The Great Omission

A sermon based on Acts 1:1-11, which can be read here.

So here they were at the end of it all.
Today marks the last day when Jesus would be among them in human form.
Never again will the disciples see Jesus “in person.”
Never again will they “hear his voice” teaching them,
challenging them,
calling them to change.
And never again will they be able to literally reach out and touch Jesus.
Today was a day of change, great change for the disciples,
Nothing would ever be the same again.

In fact, nothing had been the same since those few days before Jesus arrest and crucifixion.
Jesus had walked with them for three years,
teaching them what the kingdom of God was all about in their lives. They had seen him work miracle after miracle,
they had tried to take his words to heart,
and over the past few weeks,
they had been through both a most terrible and wonderful experience with him,
what with the ever darkening shadow of the cross looming over them as they got closer and closer to Jerusalem,
until at last the soldiers came for him, and they ran,
and he was crucified, and they despaired;
and then, wonder of wonders,
he was alive and in their presence once again.

And he taught them again,
in the Upper Room, along the Road to Emmaus,
at the Sea of Galilee where they shared a meal of bread and fish.
But now all this was about to end.
Jesus had been hinting that he would be leaving them soon,
and I think they sensed his coming departure as they walked him up Mount Olivet.

And sensing that they would not be with him again in this world in this way,
they had to ask him the question that was burning in their minds.
And though perhaps just one person gave voice to the question,
I can just see them all straining, waiting for Jesus’ answer:
“Lord,” they asked, “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
This was the burning question -
the question that laid deep in each disciple’s heart.
Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Now there are a number of observations we can make about this question and Jesus’ reply to it.
The first observation is that it is crystal clear that the disciples still had a lot to learn.
After more than three years of hearing Jesus teach and preach,
they still don’t understand that the Kingdom of God is not some political or worldly power.
After three years of words and a cross to the contrary,
they still expect that Jesus will set up some sort of earthly kingdom.

And if the disciples still had a lot to learn after three years of teaching by and fellowship with Jesus,
then it is likely that we too have a lot to learn.
And what we need to learn is probably along the same lines as what they needed to learn.
What do I mean by this?
Well let’s look in more detail at the question and Jesus’ reply.

What the disciples are basically asking is this:
Lord, are you going to do now what we have been waiting for you to do all along?
Will you finally make thing the way they were for us in our glory days under King David?
Will you make it all right for us again?
make us a strong nation once more?
and make your people, your chosen people, into the powerful and privileged people that chosen people should be?
Yes, we know about those dark days of your death,
and we have heard your teaching about suffering and cross-bearing,
but enough is enough, already.
It’s time to get to the bottom line.
So Jesus, what are your plans? What are you going to do now?

Notice what is being asked.
Lord, will you take action? Will you do this now?
Will you make things like they used to be?
When we were in charge, when we had the power and glory

And though at first glance it may not appear to be so,
this question the disciples ask sounds a great deal like some of the prayers we pray to God -
when we ask God to do something for us,
to take action on our behalf,
to give us the power and glory, and to give it all to us now.

And of course, beneath this prayer often lies the idea of returning to the past,
of going back to the way things used to be,
back in the good old days.

Some of you are no doubt old enough to remember the Lone Ranger programs on TV.
Those of you who remember these may also remember that each episode opened with the Lone Ranger riding his horse Silver to the top of a hill,
where Silver would rear up on its hind legs and then both rider and horse gallop away to the sound of the William Tell Overture.
Meanwhile the narrator introduced the Lone Ranger as a champion of truth and fairness and invited the listeners to “return to those thrilling days of yesteryear.”

While returning to the past might make for good television,
it does not make vital and alive disciples,
nor does it make faithful and thriving churches.
And yet, how often is the past looked upon as being the direction into which we should head?

And further, we expect that Jesus, that God, will be the one that brings about the changes necessary for us to return to our glory days of yore.
Lead on, O King Eternal, we cry.
Take us back to what we once were.
Make us once again into the church of our fathers and mothers,
when the pews were filled,
when the choir loft was packed,
when the Sunday School overflowed,
and on and on and on.

