KEEP THE MISSION GOING
Acts 1:6-17, 21-26
Stephen Hamilton Wright
First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin                                           May 4, 2008

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             Rocketship Jesus—maybe you’ve seen the painting.  In the mid-20^th century, Salvador Dali did a painting of Jesus ascending.  It’s a view from below, with about nine glowing yellow spots under the feet of a man in white robes.  It looks very much like those special reports we used to watch on television, back in the time when every space launch seemed newsworthy.  The message is clear: Jesus is moving to a different place.  He is headed for a different reality.  Even so, He is in human form, so there is every expectation that we have not seen the last of Him.  The trouble is that it’s not at all clear where He is headed.  I don’t think first century people were quite as unsophisticated about science as we sometimes think they were.  I think the first century apostles were pretty confused about where Jesus was, and where He was sending them.  They did not expect a physical body to go rocketing into the spiritual world, as the Bible says Jesus did.  There are bodies, and there are spirits that are not connected to bodies.  That’s what they thought, and that’s why they stood staring at this ascending Jesus—it was nothing they had ever seen before.  They had no idea what to think.  They had no notion what it all meant.  Rocketship Jesus—we aren’t the only ones who aren’t completely sure.

             We don’t know how the story ends.  We don’t get a clear picture of the end of history.  Knowing where we have been does not make our destination certain.  Investment companies always remind us that “Past performance does not guarantee future results.”  Like the first messengers for Jesus, and like kids everywhere, we want to know: “How much longer?”  Jesus says, “Never mind.  You won’t be able to know that.”  Space and time are far greater than we imagine.  The story has a long way to go yet.  If we believe that all things work together for God’s good purposes, we should be waiting awhile.  Creation has a long way to go before we understand it to be good; the poor must be fed, we have to stop wars, and stop religious intolerance.  We want to see every child loved and protected.  We want health care that fulfills the vision of an end to pain.  All that will take time.  It did not happen within the earthly life of Jesus, and it probably won’t happen in our generation, either.  The truth is that we can’t describe that glorious age of the full reign of God exactly.  As Presbyterians, we insist that God already has final authority over everything that exists; at the same time, we acknowledge the obvious truth that some details still need to be worked out.  The visions the Bible answers are symbolic and romantic.  Streets of gold and walls of gemstones sound wonderful, but we don’t really believe that God plans to make the whole world look like a multi-hued version of the Emerald City, or the alabaster cities, either.  We choose to believe that the Power we praise pushes us, in spite ourselves, toward a far better reality for everything that exists.  We don’t know when that will be, or exactly how it will look.  We do not know how the whole story ends.

             So, says, Jesus, “Be my witnesses.”  Jesus says, “Be my witnesses.  You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes over you, and you will be my witnesses everywhere, to the ends of the earth.”  He first spoke that message to His first followers, when the story of His love was young and fresh in the world.  Nearly two thousand years later, the assignment holds.  Unless we believe that the whole world is living the way of God, there is still work to do.  Jesus sent those first apostles out into cultures that were wracked with poverty, violence, confusion and insecurity, where people sought spiritual answers from an amazing array of possibilities.  Look at our world situation: growing poverty, violence and crime everywhere, uncertainty about solutions, and fear of an unseen global enemy.  The world still needs a big dose of good news.  More than news, it needs people and organizations who will demonstrate His way of love by living it.  The instruction to followers to be witnesses, even to the far reaches of the earth, still holds.  Surely Jesus needs witnesses in places like North Korea, China, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Israel.  He also needs witnesses in Washington, where real lives are reduced to political calculations, tens of thousands at a time; and He needs witnesses in Wisconsin and Wausau, in the Capitol and City Hall, in courtrooms, in businesses, and yes, in churches, anytime and anywhere love and unity and cooperation get pushed behind personal advantage or institutional survival.  The message from Jesus still stands: “Be my witnesses.  Be my witnesses.”

             Then, He is gone.  He is out of sight.  Jesus teaches and leads His disciples for about three years.  After the resurrection, He meets them again a few times.  He gives them a final commission, reported in various ways in the Gospels and Acts, and then, suddenly, He is gone.  They are on their own.  Theologically, the story of Jesus being lifted into the clouds is called the Ascension.  Symbolically it balances the Incarnation—the birth of God in human flesh.  Divine nature was completely joined with human nature in one person when Jesus was born.  Now, when Jesus ascends, human nature is joined completely with divine nature, and the connection is complete.  The new reality is symbolically fulfilled.  The trouble for the first witnesses, and for us, is that whatever the exact nature of the event that led to the ascension stories was, Jesus is out of sight.  The physical being of Jesus has moved into a realm we cannot see.  Now, we have to decide what to do about His last instructions.  What does it mean to be his witnesses to the end of the earth?  We have to decide.  Jesus is not physically in front of us to tell us what to do.  He didn’t give specific directions to His first messengers either, except that they should travel light, look for hospitality, and keep telling about His love.  That’s the message, over and over.  Then, He leaves.  The One who was God with us becomes us to God, and we have to figure out the rest.  Jesus, as they say, has left the building.  He is still in touch, of course.  We pray in His name; we search through His teachings; we feel His Holy Spirit.  But He is out of our sight.  We have to figure it out by ourselves.

             So, we get to work.  We get down to business.  Jesus told His followers to tell His story, so when He steps out of sight, we get to work.  You see what the first apostles did first: they prayed, and they organized their leaders so they could get moving.  Maybe we should try their method of electing officers: they cast lots!  That was a common way to make serious decisions in their culture, because they believed that divine power would guide the roll of the dice for such purposes.  Regardless of their method, the point is that Jesus had set the mission in motion, and they got organized to keep His work moving.  Churches are called to do the same.  Keep moving!  Get to work!  In order to do that, someone has to show the way.  What if every decision-making process in a church, from controlling the kitchen to calling a pastor, started and ended with this question: “What will this show our neighbors about Jesus?  How will this show how much He loves everybody in town, and everybody on the planet?”  We need leaders who keep calling us to questions like that.  We have work to do, and the work does not end with balancing the budget or even making sure there is worship every Sunday.  You don’t even have to believe in Jesus to do those things; you just need to know how to add and how to advertise!  We have more to do.  By the example of our worship, we want to inspire the whole world to come together in praise.  We want to continue serving the poor, and breaking down lines of discrimination, because that’s what Jesus did.  Faithful churches organize to show how much Jesus loves the whole world.  That’s our mission.  We have work to do.

             The way the Bible tells it, Jesus shot up into the sky after His work on earth.  That’s the story in a couple of places, anyway.  The historical and scientific aspects of that story bamboozle us a bit, but more important, we have to decide what happens next.  Jesus isn’t here to spell it out.  So, we get to work.  He left His instruction that we should be His witnesses.  He also left His example of how to do His work of love and care.  Let’s get to work.  We want to keep His mission going.

 Let us pray.

            Power of our lives: keep us searching, and keep us moving.  Teach us to shape everything we do to show the love that comes from Jesus; for we pray in His Name.  Amen.