Going and Coming

(Scriptures: Acts 1:1-14, Ephesians 1:15-23,
Luke 24:44-53)

Today’s reading from Luke and Acts remind us, if nothing else, that Acts is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s Gospel tells of the acts of Jesus during his earthly ministry, and Acts tells us about the acts of the Apostles, of the early church – the acts of Peter, of John, the acts of Philip, James, etc. - and after the account of Paul’s conversion, the focus rapidly shifts to the acts of Paul.

Acts is a sequel to Luke, and so Acts basically picks up where Luke begins. Luke tells us that Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and as he blessed them, he was taken up from them. Acts begins by retelling and to some extent expanding and reshaping the narrative at the end of Luke. In Acts, Jesus’ “blessing” sounds more like a “challenge”. In today’s reading, Jesus is spending his final moments with his disciples before ascending to heaven. And as usual, the disciples are out to lunch, oblivious to what Jesus is telling them. “Now will you restore the kingdom to Israel?” they ask. Jesus is about to leave them, and they’re still caught up in their parochial, tribal, nationalistic concerns.

Jesus, even in his last minutes on earth, is to the last a master teacher. Jesus was unwilling to engage the explicit question the disciples asked, but he realized that behind their explicit question was an implicit question, sort of a “question behind the question”, which went as follows: “Where do we go from here, Jesus?”. Jesus’ response is worth noting. He redirects them from the specific question they did ask – which they had no business asking – to the implicit “question behind the question”– which Jesus answered graciously. He responds to their explicit question by basically telling them to mind their own business – “it’s not for you to know the times the Father has set by his own authority” – but then answers their “question behind the question” – “where do we go from here” - by going on to say that they will receive power to be Christ’s witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and the whole world. Jesus gives them an expanded frame of reference, a greatly expanded mission field. The disciples prematurely want to declare “mission accomplished”, hoping that they can bask in the glory of having been by Jesus’ side as he restored independence to Israel. By contrast, Jesus is telling them that their adventures in faith, far from being over, were really just beginning. Like a loving parent caring for toddlers, Jesus had walked beside the disciples and held their hands through the course of his earthly ministry. Like tuckered-out toddlers, the disciples thought it was high time for milk and cookies and a nice nap. But instead, Jesus would now be ascending to the Father, and, like growing children, they were going to have to learn how to look both ways and cross the street on their own. It must have been a jarring conversation for the disciples.

It may also be a jarring conversation for us. Listening to the disciples may be like looking at ourselves in a mirror. Like the disciples, we may define our faith in ways that are narrow and self-centered. We may define our faith primarily in terms of “I” and “me” and “my” – Am I saved? What will happen to me when I die? Will I get to heaven? Will I see my family again? And there is a time and a place for these concerns. They’re very important concerns. When we’re grieving the death of loved ones, when we or our family members are on beds of pain and illness, when we or our family members faced with our own mortality, our faith can become a great source of personal strength and comfort. Truly, what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. As the saying goes, when we’re at the end of our rope, it’s time to tie a knot and hang on…and we do that by leaning on the everlasting arms of God.

But if we define our faith in Christ primarily in those terms – what’s in it for me? – we’ve greatly truncated the mission Jesus laid out for his disciples. Sort of like that movie from a few years ago, ‘Honey, I shrunk the kids.’ - ‘Honey, we’ve shrunk the mission.’ We’ve shrunk the mission of witnessing to the Gospel in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the whole world into “Well, at least I’m saved” or “Well, at least my family will be together in heaven. Us four, no more. Everyone else can fend for themselves.” No wonder we may latch onto to those who huckster and traffic in myths about the end times. After all, we and our families are saved….what else is there to do? Mission accomplished! Time for milk and cookies and a nice nap. I think part of the reason so many get caught up in the end-times mania is that the mainline churches haven’t done what Jesus did for his disciples in our reading from Acts, haven’t done a good job of helping their congregations understand their mission, understand why we’re here. Because of this lack of a big picture focus, we’re prone to focus on ourselves, prone to declare “mission accomplished” when in fact our mission has hardly begun. Peter and Paul and the rest of the apostles didn’t sit around obsessing about their own salvation – come to think of it, they didn’t sit around much, period - they had much bigger things on their minds.

Because the mission that Jesus defined for his disciples – “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and the whole world” – still stands. It’s an ongoing mission. Think of it this way: everytime a baby is born, surprise! - there’s a new person who hasn’t heard about Jesus. So the mission field is ever before us.

Another way to think of it is to go back to the Luke narrative – Jesus led the disciples out to Bethany, from whence he ascended. Bethany, where Jesus visited Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and where he was hosted by Simon the Leper. While there are some disputes as to the meaning of the name Bethany, most authorities interpret the name as meaning “house of pain, house of suffering” – “Beth” means “house”, and “ani” or “anya” means “pain” and “affliction”. Some think there may at one time have been an almshouse or poor house there. So, before his ascension, perhaps Jesus gave the disciples not only verbal instructions, but visuals as well – a place of suffering, a place which needed the good news of Christ.

