"What Next?" - Sermon

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 12, 2024
Scripture:  Acts 1:1-11


It is good to be back here!  It was strange for me this year, to travel through Holy Week and most of the season of Easter as a worshipping member of a congregation, with no worship leadership or music responsibilities – something that I haven’t done in more than 20 years.

But here we are, on the 7^th and final Sunday in the season of Easter, on the threshold of Pentecost, the next major festival in the church year.

 

Last Thursday was the feast of the Ascension, and that is the story that Chris read for us this morning. Last Thursday was 40 days since Easter Morning. Jesus had spent 40 days after his resurrection in deep conversation with his disciples, giving them final teachings and instructions, knowing that this time of deep intimacy couldn’t last forever. As compared with the time before Jesus’s death, they don’t seem to have been traveling around, Jesus isn’t teaching large crowds, Jesus isn’t healing anyone or working miracles. Instead they are staying in Jerusalem and Jesus is teaching his closest friends and followers about the Kingdom of God and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

 

And then we come to today’s curious story.  Jesus and his disciples travel about a day’s journey outside of Jerusalem – if we read on a couple of verses from what we read today, we’d see that this story takes place on a hill called Olivet. And then the disciples watch as Jesus rises up off the ground and is carried away into the sky.

 

(Side note:  if you do a Google image search for the Ascension, there are some very entertaining pictures out there, like these, that show Jesus’s feet dangling from a cloud in the sky.)

 

The Ascension of Christ – Hans Süss von Kulmbach

Public Domain

 

The Ascension of Christ – Adriaen van Overbeke

Public Domain

 

But humour aside, this is another story where something is happening that the disciples don’t quite understand; another story where something mysterious is happening; another story where the mystery and holiness of God draws a little bit closer.  I read this story alongside stories like the story of the transfiguration where Peter, James, and John encountered God’s holiness when Jesus’s physical body was transformed on top of a mountain. I read this story alongside stories like Jesus’s baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, and God’s voice spoke to Jesus. I read this story alongside stories like Moses conversing with God on top of a mountain in the desert.  All of these stories bring a sense of other-ness; they bring a sense of mystery; they bring a sense of the holiness and the immediacy of God’s presence.

 

And here we have another one of these stories, and because the holiness of God as encountered in stories like these can be hard to depict with non-abstract art, you end up with pictures of Jesus’s feet dangling down from the clouds.

 

After any encounter with God, there is always a feeling of “what next?” that lingers. Moses encounters God on the mountaintop – all well and good, but what next? Moses then had to come down the mountain and lead the people through the wilderness for 40 years towards the Promised Land.  Jesus hears God’s voice as he rises out of the water of baptism, naming him as a beloved child – a beautiful story, but what next? Jesus then goes into the desert for 40 days to fast and pray and then begins his public ministry.  Peter, James, and John witness an awe-inspiring transfiguration on top of the mountain – how do you move on from that?  They came down the mountain, and accompanied Jesus on his final journey to Jerusalem, to the cross, and then on to the resurrection.

 

And here we have the disciples watching Jesus ascend into heaven, they encounter a couple of messengers from God, or angels.  What next?

 

Stepping outside of today’s story, I can tell you that their “what next” is going to come next Sunday, 10 days after they witnessed the ascension.  (If you want to read ahead this week, you can check out chapter 2 in the book of Acts.) But for now, all that they know is that Jesus has told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait for their what next.  Again, stepping outside of the story, we know that their “what next” is worth waiting for, but for those disciples, they had no idea of what was coming.  God is about to do a new thing in their lives, and in the lives of the world, but they can’t quite see it clearly yet.

 

I don’t know exactly where each of you is on your faith journey, but I suspect that if I took a survey, some of us are vibrating with excitement at the nearness of God, some of us are in that in-between waiting stage of wondering “what next?”; and some of us are tumbling into the Pentecost excitement of that new thing.

 

For me, coming back from 3 months away on Sabbatical, the story of the Ascension really resonates with me this year.  Despite the sadness of yesterday’s funeral, my heart has been smiling since Wednesday as I’ve seen and heard about everything that has gone on around Two Rivers Pastoral Charge since I’ve been away – from PIE Day celebrations to 1400 Sandwiches for Romero House to Spirit-filled worship services led by members of our Two Rivers Pastoral Charge church family to a new garden going in to augment Ida’s Cupboard.  I’m not surprised that all of this has happened, but it is making my heart smile.  And I get a very strong sense of being right on the threshold of the “what next.”  I feel as though we are right at the edge of a Pentecost moment of newness of energy and revitalization and equipping in our call to be the church.

 

Even if the disciples longed for the “good old days” when they could see Jesus, when they could reach out and touch him, they couldn’t go back in time – they could only go forward.  They had to trust that the new ways that God would be with them would be just as important, just as good as the old ways that were gone.

 

And it’s the same for us, 2000 years later. We can’t go back to the way that things were, but we can eagerly anticipate our “what next” as we journey together, trusting that God’s got plans for us!

 

And may it be so.  Amen.

Lessons from Sabbatical - Final Reflections

Today is my last day of Sabbatical, and I’m spending some time yesterday and today preparing for my re-entry back to the church. (Technically my Sabbatical ended on April 30, but this first week of May has been Study Leave as I took a course on Rural Ministry last week.)

I spent 11 days in the UK at the end of my time off – a combination of visiting friends, doing the tourist thing, and taking the aforementioned Rural Ministry course. It was good to re-connect with friends that I haven’t seen in 5, 7, or 20 years, and in my conversations with them I had opportunities to reflect back on my Sabbatical – how it has felt to be off, and how I am going to carry the things that I have learned forward with me.  Because if I don’t carry these lessons with me, it will be a long 5 years before I have the opportunity to do another reset!

 

So… what do I need to do differently?

·      I need to make sure that I maintain my better sleep habits. In March of 2020, I let myself slip into some atrocious sleep habits – because I didn’t need to get up in the morning, there was no point in going to bed early, but when I did need to start getting up in the morning again, I kept staying up far too late. It took a couple of months to get there, but I feel well-rested for the first time since 2020. I’ve put a couple of practical things in place that will hopefully help this – setting up a “time to get ready for bed” alarm on my phone, figuring out the things that stop me from going to bed early (eg procrastinating on washing the dishes) and doing something to change them, and changing my morning routine to motivate myself to get out of bed on schedule.

·      I need to make sure that I take time to mourn myself after every funeral. Bottling up my grief without a chance to release it leads to emotional fatigue. And I have recognized that this is important not just when it is the funeral for someone whom I cared deeply for, but also for funerals when I didn’t know the person but I end up carrying the grief of their loved ones. My post-funeral self-care is going to look different.

·      I also need to be more intentional about nurturing my spirit (again, another bad habit that developed in March 2020). In the past 10 days, I’ve heard two different sermons that felt like they were preached right at me, reminding me of the importance of this! And when I get bogged down in the things that do the opposite of this (budgets, buildings…) I need to remind myself of the heart of my calling.

·      Finally, I’ve had some conversations about ministry that have helped me to remember that the ministry is the ministry of the whole church and not just the minister. Maybe I need to remember my own sermon from right before my sabbatical, that the church will keep on churching, regardless of the presence of the minister. Because it truly is God’s church.

 

These are the heart of my reflections over the past couple of weeks. And tomorrow I jump back in to ministry with both feet (and it is looking like a busy re-entry, with both a funeral and a wedding, as well as Sunday services, scheduled for my first 8 days back!) so I will have a good chance to keep practicing these things right away.

 

 

A stained glass window I encountered in England