May 4, 2008
Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1:1–11
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the
6So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to
What are we, then, to do?
Can I get a witness?
I said, can I get a witness?
You know, on the South Side where I live, that question gets a slightly different response. Our Lutheran brothers and sisters on the South Side shout “Amen!” or “Yes you can.”
Most of the time, if you were to ask me, “Can I get a witness?” I’d probably say, “What for? Are we going to court?”
But I think that Jesus in today’s Acts reading probably yelled that out at some point as he was ascending into heaven. I mean, Luke doesn’t record it in there, but I think he probably said, “Can I get a witness?” sometime in there.
Because that’s what we’re left with: witnesses.
Today we celebrate the ascension of our Lord. Not much is known about Jesus ascension, and even Luke isn’t really clear on what’s going on. What we do know is that Jesus was with his disciples for 40 days after his resurrection, and then he didn’t show up in the bodily presence anymore. Instead, he spoke of this new way that God was going to be with people, in the paraclete, the Advocate, the Ruah that we spoke of last week. The Holy Spirit.
And today we find these disciples, having been promised the Holy Spirit, having been promised that Jesus would come back again, and they’re staring up into heaven waiting for it to come as if it’s going to happen right now, right away.
And I bet, I bet for a moment there they wondered what they were to do next. I bet, I bet for a moment there, they had a twinge of sadness because this experience with God that they’d been having through the person of Jesus had come to an end.
And how to express that?
Shel Silverstein, at the end of his book of poetry “Where the Sidewalk Ends” has one final poem that reads:
“I went to find the pot of gold
That’s waiting where the rainbow ends.
I searched and searched and searched and searched
And searched and searched and then
There it was, deep in the grass
Under an old and twisty bough
It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine at last…
What do I search for now?”
“What do I search for now?” is probably just the question that those disciples were asking themselves as they stared off into space.
And the only thing that brings them back to reality, that brings them back to action from staring up at heaven are these two people that show up in dazzling clothes.
“What are you doing looking up at heaven? He’ll come back; he promised. The Holy Spirit will come upon you; he promised. But now, there’s work to be done!”
Now, there’s work to be done.
You see, the experience that they had with God, the experiences that we have with God through the gift of the Holy Spirit is not some pot of gold to be found at the end of a spiritual journey. The experience is the journey.
And that is why we don’t stop with just the Gospels in our New Testament texts. The experiences with God continued even after Jesus was no longer bodily present. And so, what are the disciples to do now that Jesus is not bodily present, what are we to do now that Jesus is not bodily present?
Well, we’re not supposed to just stand around looking up at space, waiting for it to happen again. That, according to these two people in dazzling clothes, these two “new people” as the Greek literally calls them reminds the disciples, and reminds us.
We’re about to leave the season of Easter. We’re about to head into spring. We’re about to have life slow down just a little bit. It won’t be the same.
But listen to these people in dazzling white: the work is not done. God’s spirit, God’s indwelling presence is still here, and so our encounters with God continue to happen.
And we can’t be silent about that. We can’t be silent about our experiences with God, our experiences with the God made known in Jesus Christ.
We need to be witnesses! God has made God’s self known to us, and so we need to be witnesses to the fact that God is at work in this world bringing salvation in the here and now.
So, what does it mean to be a witness?
James Mulholland, a Quaker minster, writes in his book “If Grace is True” about one of his first sermons as a preacher. It was at an inner city mission. He says,
“I watched about fifty men, many mentally ill or drunk, herded into a dingy chapel. They mumbled the words to a familiar hymn, yawned through the prayers, and seemed oblivious to the words I’d labored over so carefully. I pleaded with them to accept Christ and experience his grace. No one responded. Afterward, I turned to one of the workers and said, “Well, that was hopeless.”
Then the worker smiled back at him and said, “I used to be one of them.”
Who was the witness there? A witness is the one who says, “The world is ending? Oh, yeah, I used to think that. I’m all alone in this world? Oh yeah, I used to believe that. There is no God, we’re water and some trace elements? Oh yeah, I used to hold on to that. But then…
But then God spoke to me in Scripture. But then the Holy Spirit stirred me to faith. But then I realized that the breath of God moves through humanity like a wind over grass. But then I was baptized into the faith, held by a God, sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked with the cross of Christ forever.
When we have church, when we witness to the encounter that God has had upon us, “I used to be one of them” is not an unfamiliar response. God changes things yet today, and so we cannot keep looking to heaven waiting for eventual salvation, for as those “new people” in dazzling clothes remind us, there is so much salvation to be witnessed to here around us.
So, can I get a witness?
Amen.
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