June 5 sermon

Text: Acts 1:6-14
Preached June 5 at Dennison Lutheran Church (combined parish with Vang Lutheran Church)


Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Transitions aren’t always easy, are they? And this time of year is full of them—just look at the bulletin. Five of our young people are graduating from high school. One couple among us just welcomed a baby boy. Wedding season is in full swing and there are always retirements or job changes, recoveries from illness or surgery, and any number of other transitions happening at any given moment.

The disciples of Jesus experienced a major transition as well, as Jesus’ physical presence on earth came to an end. Our first reading comes from the book of Acts, written by Luke, the gospel writer. He tells us Jesus appeared to his disciples one last time after his resurrection, and then “as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

Jesus’ followers had already had to make a transition from the original, physical presence of Jesus the teacher, to the transformed (but still physical) presence of Jesus the resurrected Christ. And now they have to make yet another transition, relying on the Holy Spirit they will soon receive, in place of the physical presence of Jesus among them.

What a shock this must have been! They had such high expectations of Jesus at this point in his ministry. Just weeks earlier, he had defeated death itself, rising gloriously from the dead in order to bring life to all God’s people!

The disciples saw the upward trajectory of Jesus’ ministry, and they naturally assumed Jesus was nothing if not a rising star. They asked their teacher, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Jesus had changed everything with his glorious resurrection on Easter morning. What else could be left but for the Messiah to restore the kingdom and bring all of history to its expected culmination? It was time for Jesus to reveal himself to the world as Messiah, wasn’t it? Time to validate the disciples’ faith and vindicate their experiences of ridicule and persecution.

But this is not what happens, as we know. Jesus did not march triumphantly through Jerusalem after his resurrection, issuing “I told you so”s to the religious and political leaders who had condemned him. Instead, he appeared only to his disciples and, after just a few short weeks, he vanished for good, as “a cloud took him out of their sight.”

This transition was not as unexpected for Jesus as it may have been for the disciples. He had been preparing them for this throughout their three years together. After all, any significant transition requires long-term preparation, doesn’t it? Graduates do not receive diplomas or degrees without a lot of studying and hard work. Couples do not get married without thinking carefully about what it means to share their lives and how that might work for them.

So Jesus had been preparing his disciples, and now he reveals just what it is he’s had in mind for them: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Jesus commissions his disciples as witnesses. He makes it clear that his work must continue even after he has ascended into heaven. Can you imagine the disciples’ astonishment? What a scandal to be called upon to continue the work of the Messiah himself!

Jesus’ vision of the future was not at all like the vision the disciples had, of the immanent coming of the kingdom of God in all its fullness. Instead, God delays this coming of the kingdom so that these believers in Jesus can tell the story. God’s work in the world is to continue, and God needs people who will proclaim the word—who will tell the saving story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for our sake.

Jesus’ followers—then and now—are called to proclaim the kingdom, even though it is not yet fully revealed. For, as Jesus tells us in our gospel reading, eternal life is knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Jesus’ followers are invited into the eternal life that comes from knowing God in Christ. And Jesus’ followers are called to proclaim that same invitation to others as witnesses to God’s work in Christ.

And what does it mean to be witnesses? The angels at Jesus’ ascension give us a clue. “Men of Galilee,” they say to the disciples, “why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Well, probably because Jesus had just been lifted up on a cloud out of their sight! It’s not something you see every day! But the angels let us know that witnessing does not mean removing ourselves from the world in order to gaze up at heaven instead. Witnessing means immersing ourselves fully into the world for the sake of our neighbors.

Witnessing happens amidst our day-to-day rounds of work and play. We witness to the living God made known in Christ when we explicitly tell the story of his saving work. We also witness when we simply do our jobs, pursue our hobbies, and perform our volunteer work to the best of our ability and to the glory of God. When our work benefits others, it is God’s work, and it witnesses to God’s love and mercy.

Luke tells us the disciples turned their gaze away from heaven in order to return to their lives in Jerusalem, and he says they were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” Prayer happens amidst our everyday routines as well, both in times set apart and in the middle of daily life. Sometimes we engage in what I call “drive-by prayer.” It can be thought of as an ongoing conversation with God—praying without ceasing.

Prayer is also mission—through our prayers, we support others in their work of witnessing to God. And how do we pray? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that we might help make known the signs of God’s kingdom and God’s will here and now.

Notice that Jesus never promises his disciples that their work of witnessing will be easy. Quite the opposite is true, of course. Peter spells it out in our second reading: “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.”

The early Christians faced intense persecution, and each of the apostles became martyrs, giving up their lives as witnesses to their faith in the one true God and in Jesus Christ whom God sent. We may not face such threats to our very lives, but we do sometimes encounter opposition, ridicule, or exclusion on account of our faith.

But we are not left to do our work as witnesses alone. We have the power and authority to do this work, granted by the very one to whom we witness. In our gospel reading, Jesus says to the Father, “the words that you gave to me I have given to them.” Jesus prepared his followers—then and now—for the work of witnessing.

And in our first reading, Jesus promises the disciples, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you….” That same Spirit is poured out upon each of us in the water and the word of baptism—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the Spirit of joy in God’s presence. What Jesus calls us to do is achievable, not through our own talents and abilities, but through the power of the Spirit.

Witnessing is about God working through us, so part of witnessing is waiting for God’s direction. The disciples returned to Jerusalem but they didn’t set to work right away. Instead, they waited, as Jesus had commanded them. They waited for God to pour out the promised Holy Spirit, empowering them to fulfill their call.

This chapter of God’s story—the one in which we live—is still focused on God’s work in the world. It’s still about the expectation that God is on the move and up to something, just as it was for the first disciples. We may play a bigger role than those disciples originally expected, but it’s still God who is at work through us.

And so we wait for God to work, and we participate in that work as we are called. But this waiting is far from passive. The disciples were not just staring at one another and twiddling their thumbs. Instead, they were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”

Intentional stillness in the presence of God strengthens us for our calling and trains us to be attentive to God’s activity. It helps us to look for God’s work in and through and among us, and it helps us to discern how we fit into that work.

And, indeed, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Jesus calls us to be witnesses “to the ends of the earth,” so until everyone has heard the story, we’d better keep telling it. We’d better keep proclaiming Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for us. We’d better keep announcing the hope of this story’s ending, which we know through God’s promise.

The angels tell us at Jesus’ ascension, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” God has promised that Jesus will return, restore the kingdom, and make all things new.

And so we wait, even in the midst of suffering, trusting that Jesus is not really “absent” but simply “ahead” of us. Jesus has not left us orphaned but has gone to prepare a place for us, as we have heard in our gospel readings in recent weeks. Jesus has commissioned us to be his witnesses—to share the good news of God’s love and mercy. And he has equipped us with the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill this calling.

We trust in the words of Peter in our second reading, that we can “cast all our anxiety on [Christ], because he cares for us” and we trust that “the God of all grace, who has called [us] to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish [us]” in our work as witnesses.

Thanks be to God! Amen.