Custodians of the Promise

Acts 1:1-11

Ascension of the Lord

Year B

May 17, 2015

First and Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Today is actually two days- this is the seventh Sunday of Easter, the day we bring our prolonged season of Alleluia to a close and it is also the day we observe Ascension Sunday, the day when Christ was taken up into heaven.

            Today two of the great moments in the history of the church come together; the Resurrection of Christ from the dead and the return of Christ to sit at the right hand of God the Father almighty, as the creed says. 

            This moment in the history of the faith is so important that Luke actually tells it twice.  One instance of his telling is in our reading today from the book of Acts.  A second is found in his gospel, in Luke 24.  The stories are remarkably similar, which makes sense since we believe the same author wrote both.  In both the central actions are the same; Jesus takes one last chance to teach the disciples and God takes him from their presence into God’s.

            The gospel account has the disciples standing there in silence listening and watching, but Acts includes a question from them.  It doesn’t tell us who asked the question, but let’s face it, it was probably Peter.  Whoever it is, the question is one that has been persisting since the beginning of Jesus’ ministry; it is the question of timing.

            When are these things going to happen?

            When are all these promises going to come to pass?

            There is a sense that they have begun to trust that the promises WILL be kept, but the timing still eludes them. 

            So, as Jesus is teaching them this one last time, one of the twelve asks him, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”

            It has taken a while, but their question has changed in at least one important way.  They don’t question IF the kingdom will be restored but WHEN. 

            If we press down lightly on this text, we can see in their question a little progress at least.

            Jesus seems unimpressed with their progress though because he replies, “It isn’t for you to know the times and the seasons the Father has set by his own authority.” 

In other words, you are STILL asking the wrong question.

            It is a NEW wrong question, but it too misses the point.

            What Jesus hears in the disciples’ question is an assumption; that restoration of the kingdom is God’s work and God’s work alone.

            Jesus, in one last effort, tries to get them to understand that when it comes to the kingdom of God, the timing is up to God but the ushering in, well, that is all hands on deck. 

            St. Augustine put it this way, “Without God I can’t; without me God won’t.”

            Or as Desmund Tutu frequently paraphrases, “by himself, God won’t; by ourselves, we can’t; but together, with God, we can.”

            When it comes to the ushering in of the kingdom of God, we are not spectators of God’s work in the world; we are partners in God’s work in the world.

            At its heart, Ascension Sunday is about one part of that that partnership.  Just before he is taken by God to heaven, Jesus entrusts the disciples- entrusts us- one last time with the promises of God and the witness of the Spirit.  When you peel back all the layers of history and tradition, all the pomp and circumstance, all the keepsakes and souvenirs of generations of institutionalized religion, what is the church but a community entrusted with a witness; a story; a good word to share with the world?

            Last week I spent five days with a couple of thousand other preachers at an event that probably sounds like the seventh circle of hell to most people.  It is called the Festival of Homiletics and over the course of four days and evenings, I heard eight sermons and attended six lectures on preaching. 

            It was incredible.

            Yes, it was also an extraordinary display of church nerd-dom as two thousand grown men and women treated a bunch of preachers and professors like they were rock stars.

            And, yes, on the surface a preaching conference is about as dull as it sounds.

            But one thing sets this event apart. 

            As someone who is entrusted week after week to handle the word of God and hopefully share some tiny corner of a window through which we might all peek into it, being with that many others who feel equally ill-equipped and overwhelmed by the privilege and burden of this work is like water on a dry garden- it restores what is nearly wilted to death.  It is life giving to be with other preachers.

            As providence would have it, on Monday morning the Pew Research Center released its latest round of research on religion in America.  The Religious Landscape Survey is the most comprehensive ongoing picture of religion in America and, well, the news was not good.

            Over the last decade, Christian churches across the spectrum- from Catholic and Orthodox to evangelical and mainline Protestant- have either continued to decline in membership or failed to grow with the broader population.  In fact, as the nation’s population has grown, the fastest growing religious identification is “none.”