And so we pray,
Lord, isn’t it about time you did something about our sorry condition and return us to the way we were?
Or in the words of the disciples,
“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

But notice, if you will, Jesus answer.
In reply Jesus says rather cryptically,
“It is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”
By this he means:
No, this is not the time for any such thing.
I am not about to do what you ask,
and furthermore it is none of your business to know if and when God will take action in the future.
Keep your nose out of God’s business, and look after your own.
And then Jesus adds,
For you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”

Did you hear that?
The disciples ask Jesus to do something for them,
and he turns right around and says to them,
“You shall receive power.”
God’s not going to come down and make everything alright for us,
God’s not going to return us to the graveyard of the past,
no matter how attractive such a resting place might appear.
Instead God gives us the power to make a difference.

We often have a hard time understanding this,
for we sometimes see religion and faith as a means to get God to do what we want.
We want to reach up and turn on some cosmic switch and God will do what it is we desire.
But to this kind of thinking Jesus says,
“You shall receive power - It’s in your hands, now.

One of England’s great leaders during the nineteenth century was William Gladstone,
who had a favorite illustration about prayer.
It seems that his neighbor’s little girl, Julia, was upset because her brother had made a trap to catch sparrows.
This bothered her so much,
that she told her mother she was going to pray real hard that the trap would fail to catch any birds.
And so Julia prayed every night and worried through the days.
One night, however, her mother noticed that Julia seemed especially confidant that God would answer her prayers.
This went on for three days,
after which her mother asked her,
“Julia why are you so sure your prayer will be answered?”
Julia smiled and said,
“I know my prayer will be answered because three days ago I went out there and kicked the trap to pieces.”

We may pray, “Lord, will you . . .”
But Jesus says, “You will receive power . . .”
You will receive power, and please note,
the power you receive will not take you back to some nostalgic, yellow-paged past found only in your memories,
the power you will receive will lead you into a new future.

And perhaps this isn’t so bad,
and maybe we could get used to this idea
as long as God will give us the power to make things the way we want them to be.
Maybe it won’t be so bad if God will give us the power to “restore the kingdom” to our kind of people.

But this too needs to be questioned.
It is always a disturbing thing to me to note how so many who use the name and the symbols of Christ do so with the purpose of elevating themselves and their kind of people to places of power and privilege.
How can it be that the cross,
the symbol of our Lord’s death - his death for all people -
How can it be that this cross, lit up by flames,
can be used by the Ku Klux Klan as a means to instill fear in people who are different only because of the color of their skin?

A minister friend of mine once told a story of his being stationed in Georgia as a young soldier before the Korean war.
There he heard a preacher recount of how the Ku Klux Klan in that area was able to get churches to support their cause.
He said they would walk down the church aisle during the opening hymn dressed in their hoods,
and as the hymn ended they would deposit a large check in the offering plate.
My friend stated that if this happened to him in a church he served he would stop the service and immediately throw the rascals out.
But the other preacher said he would take a different tact.
He would wait until the group had been seated,
then he would walk up to the altar and take out the check and mark it be sent to the NAACP,
and then he would step into the pulpit,
and by the power of God,
he would preach the best sermon he could on the love of God in Christ for all people,
and what that means for race relations.

Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses”
My witnesses!
This power God gives us is not for our own purposes,
it is not given so that one people can lord it over another -
it is for divine purposes.
You will be my witnesses - witnesses who will testify to what God has done and is doing in Jesus Christ,
to make the world not the way they want it,
but the way God wants it to be.

And what are God’s intentions?
What does God want?
Listen further to what Jesus has to say;
“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Now the early disciples would have had some problems with that.

In Jerusalem? Why of course…that’s home territory,
that’s where our people live,
and that is where we expect to be witnesses for the Lord.

