\u201cWill you take us back to the good old days, Lord?\u201d, the disciples ask. But Jesus is all about the future. Don\u2019t worry about the past, just wait for the Spirit and then go be my witnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the 11th<\/sup> time I\u2019ve started as the pastor of a church and there are some things I\u2019ve learned about starting up. One is that the first thing I need to know: where is the light switch? This text has three parts. The first part makes it clear that the author\u2019s intention is to provide a witness to the life of Jesus Christ. He addresses \u2018Theophilus\u2019, a Greek word that translates as \u201cGod\u2019s Friend\u201d. 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\u2019 ministry\u2014\u201call Jesus began to do and teach\u201d and what we know as the passion story: \u201chis suffering\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cjust wait\u201d? 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. \u201cWhile staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there\u2026you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The disciples have a different idea. \u201cWhat\u2019s the plan, Jesus?\u201d, they ask. What they have in mind is a glorious victory that restarts David\u2019s kingdom. I imagine they\u2019re frustrated; they ask, \u201cLord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?\u201d 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Isn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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? <\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s especially important that we hear the rest of this passage. When the disciples ask, Jesus simply says: <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a transition moment for the disciples. They knew how to be with Jesus, but now he\u2019s gone. They know how to hope he will make things great again. But that\u2019s 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\u2019ve seen Jesus. They\u2019ve seen him change lives. They\u2019ve seen him change them. Now it\u2019s time to tell others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This point is made in the last part of the text as well. The disciples are standing there, \u201cgazing into heaven\u201d. Can you imagine this? There\u2019s a cloud, there\u2019s Jesus lifted and leaving. Let go of \u201chow did this happen?\u201d For a moment, just think about those 11 disciples, seeing their leader, their rabbi leave. Salvador Dal\u00ed has a great painting of this: all you see are his massive feet. And there\u2019s 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\u2019m still asleep, she will come wake me up, pawing at me to say, \u201cThere\u2019s a croissant! There\u2019s a croissant!\u201d I give her bits as I have morning coffee. When it\u2019s gone, I have to hold my hands up to say, \u201cThat\u2019s it, all gone!\u201d The cloud is God holding up hands to say, \u201cHe\u2019s gone.\u201d And just to make the point, two men in white, messengers, appear. They say, \u201cWhy are you standing around, looking up to heaven?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019re 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, \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d And \u201cWhat\u2019s now?\u201d What\u2019s 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. \u201cWhat\u2019s now?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a witness means sharing, demonstrating, what Christ looks like. C. S. Lewis was a British scholar and writer who said, \u201cEvery Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.\u201d [Mere Christianity] Our task now is to share what we\u2019ve 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 \u201cLiving Buddha, Living Christ,\u201d Thich Nhat Hanh remarks to a visiting Christian: \u201cYou say you are people of the Resurrection. Show me your resurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a time pregnant with possibility. But like all pregnancies, the end isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor \u00a92025 Ascension Sunday \u2022 June 1, 2025 Acts 1:1-11 \u201cWill you take us back to the good old days, Lord?\u201d, the disciples ask. But Jesus is all about the future. Don\u2019t worry about the past, just wait […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[371,52,3,2,32],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-luke","category-pentecost","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-c","tag-pentecost"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1787,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It sounds simple, doesn\u2019t it?\u2014until 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 Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s Cat? It\u2019s 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, \u201cIs the cat dead or alive?\u201d \u2014and suggested that actually the cat is in a sort of in between state where we don\u2019t 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\u2019s also where the disciples are in the story we read from Acts today. A few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, we celebrated Jesus\u2019 return from the dead. \u201cHe is Risen\u201d, we proclaimed: \u201cHe is risen indeed.\u201d I don\u2019t know about you, but where I was, we sang \u201cChrist the Lord is Risen today\u201d, 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n