Wait and Pray

7th Sunday of Easter/Ascension Sunday

Today's Readings: Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In our Creeds we confess that we believe in Christ who lived, died, rose again and ascended into heaven. In today’s readings we hear about this ascension and how 40 days after Jesus rose again, he mysteriously went to be with the Father. But as we heard last week, Jesus promised that we would never be left orphaned. The Holy Spirit would fill us, fill the world in his absence, and be our new Advocate. The Holy Spirit is coming, Jesus tells the disciples, coming to fill you with the power to be witnesses of God’s love throughout the world, to the ends of the earth!

After Jesus ascended I can’t imagine the awe AND the confusion the disciples must have felt! I mean

after he rose again and appeared to him they were still asking, “Jesus, NOW are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel!?” They watched their hopes gruesomely be nailed to the cross that Good Friday, they mourned the death of their hopes and dreams that Holy Saturday, and here post Easter we can feel that energy rise in them once more. ‘Aha! This IS the long awaited Messiah of our dreams!’ But Jesus still says no. No the kingdom of God is much greater than any kingdom on earth ever could be. The restoration of the kingdom of Israel would be small and finite compared to what our God has planned. No, the kingdom over which God reigns is so much more and encompasses all the ends of the earth, restores ALL of creation, reconciles everything to God.

But we can’t see that can we? We can’t see what the fullness of God’s kingdom truly is or looks like or will be.. we can’t fathom the expansive compassion, mercy, justice, or love of our God, it is too big, so unlike anything we have ever seen on earth.. we can only hope of the possibilities.. leaning into and trusting the promises left to us by our God who would rather live and die with us than walk away from us. Promises of God’s kingdom come will be a time when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, death with be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more. Promises of the kingdom come are promises of eternal life in the presence of our Creator, our Savior, our life-force.

If we find it hard to imagine and lean into, imagine how the disciples must have felt, how unbelievable it must have all seemed. They are left so speechless, so dumbfounded they just stand there looking to the skies until two mysterious men in white robes snap them out of it and back into reality. As they went back to Jerusalem and gathered once again in that upper room.. did they really expect the Holy Spirit to come to them? I bet they wondered what that would look like and feel like… how would they know when the Spirit came? What would be different? What would that power of the Spirit Jesus promised feel like as it coursed through their veins? Were they ready for it? Did they really want that power at all?

As they waited for the Spirit to come, trusting that it would because Jesus told them so, they stayed in that upper room, waiting and ‘constantly devoting themselves to prayer.’ Perhaps we can relate to this today. Many of us are staying home.. waiting and praying for an end to this pandemic. Perhaps that is the exact season to which we have been called right now, a season of waiting and praying. Do we expect God’s Spirit to show up in our midst? Do we trust that Jesus’ promise is true? Do we feel the Spirit of Life coursing through our veins calling us to continue to make the presence of Christ’s lived reality of God’s love known throughout all the ends of the earth? I hope so. I hope in this time of waiting and praying you are crying out, ‘Come, Holy Spirit,’ and being filled with the power of God’s Spirit which has made it’s home in you. God absolutely DOES show up in our midst.

I want to leave you with a poem from Jan Richardson’s Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. She wrote this poem for Ascension Sunday the spring before he husband Gary died. She said on Facebook days ago, “It reminds me how blessings have a way of moving both within and beyond time, spiraling around to meet us anew in the ways we most need but never expected. In these unexpected days, this blessing is for you:”

STAY

I know how your mind rushes ahead, trying to fathom what could follow this. What will you do, where will you go, how will you live?

You will want to outrun the grief. You will want to keep turning toward the horizon, watching for what was lost to come back, to return to you and never leave again.

For now, hear me when I say all you need to do is to still yourself, is to turn toward one another, is to stay.

Wait and see what comes to fill the gaping hole in your chest. Wait with your hands open to receive what could never come except to what is empty and hollow.

You cannot know it now, cannot even imagine what lies ahead, but I tell you the day is coming when breath will fill your lungs as it never has before, and with your own ears you will hear words coming to you new and startling.

You will dream dreams and you will see the world ablaze with blessing.

Wait for it. Still yourself. Stay.

(Poem and Photo by - Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief)

Amen.