Weekly Sermon

February 3, 2002 - "Getting Ahead of God"

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Geneva Presbyterian Church

Acts 1: 6-14

So when they had come together, they asked Jesus, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But 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." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying. Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. Prayer: Come, Lord Jesus, come, and quiet any voice but your own that we might be guided to your will through this Holy Scripture. Amen. This is the third week that we have focused on the first chapter of Acts, but we jumped around a little bit. Let me take a moment to explain where we are. In the previous five verses, Luke, who wrote Acts as well as his gospel, described how after the resurrection, the Lord spent forty days demonstrating that he was risen and teaching his followers about the kingdom of God. Then he gathered his followers at the Mount of Olivet. It was clear to them that something important was about to happen. They were excited and hopeful. For them the long awaited event was the restoration of the kingdom of Israel. It is hard for us to put ourselves in their position since our situation is so different from theirs, but try to imagine being a peasant in an oppressed country. They carried with them the cultural memory of the one short shining period in history when the kingdom of Israel had been united and great-the time of David and Solomon. Since then Israel had been divided, first by its own fighting tribes then by a succession of conquering empires from the east, north, and west. For the followers of Jesus the dream of Israel as a conquering empire lived on, but they knew that the dream could only come through supernatural power-through the power of God. Israel was a small country which on its own could not hope to rule the world. The followers ask Jesus the moment come when when the kingdom of Israel would be restored. One of the commentaries I read said for the disciples it was like the night before Christmas and thoughts of the kingdom were dancing in their minds. They have asked this question so many times before and Jesus has never given them satisfying answers, but maybe the time had come at last. Jesus answers them as he always has by explaining that their kingdom was the kingdom of God not the kingdom of Israel. He told them that the power that God would give them was the power of the Holy Spirit to witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Those were his final words to them. As he spoke those words he was enveloped in a cloud and ascended into heaven. The image of Jesus ascending into heaven doesn't resonate with all of us, but God works with us where we are which was true then, too. In the first century everyone believed that the world was flat and that heaven was above the clouds. For Jesus' followers, ascension marked the demarcation between Jesus' resurrection appearances and his return to heaven to sit on the right hand of God. The gift of the Holy Spirit could come only after Jesus had returned to the Father. My favorite thing in this story is what happens next. Two men or angels dressed in white appear. They say, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." The unspoken implication is that wasting their time looking up into the heavens wasn't going to speed Jesus' return to earth. I like that part because I'm comfortable with the message, "Get on with it-get back to work. Move along…Nothing more to see here." I'm a doer and I think most of us are doers. I want to get busy. Standing around is very uncomfortable for me. Besides, there is always more than enough work to do. Jesus had given the disciples their instructions. He had told them to go out into the world and "make disciples in all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." They knew what they were supposed to do, just as we know what we are supposed to do. We are called to the same mission. The ways we can fulfill that mission are as numerous as we are: we can make disciples teaching others about the love of God through Martha's Table, tutoring needy children, bringing food to an ailing friend, leading a prison ministry, etc. We know pretty much what to do. And I think we are ready to do it, but… There is a danger. We can get ahead of God. Timing is everything. Years ago I was talking to parishioner in Berkeley Heights where I was the interim pastor. The parishioner was on the pastor nomination committee and was telling me what he was looking for in a new pastor. He wanted a pastor who had always known he or she was called to the ministry. That was an interesting idea to me since I didn't know all my life that I would be a minister. Not knowing that I would eventually be a minister meant I learned many things from the perspective of a parishioner. I'm comfortable believing that it was God's timing, not my own that dictated when my call would come. Incidentally, my husband John who grew up Catholic mentioned the other night that when he was a child, he fervently prayed that he wouldn't be called to be a priest. Johnny and I are glad he wasn't! Keith Phillips, the man who established World Impact Ministries, tells this story: "One inner-city worker dreamed of establishing a daring street ministry. But when the miracles he had hoped for did not materialize, he resorted to fantasy, distorting encounters and creating imaginary events, hoping to stimulate the respect of others. He became enslaved to his visions of grandeur, a captive of his own expectations." The young minister got ahead of God and wasn't properly prepared for ministry. [Dr. Keith Phillips, The Marking of a Disciple, (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1981), p.20] There is only one way to get on God's timeline: prayer, study, and worship. The passage I read this morning ended with the first few verses of the passage we studied last week. Those verses say that as the followers waited on the coming of the Spirit, they devoted themselves to constant prayer. That is how they kept from getting ahead of God. Only time spent with God can bring us into God's rhythm. A year ago, I told one of my favorite stories. I'm going to tell it again because I think it makes the point so well. "When a fanatic dealt several damaging blows to Michelangelo's Pieta, the world was horrified. It surprised no one when the world's best artists assembled to refashion the disfigured masterpiece. "When sculptors arrived in Italy, they didn't begin repairing the marred face immediately. Rather they spent months looking at the Pieta, touching the flowing lines, appreciating the way each part expressed suffering yet ecstasy. Some spent months studying a single part such as the hand until finally the sculptors began to see more and more with the eyes of Michelangelo and to touch and feel as the master artist would have done. When the sculptors finally began repairing the face, the strokes belonged almost as much to Michelangelo as to themselves." [Dennis and Matthew Linn, Healing of Memories: Prayer and Confession Steps to Inner Healing, (New York: Paulist Press, 1974) p. 15] It's tempting to jump right in, to get busy, but our work will be futile if we don't wait for the Lord's timing. One of my favorite passages is Psalm 127, the first verse: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." We cannot do God's work if we run ahead. We must wait on the Lord. Amen.