I suspect that, at this point, we may be feeling a little exhausted at the thought of witnessing to Jesus in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and the whole world. Me too. If it’s only up to us, we’re not going to get very far. We’ll feel worn out, feel like settling down for milk and cookies and a nap. Hey, I feel worn out after a morning of handout of Emanuel church flyers in Bridesburg. We’ll want to declare “mission accomplished” prematurely, want God to fast forward to the 2nd coming. And so here’s where it’s appropriate to lift up another part of Jesus’ words – “you will receive power when trhe Holy Spirit comes upon you.” God isn’t asking us to do all this on our own. God will send the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will empower us to do far more than we could ask or think. One of the fascinations of Luke-Acts is watching how the disciples, who, as in the other Gospels, are about as clueless as can be, suddenly become powerful preachers and teachers and evangelists. Think of Peter, who, when he walked alongside Jesus during Jesus’ earthly mission, never missed an opportunity to put his foot in his mouth. After the coming of the Holy Spirit, Peter once again opened his mouth – and three thousand people were saved. Same disciples. Very different results. The difference is the coming of the Holy Spirit, having God’s spirit planted within them, empowering them and guiding them and directing their paths.

Next Sunday, we will celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit on the church. The Holy Spirit can empower and direct us, if we allow, if we get out of the Spirit’s way. Like the apostles, we may find that we have to set aside our own agendas. Like the disciples, we may find that if we are left with unanswered questions, it may be because they’re not the questions God would have us ask. We may be asking God the wrong questions.

I’ve taken beginners Spanish courses several times – despite which I’ve never really learned Spanish beyond a handful of phrases. I really don’t have an aptitude for language, and my brain forgets the unfamiliar phrases almost immediately. My middle-aged brain’s attempts to absorb Spanish is like a brick attempting to soak up water. But the last time I took Spanish, I remember our teacher telling the class that we need to learn to tune our ears to understand Spanish. And that phrase stuck with me. I remember when I visited Cuba with the Penn Southeast Conference, at first the conversations going on around me were just background noise, babble. But as the days went on, I could start to pick out a word or a phrase here and there. By the last day, I understood much of what was being said around me, and could even put in a few words of my own here and there. (Of course, when I got home, it all went out the window by the time I’d gotten home from the airport.) But in the same way I tuned my ears in Cuba for at least a few days to understand at least a little Spanish, we may need to tune our spiritual ears to hear the whisperings of the Spirit, in the midst of all the background noise – including all the religious background noise. We need to tune our ears to pick out the voice of the Good Shepherd, amid the voices of all the hirelings and hucksters that would lead us off course, who at best seek to fleece us, and at worst may seek to destroy us.

Having tuned our ears to the voice of the Spirit, may we be like the church at Ephesus to whom Paul wrote, saying, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of the glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.” May Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians be answered for us as well, as in a few minutes we come to the table and share the communion meal, and in so doing experience the presence of Christ, now raised from the dead and seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name, not only in this age but in the age to come. May it be so for us, the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. May it be so for us at Emanuel Church. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org

On A Mission

I believe it was in the 1990’s that it seemingly became fashionable for corporations to prepare mission statements. Perhaps with large corporations diversifying into various lines of commerce, there was a sense that they were losing focus. Stephen R. Covey, author of the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is quoted as saying “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” In preparing mission statements, companies would ask themselves, “What business are we in?” For example, here is the mission statement of the McDonald’s fast food chain: "McDonald's vision is to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile." These statements often tried to express the core of what the company was about, but broad enough to allow adaptation to a changing business environment. For example, a company whose mission statement reads, “We make top quality buggy whips” probably would no longer be in business. But if the same company said, “we make the top quality accessories for transportation, so our customers can get where they want to go with speed, comfort, and style,” their vision could adapt to the transition from the horse and buggy era to the automobile era, and could include accessories for trains and other forms of mass transit as well – the focus is the general category of “accessories for transportation,” not the specific product of “buggy whips.”

In our Gospel reading (Luke 4:14-21) today, we catch a glimpse of Jesus early in his ministry. Having preached in Galilee and the surrounding country, he had begun to build a reputation as one worth listening to. In today’s Gospel, he comes home, preaching in his hometown synagogue. The text he chooses, from Isaiah 61, is not random – in fact, in Luke’s gospel, this text serves as Jesus’ mission statement, the foundation for his self-understanding of his ministry.

