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TableTalk is a growing archive of snippets and stories from the heart of our fellowship. Don’t just stand there… May 1, 2007
Posted by Lindquist in : Editorial , add a comment
I can picture the disciples even now. How earnest (and pathetic) they must have appeared, on that first Ascension Day! Jesus was gone. And there they stood, drop-jawed, staring away after him. Motionless. As if suddenly overcome by some kind of suspended animation. “They stood there, staring into the empty sky” (Acts 1:10, The Message).
Until, of course, the angel spoke.
“Galileans!” the angel said. “Why do you just stand here looking up at an empty sky? This very Jesus…will come….” (1:11). And in the meanwhile — there is work to be done! The ends of the earth are waiting! No time to be staring away into the empty sky.
Pentecost was coming, too, of course. “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you,” Jesus promised on the day of his ascension, “you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the earth” (1:8). But Pentecost did not find the disciples still staring on the Mount of Ascension; they were already on the move when the Holy Spirit overtook them. “They were constantly devoting themselves to prayer,” for one thing (1:14). They were meeting together (2:1). I picture prayer, worship, mutuality, community. I picture strategic banter: “What did Jesus mean…witnesses to the ends of the earth?” — they must have asked one another.
Ascension time, in my estimation, is the most dangerous season of the entire church year. It is a brief season — barely ten days long, not really a liturgical “season” at all. It begins forty days after Easter, with the Ascension of the Resurrected Lord — May 17, this year. It concludes a few days later with Pentecost — at the end of the month, on May 27. And many a believer has wandered astray, I am afraid, during these few, uniquely charged days.
The principle risk of Ascension time is simple, slack-jawed passivity, I suppose. But when things misfire severely, the days between Ascension and Pentecost can produce a kind of spiritual catatonia. We get stuck on the mountain, “staring into the empty sky.” We mope. The ends of the earth may be waiting, as Jesus said — but we are watching for something better. Maybe we yearn with the disciples: “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom…now?” (1:6). Maybe we look for something more appealing. Maybe we ache for a better opportunity, or a smaller challenge, or simply for the Lord to return again to set things right. We plant our hands in our pockets, and stare away.
Until, of course, the angel speaks.
And the angel still says: “Sisters and brothers! Don’t just stand there! The Holy Spirit is promised to you, as well. Set your hearts on the ends of the earth, and he will make you able to be witnesses for Jesus.”
Ascension time can misfire when we pine for greener pastures or better days — some ideal past or some preferred future. It is like staring into the empty sky. And the staring blinds us to the needy at our doorstep, or the lost across the hall, or the unreached in “Samaria,” just over the horizon.
But Ascension is celebrated properly when we pray, worship, gather in community — and set our course toward “the ends of the earth,” as Jesus directed. Pentecost awaits us along that path. And Jesus will come, “as certainly — and mysteriously — as he left” (1:11).
So don’t stand there! There is work to do…