            Outpacing every Christian category and every non-Christian religious group, the “nones” have grown from 16.1% to 22.8% of the population over the last seven years.

            As you can imagine, that was not welcome news to a convention center full of preachers.

            The day was dominated by conversations about the state of the church, the challenge of church growth, the persistent problem posed by the “nones,” and the generally disheartening state of ministry in a world that, simply put, doesn’t really seem to want what we are selling.

            By Monday night, there were, among those preachers, a lot of long faces and frustration.  I confess, mine was one of them.

            Now, I don’t mean to overplay the scene.  No one was thinking about laying down their cards and giving up the holy game of ministry or anything.  But there was a pall over the proceedings.

            If we are supposed to be partners with God in ushering in the kingdom of God, it looks awfully like we are losing ground.

            I have been here long enough and you know me well enough to know that I do not throw around the name of the Holy Spirit a lot.  I know that for some people the movement of the Spirit is as easy to feel as the breeze in the spring.  As for me, I seem to suffer from an overdose of spiritual Novocain because the Spirit usually has to smack me in the head to get my attention.

            Tuesday morning I got a smack.

            As I sat in the pew at Trinity United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado listening to Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church preach, I was lisening to him and taking notes and getting ideas but my mind was not completely there.  A part of me was still ruminating on that damn Pew report and the frustration I and so many clergy feel about the “nones.”  Then there was a line that jumped from that pulpit and hit me square in the face. 

            Bishop Curry said, “we (meaning preachers) are custodians of the oracles of God.”  What he was talking about was the trust that you put in us week after week to preach God’s word and it is a trust, I for one, cherish.  In that moment, though, I didn’t hear him talking to me as a preacher but me as a member of the body of Christ.  The “we” I heard is this “we” the body of Christ.  “We” are entrusted with the oracles of God.  “We” are the custodians of God’s word.

            It was as though a key turned in a lock.

            When Jesus was with his disciples in those last moments on those last days, they were worried about when God’s work was going to get done, but Jesus was trying to get them to understand that in the meantime he was trusting them with the Good News OF God’s work. 

            They were to be the custodians of the promise; proclaimers of the promise; partners in the unfolding promise of God.

            And what is the promise of God other than the word of hope that is the risen Christ?

            It was as though a key turned in a lock.

            Jesus told the disciples you are worrying about the wrong thing when you get all caught up in the timing of the coming of the kingdom of God.  Don’t worry about WHEN it will happen.  Your job is to share the Good News THAT it will happen.

            The disciples were worrying about the wrong thing.

            And so was I.

            So are we.

            And at that moment at that Ecumenical conference in that pretty Methodist Church listening to that dynamic Episcopal Bishop, this Presbyterian preacher whispered to himself, “to hell with the Pew report.”

            We are worrying about the wrong thing. 

            We need to stop keeping score about WHEN the world comes to know the truth of God in the risen Christ and start getting about the business of proclaiming THAT the truth of God is the risen Christ.

            We need to stop worrying keeping the church and get about the work of proclaiming the kingdom.

            We are custodians of the promises of God.

            Christ has entrusted us with the very prayers of hope and love he has for this world and we had better get about the business of proclaiming them because if not we, then who will give voice to our savior's ongoing prayer for the world?

            From the moment of the ascension to this one, the church of Jesus Christ has been entrusted, not with the power of granting salvation, but the profound responsibility to proclaim it with out ceasing.

As long as there is breath in our bodies, we are called by Christ who rose to proclaim Christ who is risen.

And when we grow weary with our holy task; when we see Pew research data that makes us doubt our holy work; when we retreat into the tortoise shell of our cultural insecurities and silence our prayers, hope loses its voice in the world.

Because make no mistake about it, friends, the hope of all creation is the risen Christ and the voice of that hope is the people of God.

So let's take a breath, screw our courage to the post, and once more into the breach of this broken and sinful world let's make our voices heard as we sing the hope of God in the prayer of Christ that proclaims the salvation of ALL God's children.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia,  Alleluia! 

Amen.