The Isaiah text quoted by Jesus comes from a time after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon. After decades in exile, they are finally home at last – but “home” is the charred, crumbling remnants of a temple surrounded by a city in ruins. Our Old Testament reading from Nehemiah 8 tells of a time immediately after the return from exile, when the people, having been in exile amid hostile foreigners for so long, eager to reconnect to their roots and their faith and starving for a word from the Lord, prevailed upon Ezra to read from the book of Moses. And so Ezra read from Moses, we’re told, with interpretation, giving the sense, so that the people understood the reading. But the Isaiah text quoted by Jesus comes at a later time, when the initial burst of energy among the returnees from exile began to wane. They needed to rebuild all over again, and they became discouraged, both at the magnitude of the task before them and by opposition from surrounding tribes. And so the Isaiah text is a word of hope, a word of good news to people needing to hear good news.

We’re told that in Jesus’ day, while the text was read in Hebrew, the people spoke Aramaic – a dialect of Hebrew, but different enough that some may not have understood the text as it was read. In our context we might think of the differences between the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken in Berks and Lehigh and Lancaster counties, which my father’s parents spoke, and the High German in which our older church records are recorded. And so it was customary for the rabbi to interpret the text to his listeners, just as Ezra interpreted the law of Moses in our Old Testament reading. This may be where the tradition of preaching a sermon originated. We’re told that Jesus’ reading caught the attention of the congregation, so that all eyes were focused intently on him – no bored, half-asleep, slack-jawed, dead-fish stares from the congregation that day. And in our Gospel reading, after Jesus read out the text – significantly, omitting a line about “the day of vengeance of our Lord” – vengeance wasn’t part of his mission - he gave his interpretation, his sermon – one short sentence – “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Some translations say, “has been fulfilled in your ears” or “has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.” Of course, his listeners had to wonder, “what does he mean? Fulfilled how? What has changed just now, as we heard Jesus reading?” Some foreshadowing – in our reading next week, Jesus will go on to tell them what he means, and the congregation that started out speaking well of him will try to throw him off a cliff.

For Luke, the Isaiah text – and let me quote it again: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This text defines how Luke saw Jesus’ mission. It sets the context for the rest of the Gospel, and indeed also for much of the book of Acts, which Luke wrote as a sort of sequel to his Gospel. More than the other Gospels, in Luke there is concern for the poor, for the oppressed, for those in captivity to societal forces beyond their control, for those on the margins of society. For example, in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, the first beatitude says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In Luke 6, the parallel passage from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain just says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” And it’s followed up in a few verses by the words, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” So for Luke, this verse from Isaiah on which Jesus preached is foundational, absolutely key to understanding what Jesus was about. Let me say a word about that final phrase – the year of the Lord’s favor. This refers to the year of Jubilee, set forth in Leviticus 25:10, where every 50th year, the trumpet was to be sounded, and the people were to proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof – and if that last phrase sounds familiar, it’s the quote on the Liberty Bell. Any land that had been sold over the past 50 years was to return to its former owner, and the people were not to work the soil, but to live on whatever the land brought forth on its own. This concept, which we don’t know if it was ever actually implemented, was set forth in order to prevent the rich from scooping up too much wealth from the poor, and to be sure that no person or no family or no tribe would be in perpetual bondage to another. In this day of huge disparities between rich and poor, maybe it’s time to proclaim a year of Jubilee.

What does this text from Isaiah mean to us, here at Emanuel, where our name proclaims that God is with us? To us here at Emanuel who are Christ’s body, His arms and legs and hands and feet in the world today? This text that was Jesus’ mission can be our mission as well. For we are anointed – by our baptism, by the Spirit of the Lord within us, to proclaim good news to the poor – here in Bridesburg, and through our support of the Conference and wider church, to the world. For here in Bridesburg, as there were in the Nazareth of Jesus’ time, as we seek each week forgiveness and freedom from our own sinfulness and brokenness and from the world’s sin and brokenness that bears down on us all, all around us there are captives to be released, blind seeking to see, oppressed to be set free – set free from their own bondage to sin, set free from society’s oppression, from forces beyond their control - a community yearning for a proclamation of God’s favor.
But we’re just a little church. How can we hope to take all this on? It is here that our reading from I Corinthians 12 is helpful. We are one part of the body of Christ, and each of us is one member in the body of Christ. We can’t do everything – and we’re not asked to. But we’re asked to do something – to do something for Christ in our personal lives, our professional lives, our lives as members of the congregation, our lives out in the community. And other members of Christ’s body will be active as well – and we must always be mindful of our need for each other.

When I get discouraged at the magnitude of the task God has set before us, I’m reminded of a prayer attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, gunned down while saying Mass.
It helps now and then to step back and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not Master Builders, ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

So may the words of Isaiah 61 be fulfilled, not only in our hearing, but in our speaking and our doing. May we here at Emanuel be prophets of God’s good news, here in Bridesburg, in Philadelphia, and through our partnerships with other Christians, to the ends of the earth