EASTER PEOPLE -- EXPECTANT!
Acts 1:1-11
There are
some things life has taught me to expect:
·
No
matter which side of a fish sandwich I take my first bite from, tartar sauce
will ooze out of the sandwich on the opposite side.
·
If
I wear white to work, the copier will need toner.
·
When
I’m late for a meeting across town, I will hit every red light between here and
there.
·
What
I’m looking for is always in the last
place I look, even when I try looking there first.
·
And
when I lift my face to heaven and ask, “Why me, Lord,” the answer will be, “Why
not?
The day
Jesus moved out of our earthly neighborhood and back into the heavenly palace,
I don’t know what the apostles were expecting to happen next.
Jesus
told his followers to stay in Jerusalem
and wait for the power the Father had promised.
During his forty days with them, he had given them this mission, to be
his witnesses, to go, teach, baptize and make disciples of the world and then
promised to be with them always.
And then
Christ left.
No wonder
Jesus told them to take some down time.
They needed to learn what it meant to be expectant.
Being
expectant means being hopeful. It is
trusting in the unchangeable steadfastness of God and God’s love in us through
Jesus Christ. It is being confident that
no matter what happens, Christ has been given the authority and the power to
get us through, as we heard from today’s reading in Ephesians.
Being
expectant comes out our understanding of God’s creative nature. God is always creating. While God and God’s mission for the
redemption of humanity and all creation remains the same, God doing new things
to reach out and touch people’s hearts in ways that are relevant and meaningful
for them.
What the
apostles may not have fully understood was that God was in the process of
birthing something new – the church. The
church was to be a community of followers of Christ that would become the
physical presence of Christ to the world – his “body” so to speak.
Even
though Jesus would not be physically with them, he would now be present with
them through the Holy Spirit, as the Father had promised. Through the Holy Spirit, Christ leads the
church and empowers His people to carry out His ministry of healing and
wholeness and God’s mission to go out and be agents of transformation as we
make disciples for Christ.
So, being
expectant people means expecting the unexpected: being on the look-out for the new things God
is doing among us. It is being open to
the leading of the Holy Spirit, ready and obedient to follow Christ into different
ways of sharing the enduring gospel message with our community and our world.
After Jesus
disappeared into the clouds, two angels sent the Apostles on their way with the
assurance that Jesus would be back, in God’s good time, as promised.
I think what
the angels were telling them, and us, is, “Why are you standing around here. Go, trust in the promises of God, expect the unexpected
and be ready to follow when Christ calls you to be His Easter People in ways that
touch the hearts and souls of today’s people.”
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