I would hope that all of you who are coming for confirmation and reception, along with the rest of us who will renew our baptismal vows with you, know that you are carried by someone in their prayers. That is one of the greatest gifts of the Church to their Bishops. Can you imagine the jobs we would do, if you didn’t pray?
Pastor Evans, the Methodist pastor of my youth, prayed for us all as young people.He upheld us to God asking one fundamental question: “Lord, what will this one do?” A strong sense of call and the faithfulness to be true to it were the two things that he desired for us before God.
For St. Paul and his Ephesian brothers and sisters, it was enlightenment that the apostle prayed for most of all: “that your eyes might be opened.” He prayed that they may be given a spirit of wisdom to know the hope to which they were called — the riches of their inheritance in Christ and to know and release the greatness of God’s power through their lives. Paul linked that force with the same power by which the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. It was resurrection power.
Of course, we have no idea how to understand such power. And yet for Paul it was an essential gift to be asked from God for the people of God. The Christian business is all about life changing business.
These past few years we have been invited to think in fresh ways about the Kingdom of God. As the Church declines in apparent attractiveness, we must ask where to turn in response as a Church? To understand the Scriptures, there is a need for both our eyes and our hearts to be opened. These are times to look at Jesus and His mission in new ways and to see things we have overlooked or been too preoccupied to notice or realize that we need.
And yet, precisely because we know the fuller story of Jesus than was known to the first disciples who were living in it, we cannot underplay their faithful willingness to hear the call and obey the words of Jesus — especially when he told them to “wait.”
It would have been enough for them to get used to the comings and goings of the Risen Christ for those forty days after the resurrection.
Luke tells us that Jesus rehearsed with them the story of God’s revelation and way of salvation for humanity. He taught them to open their minds and hearts to understand the way that Moses, the prophets and even the Psalmists, all of which pointed to the coming of Jesus.
“This Jesus,” Peter would grow bold to say “God appointed to bring forgiveness to the people.”
They were beginning to make the connection of famous and familiar passages in the story of Moses. For example, in the wilderness when He lifted up the image of a snake on a pole to draw away all the sickness inflicted by snake poison upon the rebellious Israelites, they heard differently the phrase: “When the Son of Man is lifted up, he will draw all people to himself.”
Or when they heard the passages from Isaiah about the Suffering Servant, by whose stripes we are healed, or the one born to a Virgin, or being called the Prince of Peace, the Counselor, the Mighty God – they made a different linking. They made the connection when the Psalmist referenced the God called upon in agony of abandonment or forsakenness.
Jesus was helping link the dots and help them see that “Yes, the Messiah had to suffer.” God had to become one with human suffering – to release us, as one with us, from the ultimate power such suffering and even death could hold on us.
It would have been enough to get used to this new arrangement with the Risen Christ, but by then He left them for good with the work half finished, or perhaps barely begun. “Be My Witnesses” was His command, adding, “but wait for power before you start.”
How long do we wait? How will we know the power has come? Will we recognize it? What if we miss it? What if we are supposed to do something else while we wait and we get confused?
We know they waited, but it could not have been easy. These are questions we all might have asked. And they are questions we do ask in our own hesitation to discern and pursue the will of God.
I am fascinated by the 10 days that passed from Ascension to the Day of Pentecost. There was no physical presence of Jesus and no spiritual presence either. Just memories, emotions, trust and the resolve to be obedient.
Compare the anxiety of our own Church decision, our need for clarity, to see what you are getting at. We want to know exactly what we are getting ourselves into before we commit or consider a decision.
One final time Jesus says “Trust Me.” And one final time the disciples said “We will.”
So came the rushing of the wind and the fiery illumination. They were blown beyond themselves and given voices to speak their witness. Things fell into place as Jesus had promised and the Church, as we share in it, was born.
In reality the disciples discovered that they could not have possibly anticipated the extent of what it meant to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. It literally took some so out of themselves that they were able to face their own deaths in being Jesus’ witnesses.
Perhaps we fell a long way away from such a happening. Have we do domesticated our relationship with God through our system of thinking, cross referencing and calculating expectations that we have left ourselves too anxious to be in control that we limit the Spirit? Scripture says that she can indeed be quenched.
Like Paul, I want us to have our eyes enlightened — to know the rich inheritance of a life buoyed up by God’s call of hope and by an awareness directed by the Holy Spirit’s power. It is a link up with a life that issues into ages to come.
So, what will God do with this one? Whatever it is, it will be about witnessing to love, forgiveness and the transforming power of what happens in society when the Spirit of Jesus is released. You, God and the community work out the details. Wait when you have to wait, and pray as you wait. However, once the Power is engaged, don’t expect time to catch your breath and be ready to be thrilled, enthralled by what God will do with you, His very own — “His One.”
-Amen
(Readings: Ascension Day – Acts 1: 1-11; Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 24: 44-53)
