Keeping God’s story alive

We just read the same story two times, the story of Jesus ascending into heaven.  It’s at the end of Luke’s Gospel, and again at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, and the stories are not even the same.  And guess who wrote Luke and Acts?  The same dude, named Luke. 

His story doesn’t even entirely agree with itself.  Luke’s Gospel makes it sound like Easter was one long day: Jesus rose from the dead, appeared to some disciples headed for Emmaus, then met up with the rest of the disciples in Jerusalem and led them all to Bethany and from there he ascended into heaven, all on the same day.  Whereas Acts mentions that Jesus made post-resurrection appearances for 40 days before ascending into heaven. 

So which story is it?  Which one is right?  Doesn’t it matter what is right and correct? 

Jesus has promised a lot to his disciples.  In Luke’s Gospel, just before Jesus goes to pray on the Mount of Olives, before he is arrested, the disciples are arguing about who’s the greatest and Jesus tells them the leader must be like one who serves.  Then he says—in chapter 22 starting at verse 28—“You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”  He promised them a whole kingdom!  It sounds like a big deal! 

Biblical scholar Matthew Skinner wrote that Jesus promised the disciples a kingdom but not a schedule of events so they would know exactly what to expect.  What’s a disciple to do?  What are we to do, with limited instructions and huge challenges to face? 

Matthew Skinner wrote a book about the book of Acts, titled “Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel: Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts.”  I want to read from his introduction about why it’s important to ask these questions. 

“Does God still disrupt lives and societies today?  …Maybe…our question shouldn’t be, ‘Has God changed since Acts was written?’ But instead ‘Have our imaginations and expectations about God become too confined? Too one-dimensional?  Too cautious?’  Acts might prompt us to ask deeper questions about what is real, and about what God might make possible in our lives and in our neighbors’ lives.”[1]

We still discuss these stories because they tell us about God and how God works and what God has done, so that we will notice when God is at work in us and around us in this world right now.  Sometimes we think it must have been easier for the disciples to follow Jesus because they saw so many miracles or whatever, but I’m not sure it is ever easy for humans to act on faith.  We are still putting our lives on the line, and we are still making ourselves incredibly vulnerable for the sake of God’s work.  Even with a lot of practice, it’s probably never easy.  The sacrifices are still hard to make, and discernment is always challenging. 

Matthew Skinner notices that in the Acts story of Jesus’s ascension, the mysterious messengers seem to deliver an urgent message, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  But Skinner writes: “…the moment’s urgency is not a call to action.  It is a call to wait.  The first great act in the Acts of the Apostles is to walk back to Jerusalem and let time pass.”[2]

Waiting feels weak, and it can feel incredibly vulnerable.  And yet, as Skinner puts it,

“…waiting often proves wise when people try to make sense of where and how God is accompanying them.  Waiting reminds us of our dependence on God and the limitations of our ability to see and know God.  By waiting, Jesus’s followers begin to learn that they need to be a responsive community, a community that waits upon God to initiate.”[3]

And there it is: that vulnerability, that reminder of our mortality, that signal telling us that we still need God.  God is the one who acts.  God is one giving us directions, and it’s up to us to listen carefully and discern wisely and follow accordingly. 

The Holy Spirit isn’t going to show up like a blank check that we get to decide how to use.  The Holy Spirit isn’t sitting behind a desk rubber-stamping our decisions.  We are in a back-and-forth relationship with God.  We participate in an ongoing conversation with God; that’s called prayer. 

We find our place within a faith tradition that has been handed down to us from our ancestors, and I don’t even mean just the Lutherans, but all the followers of Jesus who have been figuring things out and getting things wrong and begging forgiveness and building up God’s kin-dom since well before Jesus walked the earth: all those faithful Jewish people and rabbis who taught the Torah and the traditions to Jesus. 

Jesus ascended into heaven, but he didn’t leave us with nothing.  We have the Holy Spirit who helps us interpret these Scriptures.  And friends, we need to know what we’re talking about.  There’s a lot of Scriptural interpretation going on these days that is used to support theology that excludes beloved members of our family and heaps burdens upon vulnerable people who are already carrying too much.  There’s Christian nationalism running around and distorting the message of Jesus. 

As Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber said, “Now is not the time to cede the faith to Chrisitian nationalists.”  It’s not enough to ignore those voices; we have to be able to speak intelligibly about our faith in God.  I have to practice this too, you know; I can be confident giving a monologue about faith while I’m up here preaching, but dialogue is a whole different skill. 

And I want us to practice using the Bible—not referring to it as an idol, like “The Bible says…”  But sincerely opening it and reading it, and practicing this during worship.  Some of us grew up doing this, and we take it for granted, but do kids these days look things up in books?  Ever?  So we’re gonna practice during this summer.  If you’re really good at flipping through the Bible to find the chapter and verse, help the person next to you who is new to it, or point to the words for someone who isn’t yet reading. 

The Holy Scriptures are not meant to be locked away, too precious to touch or too sacred to converse with.  This is a living word that stays alive because we keep telling the stories.  It’s the story of our ancestors, and now it is our story too. 

We are still living the stories of the apostles in a world that is as hostile as ever to the Gospel, because the world doesn’t want people to be liberated and because hopeless people are easier to control. 

We bear witness to an intrusive God who has gotten up in our personal business and challenged us to love others as Jesus loved, even to the extent of washing the disciples’ stinky feet—including the disciples who betrayed him and denied him.  And we are part of the disruptive Gospel, reporting the good news for the poor and the outcast. 

God, equip us, calm our fears, and set us free.  Make us worthy to bear your good news. 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl

[1] Matthew L. Skinner, Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel: Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2015, pages xii-xiv.

[2] Ibid 7. 

[3] Ibid.