main point of this story comes in two conversations: one between Jesus and the disciples, one between the disciples and two angelic figures. In the first conversation, Jesus tells the disciples to do one thing: wait. Wow! When was the last time someone told you “just wait”? Not one word about going out to heal, not one word about casting out demons, not one word about the next steps in the ministry. Wait, wait for the Spirit to direct you. “While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there…you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 

The disciples have a different idea. “What’s the plan, Jesus?”, they ask. What they have in mind is a glorious victory that restarts David’s kingdom. I imagine they’re frustrated; they ask, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They want Jesus to get busy, they want to get back to the old kingdom, the glory days of Israel. How about it, Lord? Can we just get on with things?

Isn’t this like us? We all have memories of how things used to be in churches; we have a memory of how things used to be in general. I remember when I was first driving, picking up friends in my mother’s car, being able to get enough gas to ride around by scrounging change out of the folds in the seats. I remember when eggs were a cheap food. What about it, Lord? Are you going to get us back there? Some of you remember when the pews here were full, I imagine, and when the church was a more visible part of the community. What about it, Lord? Are you going to get us back there? This is a transition time for this church. Just like the disciples, for many the first instinct is to pull up some picture from the past and ask, can we go back there?  

So it’s especially important that we hear the rest of this passage. When the disciples ask, Jesus simply says: 

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.

This is a transition moment for the disciples. They knew how to be with Jesus, but now he’s gone. They know how to hope he will make things great again. But that’s not their job; their job now, he says, is to wait in the faith that God has a future in mind, that God is moving, and the Spirit will come to them, and their task right now is to be his witnesses. A witness is someone who has seen something and tells others about it. They’ve seen Jesus. They’ve seen him change lives. They’ve seen him change them. Now it’s time to tell others.

This point is made in the last part of the text as well. The disciples are standing there, “gazing into heaven”. Can you imagine this? There’s a cloud, there’s Jesus lifted and leaving. Let go of “how did this happen?” For a moment, just think about those 11 disciples, seeing their leader, their rabbi leave. Salvador Dalí has a great painting of this: all you see are his massive feet. And there’s the moment he disappears from view. My daughter May is kind enough when she works from home to go to Lil Amps and bring me back a croissant. Now, our dog Ellie loves croissants; if I’m still asleep, she will come wake me up, pawing at me to say, “There’s a croissant! There’s a croissant!” I give her bits as I have morning coffee. When it’s gone, I have to hold my hands up to say, “That’s it, all gone!” The cloud is God holding up hands to say, “He’s gone.” And just to make the point, two men in white, messengers, appear. They say, “Why are you standing around, looking up to heaven?” 

Now we are in a transition moment too, so this text ought to speak especially powerfully to us. Just like the disciples, I suspect some are worried about the future, some are wondering how we are going to get along without Pastor Sue. I imagine there are questions being asked, and we need to make sure we’re asking the right questions. The disciples asked about making the past happen again; are we wondering how to do that? Remember that Jesus was all about their future. So while we need to understand our past, our focus should be on, “What’s next?” And “What’s now?” What’s next will take time to figure out; we have a search committee and a Consistory working on making suggestions about that and I encourage everyone to talk to those folks about how you see the future of this church. “What’s now?” Is simpler: we faithfully wait and in the meantime practicing being witnesses. Just wait: wait for the Spirit to make the future clear and in the meantime, be witnesses.

Being a witness means sharing, demonstrating, what Christ looks like. C. S. Lewis was a British scholar and writer who said, “Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” [Mere Christianity] Our task now is to share what we’ve seen of Christ, be his witnesses in this place in this time. Seeing is believing: to invite others to share the family of Christ means showing them what that looks like. In his book “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” Thich Nhat Hanh remarks to a visiting Christian: “You say you are people of the Resurrection. Show me your resurrection.”

This is a time pregnant with possibility. But like all pregnancies, the end isn’t clear. In this time, we have two tasks. One is to wait faithfully, the other is to witness. To wait faithfully is to believe God has a purpose unfolded in this congregation if we listen for it, if we follow it. To witness is to share your experience of Christ, to be the image of Christ, all week long, all day long, every day. Seeing is believing. Those who followed Jesus saw him and believed. Now let people see us, following his way, inviting them to come along.

Amen.