Easter 7A

Easter 7A May 21, 2023 One of my friends was talking about a new McDonald’s commercial that she heard this week on one of her podcasts. The commercial was promoting McDonald’s new order from the app and retrieve your order from the counter with no wait service, and one of the voices on the commercial exclaimed, “Waiting is the worst!” My friend said that her initial response to the commercial was to take umbrage that waiting had been so characterized and to lean into her more contemplative side and to think about some of the things that she actually relishes about waiting. So what do you think? Are there benefits to waiting that you have known and tasted, or are you with the McDonald’s ad in thinking that “waiting is the worst!” While I understand the spiritual gifts that are often found in waiting, I will confess that it is lately something that I have been struggling with. I’m finding myself especially impatient these days when folks don’t respond to my emails or texts in what I deem to be a timely enough fashion. I don’t think I had realized just how much of an issue waiting has become for me of late until I started reading a particular book this week. I saw it advertised on Facebook that it was releasing that day and then immediately downloaded it onto my kindle so I could begin reading it. It’s titled When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation. It’s co-authored by Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand. It’s been an interesting read for me because the authors suggest that we think that the problems in our churches are the decline (in membership, giving, influence and belief). And that we have bought into the secularized idea that our own innovation is what will save us. The authors suggest that the decline (in membership, giving, influence and belief) isn’t the actual problem but is instead a symptom of the actual problem. They suggest that churches have been infected by the secular age and what it essentially boils down to is that we think that we can save ourselves, but the gospel narrative tells us over and over again that only God can save us. The authors use our Acts and gospel readings for today to point to what the call of the church has been from the beginning. Let’s look at these two readings. In Luke and Acts, we have part one and part two of the same book, so think about it like a book and its sequel, or if you’re like Rev Aimee, you can think of it in movie terms like Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In the reading from Luke today, we see Jesus giving his disciples his final farewell. He has been eating and drinking with them, teaching them for 40 days since his resurrection; he reminds them what it has all been about saying: “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised.” And then he gives them a command: “Y’all wait here!” [Ok, actually he says, “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”] And then he ascends into heaven. We see an elaboration on the story in our reading from Acts today—where the disciples are left gaping up at heaven when two mysterious men appear and shake them out of their reverie, and they head back to Jerusalem where Jesus told them to wait and there they were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer…” And Acts tells us that they do ok at this for a while until Peter decides it is time to do some church administration (showing that Peter is truly a person after my own heart). This book I’m reading suggests that Peter gets antsy with the waiting, so he decides that they need to find a replacement disciple for Judas. (This is the section from Acts that immediately follows our reading for today: Acts 1:15-26.) So left to their own devices while they wait, the book suggests that the disciples elect a new disciples “Vegas-style” by casting lots. The lots fall on Matthias, and he becomes the 12th apostle, and we never hear about him again for the rest of the book of Acts. The authors suggest that after a time, the 12th apostle position is actually filled by God in the person of Saul who becomes Paul who features prominently in the rest of the story of the book of Acts. And in this way, they highlight the difference between when we are supposed to wait but act anyway versus when God acts and how God’s action impacts the world and the church in dramatic and unexpected ways. So, the premise of the part of the book I’ve read so far is that we, like the early disciples, are called to wait—to gather regularly and pray together and tell stories—so that our waiting isn’t inactive but rather our waiting is active and responsive to God. And just like the early church, sometimes our waiting can be scared and anxious, but the crux of our faith is that we will wait and that God will show up. They write, “This is faith: that what God has promised, God will do. This is hope: that the God who began a good work will see it to completion.”i When we wait, we change our stance, from trying to make things happen to being open to what God will make happen and also the connections that we form with one another as we wait together. This is all truly counter-cultural. We are a culture filled with busy-ness. Our calendars are always fully booked. Our children are shuttled from activity to activity. Our church is always looking toward the next event. What might it be like for us to spend this summer waiting to see how God is going to show up in our midst? What might it mean for us to commit to gathering together for prayer and worship and conversation and have that be the main thing that we do? I continue to be blown away by how the Holy Spirit is already showing up in our midst! I wonder what it would be like if we slow down even more? How God might surprise us? This week, I invite you to join me in examining your attitude around waiting and to join me in examining what Jesus’s call to wait for God’s Holy Spirit to show up in our church this summer might look like. i. Root, Andrew and Blair Bertrand. When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation. Brazos: 2023, p 23