In all of Judea? Well, okay, as long as we don’t have to travel too far into the boondocks.
After all, Judea is still our country and our people.
In Samaria…now wait a minute.
Here you’ve gone too far.
The Samaritans are heretics, they are guilty of intermarriage with non-Jews.
They are despised by everyone as we associate with.

And as far as “To the end of the earth” goes,
well here you can’t be serious.
That means we should go to the gentiles -
why they are just pagans, they are unclean, heathen and outcasts.
Further, it means to go to the Romans,
and those people are our enemies.

The disciples who had a hard time just walking through Samaria with Jesus would have certainly had a hard time with these words,
but Christ says to them,
“You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

So What does God want?
God wants us to show his love in Christ to the entire human family. God wants us to be servants to every human being,
for to God every human soul is so precious that Christ died for it.

One writer has put it well. He states,
No individual created in God’s image and for whom Christ died can be for me an enemy,
unless I am more devoted to something else -
a political theory, a nation, the defense of certain privileges,
or my own personal welfare -
than I am to God’s cause and God’s loving invasion of this world through the prophets, Jesus Christ and the church.

In John Drinkwater’s play, Abraham Lincoln, there is a conversation between Lincoln and a well-known woman,
who was also an anti-Southern activist.
When Lincoln tells this activist the news of a victory in which the South lost 2700 men and the Union lost 800,
she is ecstatic,
“How splendid,” she cries.
Lincoln is stunned,
“There were 3500 lives lost . . .,” he says
But she cuts him off,
“Oh, you must not talk like that, Mr. President.
There were only 800 that mattered.”
Lincoln’s shoulders droop,
and his tear-filled eyes flash as he speaks slowly for emphasis,
“Madam, the world is larger than your heart.”

And this is is what Jesus is saying to all of his disciples,
then and now, with these words just before his ascension.
The world is as large as the heart of God who made it and all those who dwell within it.
And we have been called, you and I, to be Christ’s witnesses on his mission of binding the human family together as one people sharing the love of their God.
Witnesses to the whole world,
witnesses to every person,
regardless of who they are and what they have done.

This great commission of Jesus is not easy work.
In fact fact, it can be extremely difficult.

It is indeed much easier to say to Jesus,
“Why don’t you take care of things for us?”
It is easier to say,
“You are my savior and Lord, you do it,”
than it is to do something about the injustice, the hunger, the suffering and the pain that surrounds us.

It is much easier to sit back and look with fondness and a growing nostalgia for the good old days of yore,
it is easier to rest upon our laurels,
than it is to get busy doing the work of God’s kingdom by proclaiming the good news to people around us today.

And it is certainly easier to keep our love and ministry inwardly focused so that only those who are a part of us,
or who are like us,
are ministered to.

In many ways the great commission that is found in Matthew 28 in one form and in Acts 1 in another,
has become the great omission in today’s churches.

Today’s churches are do well nurturing their members,
some even do well with outreach to the world around them through missions, social concerns, etc…
But many, if not most, churches have forgotten the great commission given to them by Christ,
the commission to witness, to share the good news with others. Witnessing is the life-blood of the church.

It is not enough to acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ.
It is not enough for us to claim God’s grace and mercy and love for ourselves and not share with others.
It is not enough for us to expect that God will take care of things for us,
that our church can be a beacon and light to the people without our ever lifting a finger to keep the fire burning.
It is not enough for us to “let go, and let God.”

Our highest calling, our great commission,
is to reach out beyond ourselves,
beyond the confines of our church,
and to witness to God’s love through Jesus Christ.
This is our reason for being,
and if this is not being done in our church,
then we simply have no reason to continue.
What will it take for us to understand this,
and for us to come to grips with this reality?

After two thousand years do we still have a lot to learn about what it means to be disciples of Christ?
It would be a shame, it would be a crime,
for us to claim to be Christ’s disciples,
and for us to act as though we were the church,
without our ever engaging in our primary task and main calling.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.