Community United Methodist Church
"Wait, Pray, Love"
Acts 1:6-14
May 4, 2008
by Beverly Allen, Lay Speaker
Ascension Day was this past Thursday, and I’d to read from Luke 24, which was one of the lectionary readings for that day. “Then he said to them [the disciples], ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah* is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from
According to Luke, these were Jesus’ last words, after which he ascended into heaven, as the disciples gazed on in wonder, and, I would imagine, some consternation. He was, in effect, saying – ok, guys, It’s up to you now.
In that last verse, Jesus is talking about the Pentecost -- which we will celebrate next Sunday – the time when the Holy Spirit would fill the disciples and make them ready to go out and proclaim the gospel.
Right at that moment, though, I’m guessing that they were not feeling like world beaters. They had gone through a lot since Jesus first called them to be ‘fishers of people’ – witnessing miracles, trying to understand Jesus’ sometimes cryptic parables, being told to break all the rules of their Jewish upbringing, all culminating in the Passion. And now they had just lost their Master for the second and last time.
Jesus knew that they would feel overwhelmed with all kinds of emotions – wonder, fear,
joy, and confusion -- to name just a few. Wise teacher that He was, He knew that these mortals would need some time to think about all they had experienced, to pray over it, and to gain strength for the task ahead.
That’s why He said: Wait. Stay here in the city until you have been given the power. Wait.
Wait, Pray, Love.
In Acts 1:12-14, we learn that the disciples returned to Jerusalem, and went to the Upper Room, where with ‘certain women’ including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Jesus’ brothers, they devoted themselves to pray without ceasing, until the Holy Spirit should come upon them.
This time of waiting is important – they formed the nucleus of what would become the first Christian community. They had to come together, to mend their differences, to trust and strengthen one another, to console one another, and to pray together -- men AND women together. Yes. They needed to become a strong, cohesive community of faith for the trials that lay ahead.
I’m not much of a gardener, but this reminds me of when you carefully plant seeds in a pot, water them, and then wait for the first seedlings to emerge. You don’t expect those seedlings to come up as soon as you plant and water them, do you?! They need time to incubate, to do whatever seeds do, before they finally show their heads.
Gardening teaches patience. Maybe we should all do more of it.
We’ve been taught, haven’t we, that doing something is better than doing nothing? But perhaps we need to reconsider that social conditioning. There can be such a thing as ‘active waiting.’
What’s ‘active waiting’? Let me tell you a story.
I went over to Crestone for the first time this weekend, looking for some inspiration to write this sermon. Actually, I’ve been wanting to get over there for some time, because I’d heard that it was something special.
It was! The spiritual energy of the place is palpable. And I found some people over there who know all about ‘active waiting.’
I visited the Carmelite monastery first – there, in a plain, but beautiful, adobe chapel, I watched the monks and the people participate in the
And those periods of silence were as rich to me as the words of the
I asked Donovan, my host at the B&B, where the best place to meditate was. Without hesitation, he directed me to the ashram on the side of the mountain.
So, off I went. This was a totally new experience. After leaving my shoes in the anteroom, I entered a light-filled octagonal room, with no furniture -- just area rugs on the floor and shrines to various Hindu gods and spiritual leaders.
It was one of the most peaceful places I have been to in a long while and it was filled with spiritual energy as well as with light. I know it’s not quiet when they have their services, judging from all the music-making equipment I saw on a bookshelf – everything from bells to tambourines to finger cymbals.
But it was quiet when I was there. I don’t know a lot about ashrams, but apparently, they like joyful and noisy communal celebration as well as silent meditation – just as we do.
I grabbed a cushion and sat meditating cross-legged on the floor for a while – not TOO long, because my knees don’t seem to like the pretzel position too much anymore.
So often, we are uncomfortable with silence, and we long to fill it up. But, with practice, I am becoming more comfortable with being still, and listening for the still, small voice of God.
Not long ago, I read the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. After a bitter divorce and a crushing depression, she sets out to reclaim her spirituality and her joy in life. Her journey takes her to
It’s a wise and wonderful book, but I was particularly fascinated by the section on
“Every religion in the world has a subset of devotees who seek a direct, transcendent experience with God,” writes Gilbert. “The interesting thing about these mystics is that, when they describe their experiences, they all end up describing exactly the same occurrence. Generally, their union with God occurs in a meditative state, and is delivered through an energy source that fills the entire body with euphoric, electric light. The Japanese call this energy ki…the Kalahari Bushmen call it n/um (their holy men describe it as a snakelike power that ascends the spine and blows a hole in the head through which the gods then enter). [Whoa!] The Islamic Sufi poets called that God-energy “The Beloved” and wrote devotional poems to it….in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah this union with the divine is said to occur through stages of spiritual ascension, with energy that runs up the spine along a series of invisible meridians.” (Gilbert,
We Christians call that transcendent union with God the ‘Holy Spirit.’
Likewise, the monastic writer Thomas Keating affirms that “divine union is the goal for all Christians. We have been baptized; we receive the Eucharist; we have all the necessary means of growing as human beings and as children of God.” (Keating, Thomas. Open mind, open heart: The contemplative dimension of the Gospel.
So -- back to the apostles and the other first Christians in the Upper Room – we left them praying. Well, they kept ON praying for ten days, and in so doing, they came into being ‘of the same spirit’ (or, in Greek Homothumadon).
This word is used twelve times in the original Greek of the New Testament, ten times in the Book of Acts alone. For Luke to use the word that many times, he must have been trying to get our attention. Homothumadon is a combination of two words meaning to "rush-along" and "in unison". For example, under the direction of a great conductor, the instruments of an orchestra come together in a unique musical expression. Similarly, the Holy Spirit blends together the lives of members of Christ's church and makes them act with one mind, one accord, and one passion, or Homothumadon.
But the disciples in the Upper Room didn’t sit around waiting for God to zap them into this state. They actively opened themselves to God, and with one another, intently in prayer, they prepared the way for God to unite and empower them.
Thomas Keating writes: “Since Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church has been encouraging Catholics to live the fullness of the Christian life without expecting priests, religious or anyone else to do it for them. This implies creativity as well as responsibility on the part of lay people to come up with structures that will enable them to live the contemplative dimensions of the Gospel without a cloister.”
The more I practice centering prayer and other spiritual techniques, the more I recognize how important this time of preparation is. When I was growing up, at times church seemed like a meaningless exercise to me. You went to church, and the minister did all the ‘heavy lifting’ of trying to bring about a spiritual conversion. It would have made so much more sense to me if I had understood how essential it is for us to do our part to prepare the soil for the spiritual seed. It’s kind of the spiritual equivalent of using Miracle Grow instead of regular potting soil.
I’d like to end with a poem from Macrina Wiederkehr’s book Seasons of Your Heart. It’s called “A Prayer for Standing on Tiptoe”, and I think it sums up very well this ‘Jesus-mandated’ period of waiting before the Pentecost:
On tiptoe we stand, Lord Jesus
eagerly awaiting
your full revelation
Always expecting you
to come some more.
Our hands and hearts
are open to your grace.
Our lives still waiting for
the fullness of your presence.
We are those who have been promised
a Kingdom, and we can never forget.
Yet we have a foot in both worlds
and so we stumble.
But still we stand
on tiptoe
owning our kingdom-loving hearts
and our earth-eyes.
We lean forward
and hope.
(Wiederkehr, Macrina. Seasons of your heart: Prayers & Reflections. Revised and expanded.
AMEN.
