The Sunday after the Ascension--Year A

Easter 7A—Sunday after Ascension
June 5, 2011

You would think that after the resurrection, nothing would surprise them, these disciples who had walked with him, who had seen him heal so many and work so many wonders. But that day, outside on the mount called Olivet, they were most surprised to see their friend and master lifted up in a cloud toward heaven until he was taken out of their sight. They were so surprised that all they could do was stand there, with their mouths open, watching and wondering, until two men in white approach them and seem to break their spell.

We know something about that, don’t we? Sometimes life surprises us, catches us off guard, throws us a curve ball, and we are so surprised that we cannot know or remember how to proceed. Sometimes this surprise comes through a blessing, but sometimes it comes through a loss. Sometimes it is even God who surprises us.
So, when the disciples finally come to their senses, what do they do? They remember what Jesus has told them, to wait in Jerusalem, and so they do just that. They go back to Jerusalem, and they wait; they’re not even really sure what they’re waiting for. But still they wait.

For us, waiting is a lost art. In our high-speed, technologically advanced culture, we chafe at any waiting we are forced to do. We fidget and fuss, we fret and we grow anxious. We as a people have lost the art of waiting gracefully. So when we must do it, we often do it badly.

This part of the Easter season in which we find ourselves today has much to teach us about waiting gracefully. It is an in-between time, after Jesus has ascended to heaven and before the gift of the Holy Spirit, the comforter given at Pentecost. We long for the gift of the Spirit, for some solid definition of who and where we are and what we are supposed to be doing. But for today, at least, we are called to follow the example of the disciples. Today we are called to wait.

We see in the story from Acts, that waiting gracefully, waiting faithfully is also a part of Christian discipleship. It is as much a part of Christian action as service, stewardship, charity…For the disciples didn’t go back to that room and twiddle their thumbs. They went back and they waited in an intentional way. Two notable actions characterize the disciples’ waiting. They stay together; and they pray.

As they wait together, they physically manifest the reality that, even though Jesus is gone, they are all still in this together. And even before they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and are made the Church, they are already acting like how the church is supposed to act. For that is what the church really is: a body of people who are in this thing together, people who no longer have to “go it alone,” who do not have to wait and agonize and battle anxiety alone but who have a whole host of others to wait with.
And as they wait, they pray. They turn their focus away from the work of waiting and they turn it toward God, the source of all good gifts. They pray because in their waiting they are reminded that they are truly powerless, but that in God, all things are held in God’s care and in God’s power and in God’s time.
So much of our lives are made up of the in-between times. Already we have received the gift of the Holy Spirit at our baptism, but God’s kingdom is not yet fulfilled.

In our baptism, we are called to be people who wait well and also who wait with one another. Take a moment and remember when the last time was that you waited well? When was the last time you waited with another? What characterized that time? Was it the support, the community? Was it prayer?

In this in-between time between Ascension and Pentecost, and in all the in-between times in our lives, may we hold together, wait with and bear with one another, and may we turn our eyes to God, the giver of all good things and the creator of hope; may God grant us the spirit cast all of our anxiety upon God, to remain steadfast in our faith that Christ himself will “restore, support, strengthen and establish us;” may God give us the grace to hold together and to wait gracefully, through prayer and in hope.