...and waiting...

Last week, we talked about our call as a church:  to wait for the return of Christ.  We return to this mystery every time we eat the Lord’s meal.  And each time we eat this meal, we are taking part in something that has gone on for centuries.  Generations of believers before us have waited for Christ to return, and now, it is our turn to wait.  But how do we wait?  We will be exploring answers to this question over the next few weeks, but we will enter this study as Christ commanded us to the Kingdom of God:  like children.

            Are we not all, each one of us, a bunch of children riding in the back of a car?  “Are we there yet?  When will we get there?  Can we stop…I can’t wait any longer?  Is this it?”  The disciples made a habit of asking the Lord these questions.  And who could blame them?  The Old Testament scriptures taught the disciples to ask this question.  Throughout the Old Testament, we hear people asking, “How long, Lord?  How long?”  Can anyone name the Old Testament person who asked this question the most?  Likewise, this phrase appears in the Psalms around 20 times.  The Lord even asks it of His people…how long will you act this way?  And now, the disciples asked this question of their Lord:  “How long until you establish Israel?”  In other words, how long will Israel be in this mess?  How long will we be beaten and killed for being Jewish?  How long until people stop laughing at us?  How long do we have to put up with all the opinions, the chatter, the different lifestyles…how long until we can be free?

            Have you ever felt this desire…the intensity of being focused on a goal…the passion to see results?  Some people are ambitious and determined, stopping at nothing until they achieve their goals.  Others tire out over time and lose focus.  Or maybe you have not yet found something in life that you have chased without abandon.  This is how Jesus describes His gospel…a gospel that makes people sell everything that they have, drop all of their plans, and go back on all of their commitments.  It is no wonder, then, that the disciples get so worked up about finally getting to cash in that hidden treasure…the gigantic pearl.

            How long?  The Lord answers the disciples, “Stop.  You’re overstepping your bounds.  You’re in God’s territory now.  You don’t get to know when this all will come to a close.”  How fair is that answer?  You’ve followed this God-man, Jesus.  You’ve seen Him perform miracles to the unlikely and the unhelpful.  You’ve seen Him teach and reach out to the ungrateful.  You’ve seen Him beaten, tortured and murdered by the State.  You’ve even seen Him conquer death…the greatest victory the world has ever witnessed…and now, Jesus is saying that the journey isn’t over.  Not yet.  Many things are allowed on a journey, but apparently, certainty is not allowed.  We simply cannot be certain when this great story will draw to a close.

            But the Lord does not leave the disciples empty handed.  In fact, the Lord gives the disciples an unexpected treasure that extends from their present into ours, and into eternity:  the Church.  God truly is a giver.  He is always coming at us from all sides.  He created the earth, and then came down and walked with His creation.  He came down as a cloud to give Moses the Law.  He came down when Solomon built Him a house.  He came and became one of us.  And now, Jesus said that God was coming down to be a power source…the nucleus of the Church.  Was this the great ending that Jesus had been promising?

            Not quite.  In fact, this was a great beginning…the whispered word that commanded the universe to roar into existence...the gust of wind that transforms a small campfire into a full forest blaze.  This gift would transform the disciples into witnesses.  The actual word used here is ‘martyr’.  Now, the word martyr usually brings to mind crosses, pikes, flames, bears, sharks, and other such gruesome images, because many generations of martyrs experienced such things.  However, the word martyr can refer to any sort of witness of the Lord.  In fact, the word martyr is related to the word ‘memory’, as martyrs reflect the memory of Jesus in the world.  As we are all members of Christ, we all remember Christ, until He returns.

            The disciples would reflect the memory of Christ as witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  The fire began with God’s people, and spread outward, to the extended family, to the despised, to Gentiles, to Rome, and to the farthest peoples.  But it all started with the disciples…a group of men and women who had their world turned on its head…who had traded their lives to follow this rogue Rabbi…who felt this desire deep within their hearts…how long?  And now Jesus was teasing them with a few words about the future…and these would be His last words to His followers.  For as soon as He finished speaking about martyrdom, He floated up on a cloud into the sky and disappeared.

            Now, I don’t know about you, but this part of the Bible almost always makes me want to laugh.  Can you imagine the confusion here?  No goodbyes…no warning…no 3, 2, 1, we have lift off.  Jesus simply floats away in a cloud, likely similar to the cloud that consumed Moses in his encounter with God on Mt. Sinai.  Jesus was, and continues to be, a mysterious Lord.  And as He floats away into the sunset, the disciples are gawking up into the skyline.  Suddenly, two men appear and criticize the disciples for trying to figure out what’s going on.  “Guys…stop gawking.  You look silly.  You will probably be just as confused when He comes back, so stop ogling the sky.”  This whole event plays out like a Monty Python sketch.

            But isn’t that a common reaction?  To try to figure out what’s going on?  You know that thousands of people scan the news outlets every day trying to figure out when this whole thing is going down.  People publish books, hold seminars, direct movies, publish documentaries, triangulate Mayan calendars…anything to get a sneak peak at when the story will come to an end.  We want some sense of control…just a little certainty, so that we don’t feel completely helpless.  Yet, with all of our investigative abilities, we tend to look in the wrong places.  We look to the sky for a God that constantly comes down and dwells among us.  We confuse the creation with the Creator.  We search for the living amongst the dead.  Apparently, as much as we try, we are not fully capable of certainty.

            Thankfully, God doesn’t require certainty from us.  God doesn’t ask us to figure everything out…to investigate all of the mysterious footprints that He has made on creation.  God simply requires obedience.  This is the heart of covenant…the heart of waiting faithfully.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  If you know me, you know that I love to think.  I love to read, to question, to discuss and to investigate.  When I ask about your major, I’m not just trying to create conversation.  I want to mooch off of your education!  Yet, as much as I love to think…to investigate…to attempt to understand all of God’s creation, God does not judge me by how much I understand.  But He does expect me to obey.  No matter how hard I stare at the sky…no matter how much I concentrate, I will not make Christ’ return any less mysterious.  However, when He does return, I want Him to catch me being obedient.

            Over the next few weeks, we will look through the book of Acts and try to outline more specifically what the waiting Church looks like.   In what ways are we called to obey?  What should we be doing when Jesus comes back?  Yet, our passage for today provides a clue in successful waiting:  mystery.  Mystery can be frustrating.  Some criticize mystery as a cop-out for not investigating and explaining all angles of an issue.  Laziness.  Others describe mystery as an opiate, which distracts people from concrete reality.  Delusion.

Conversely, mystery can help us to maintain our focus.  Mystery provides the impetus to keep going…to keep striving along this long journey.  Imagine your favorite food…mine would be my wife’s world-famous chocolate chip cookie cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  Now, imagine that I only have one of these cupcakes left, sitting on a plate at home.  I cannot stop thinking about this cupcake, so I go home, unwrap the cupcake and devour it.  No more cupcake.  Now I am left alone with my desire and nothing to fill me.  What good is it to consume something that goes away?  Thank God that we cannot consume Him…that He consumes us.

This is the beauty of God’s mystery.  God feeds us with the food that never ends…we drink of the fountain that never runs dry.  God’s mystery ensures that we must always pursue Him and demands that we continue to obey Him.  This is the beginning of our exploration on waiting…that we not be caught with our heads to the sky, necks craned and mouths gaping, but that we be obedient.  If we consent to obedience, then we are ready to explore what God has waiting for us as we wait on Him to return.