Staring Into Space

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
05.04.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Acts 1:6-14

If you’ve ever worked as part of team, or been part of a group project at school, you know there are as many different ways to mess a project up as there are human beings. Every project meeting is blessed with at least one or two of these personalities...maybe they’ll seem familiar.

There’s the perfectionist control freak, who immediately assumes that they are in charge of the project and starts giving orders to everyone and presenting everyone with the graphs and timelines and flow charts that show how this project fits neatly within their six year plan for world domination. You’re right there on their chart, no, not there, there, that little dot down there, right below the market capitalization plan for the factory in Indonesia that will build their giant army of mechanized warbots.

There’s the attention-seeking hypersensitive, who immediately assumes that that comment that you just made about maybe going out to get lunch afterwards was your snide way of saying that they had personally failed to bring snacks, and who then requires everyone to spend the rest of the meeting telling them that, no, no, you do a great job, that wasn’t what we meant at all. It’s worth noting that attention-seeking hypersensitives are unusually susceptible to the effect of tasers.

Not that I’m suggesting that. I’m just saying.

There’s the monologuer, who when asked to give their perspective about the direction of the project immediately begins telling the whole group about this time when they were at this place where they met this very important person you’ve never heard of, who told them something sort of related to the project that was said by this other very important person you’ve never heard of, and then proceeds to talk for 45 minutes straight without apparently ever pausing to breathe. I know what you’re thinking, but unfortunately, tasers have no effect whatsoever on the monologuer.

There’s the attention-deficit-disorder multitasker, who spends the whole time trying to listen while simultaneously responding to emails on their BlackBerry, texting on their iPhone, rereading the background material for the meeting, checking their voicemail, and furtively searching for a relevant document on their laptop. Though they’re the busiest person you’ve ever known, you’ve recently noticed that they haven’t actually finished anything, including a complete sentence, since August of 2003.

Then there’s the space cadet, who appears, well, they appear not to be there at all. Their eyes have this far away look, their focus cast far away to the distant horizon outside of the meeting room walls. They’ve gone to their happy place, and are completely and utterly inert, in a Zen state of complete and utter nonproductive disengagement. They’re so far into their journey into never-never land that if everyone gets up and leaves very quietly, they’ll probably still be there when you get back, a little trickle of blissful drool running down from one corner of their slightly open mouth. We actually did this at our last session meeting, but I’ll leave you to guess who it was.

It is our human tendency to become this last one, the space cadet, the witless dude-where’s-my-project person, that gets a little bit of attention during the planning meeting up on top of Mount Olivet.

We’re at the very beginning of the Book of Acts. The first handful of verses connect our story to the end of Luke’s Gospel, and now we’re told more detail about what Jesus did as he prepared for his departure. The disciples have gathered together with the risen Christ, and during the question and answer session at the end of the meeting, they’re trying to figure out what in the world is going to happen next. Is this it? Is God’s Kingdom finally here?

Jesus tells them pretty clearly that things aren’t going to happen as they originally thought. They’d been hoping that this was the thing they’d expected, the arrival of Jesus as the great warrior who would liberate all of Israel, bringing about the fulfillment of the Kingdom. Jesus tells that that this isn’t how it’s going down. When exactly things are going to completed, when the age of messianic fulfillment will come, none of those things are to be known by anyone but God. It’s not on the table. It’s not going to be shared, at least, not in the way that they expect. But something else, something they had not expected, is going to happen.

In response to their question about the Kingdom, Jesus goes on to tell them that power will come to them through the Holy Spirit, and that from that, the disciples will become witnesses to Christ in Jerusalem, in the southern kingdom of Judea, in the northern kingdom of Israel, and to the ends of the earth itself. Having told them what was important, Jesus then gets up and leaves the meeting, and by getting up, I mean really, really up.

The disciples watch him go, staring gape-mouthed into the sky, frozen and inert. As they continue to stand there, unable to act, unable to move, two “men in white robes” appear. “Men in white robes” is just a different way of saying angels, and the word aggelion in the Greek just means “messenger.” These two messengers have something very specific to say to the disciples.

What they have to say is this: “Hey! You! Jesus already told you what you what you’re going to need to do, and what’s going to happen! This book’s supposed to be called the Acts of the Apostles, not the Standing-Around-and-Staring-into-Space of the Apostles! Get moving!”

And so they do. What are they moving towards? They’re moving towards what Jesus tells them in verse eight of chapter 1, which is also proclaimed in verse five of chapter one, which is also proclaimed in verse forty-nine of the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke. They are moving towards an event that is deeply vital and pivotal to the Gospel proclamation in Luke and Acts. They are moving towards the arrival of Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, God’s own Spirit, which comes down from heaven and fills them with the power that they’d need to spread the message of Christ’s love and justice and salvation throughout the entire world.

Oddly enough, next Sunday is Pentecost, though it’s close to two thousand years later. And over those two thousand years, we Christians have done a whole bunch of staring into space. We’re waiting for Jesus to return. We’re waiting for that one perfect impossible moment when we’ll have it all together, for that moment when the stars in the night sky align and say, Hey! You! It’s finally time for you to act.

So some don’t act at all, but most of us look towards that distant and impossible future, keep staring towards the heavens, and we wait. And we wait. And we wait. And our eyes are glazed, and we’re off in our happy place. We don’t see the task at hand, which is to share Christ’s saving love with the world. We don’t see the task at hand, in the here and now, in a human being in need of a kind word or an open ear. We don’t see the task at hand, in a world that burns with the fires of war and the cries of hungry children.

That’s a pity, because the guy in charge of this project really, really does not want us to mess it up.