A Work in Progress: The Beginning of the Acts
September 20, 2009 Acts 1:1-11
Intro:
Many of you know that during my June Sabbatical I began some courses at the University of Alberta, working on a Masters of Education degree. Among many other things, one of the implications is that during this September, for the first time in nine years, I started back to school just like many other students. I’m confident that you’ll be hearing more about some of that in the weeks to come, but part of what I’ve missed and am once again enjoying is the rhythm of starting, working hard, and completing. And then moving on.
I’m enjoying that rhythm again, but I also recognize how seldom that rhythm applies to “real life”. In “real life”, very few things start, work, and complete, and on we move to the next thing. In “real life”, it seems to me, little is ever truly finished. I think of the things that matter most to us, our relationships: we don’t often meet a friend, get close, and then stop it and move on to the next new friend. In fact, whenever those relationships end (which of course they sometimes do), it is an occasion for grief and pain. Even tangible projects, like our renovation, don’t really follow that nice clean rhythm I enjoy – they are, overall, continual works in progress.
Our spiritual lives are perhaps one of the easiest places to recognize this idea of a “work in progress”. We aren’t ever done… we can never close the book and say “ok, my spiritual life is complete… I’m good now! On to the next thing…”. And as we’ll see this morning, that has been true since the earliest followers of Jesus.
Intro to “The Beginning of the Acts”:
This morning I’m launching into a new series of sermons for us this fall, which I’ve titled, “The Beginning of the Acts”. Earlier this year we were studying the life and ministry of Jesus and what that means for us, through the summer we did some studies about identity in 1 Peter, and last week as we launched our fall ministries we studied Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to His disciples where He said four things: “peace”, “I am sending”, “receive the Holy Spirit”, and “go in authority”. The point that stuck out to me was how the filling of the Spirit was intended to empower the sending of the disciples – that is what the gift of the Holy Spirit really is for. So as I reflected on our journey, it seemed good to me, and I felt the prompting of the Spirit, that we invest our time this fall in following the story through, asking the questions “so what happened next?”, and seeing how God formed the church in those earliest of days. So over the next couple months we are going to walk through the first 5 chapters of Acts. Today we’ll start with Acts 1:1-11.
Acts 1:1-11 (NLT)
1 In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. 3 During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.
4 Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. 5 John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
6 So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”
7 He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. 10 As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”
Background:
If you’re paying close attention to the text, you should have a few immediate questions. What former book? Who is this “Theophilus”? Who is the author here anyway, and where did this information come from?? We won’t spend a long time on these questions, but they help to get us oriented. This book of Acts is obviously part 2 or book 2, here is the introduction to book 1: “1Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” This is the introduction to the gospel of Luke (1:1-4). We don’t know who “Theophilus” was, though the name is Greek so it is safe to assume that he was not Jewish, and so the books are written to people who did not necessarily have that Jewish heritage through which to understand Jesus. The author, Luke, clearly tells us that what follows in both Luke and Acts is a result of “careful investigation” from “eyewitnesses”. Book 1 followed Jesus’ ministry, book 2 describes for us what happened after Jesus rose from the dead. And that is where Luke begins here in Acts.
Talking about the Kingdom: vs. 3
During the first 40 days after the resurrection, Jesus occasionally appeared to His disciples and we know some of those stories from the gospels, including the one we looked at last week which happened on resurrection day. Here Luke tells us that Jesus had two reasons – one to prove that He really was alive, and second to complete their teaching. This teaching is summarized by Luke as “about the Kingdom of God”. This is consistent with Jesus’ teaching before the crucifixion, He was always talking about “the Kingdom of God”. So it is a little surprising to me that we often have such a weak understanding about what this actually is. It seems to be Jesus’ main teaching focus, continued here even after the resurrection, so it seems like it is probably pretty important… but what actually is it? I want you each to take a moment in quiet here right now and try to answer that question: if you were talking to a friend who is not a Christian and the question came up, “what is this “kingdom of God” thing?”, what would you respond? (silence, invite a few responses…)
The Promise of the Holy Spirit: vs. 4-5
In the next two verses Luke tells one particular story from one of these post-resurrection appearances where the specific question about the gift of the Holy Spirit comes up. It is important for the story, because as we’ll see next Sunday in Acts 2 the promise is there fulfilled in a pretty amazing way. Last week in John we saw the same theme, though there the story was a little different – we read that Jesus “breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.” (Jn 20:22). Is there a contradiction here? In John we read that Jesus gave them the gift, Luke is telling us that Jesus told them to wait for it. Is this a problem?
I don’t think so, and hence my title for this sermon: “A Work in Progress”. Our tendency, I think, is to try to see things through a filter that is quite clear cut and definitive. So in this case, we want to nail down the time when the gift of the Holy Spirit is actually, precisely, definitively given. But again, relationships and “real life” don’t often operate with that type of precision. It is much more dynamic. And again in this passage I see the point that the powerful filling of the Holy Spirit has, as its main purpose, the empowering of the witness and the message, and the disciples had not yet been fully sent. Jesus was still teaching them during those 40 days, and then the time would come.
The Desire to Know: vs. 6-8
I find the question the disciples ask in vs. 6 a fascinating one, mostly because of what it says about them (and us). It is actually the verse that really grabbed me when I first read the passage: “they kept asking him, ‘Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?’” I noticed three things: 1. the persistence. They “kept asking”. 2. The timing. they really wanted to know the “when”. I hear in this question a desire to have the inside track, some secret knowledge that would set them apart from others, and as a result a bit of power and control in their lives. After all, many of us think that if we could just know what was coming next and when it was coming, our lives would be much better (probably because we think that if we knew, we could do something about it and thus we would have power and control). And 3., they wanted to go back. They wanted Jesus to “restore our kingdom”. That was striking to me, so much so that I dug around in other translations to see if that was a good translation and it is. Here it is – Jesus risen from the dead, conquering sin, opening a direct and intimate and personal link to the God of the Universe, and the best they can imagine is still something in the past. They are thinking of King David, and the time when the Israelites had been mighty and rich and powerful in the world, and they keep wondering WHEN Jesus is going to help them recapture that former glory.
Of course, Jesus had something far better in mind for the future than just the best they could remember of the past. This new “kingdom of God” is infinitely better that then old “kingdom of Israel”. And this is precisely the point I think God has for me and for us this morning. It is time, I think, to continue to cherish and celebrate the past, thank God for it and all those good things, but to stop asking when Jesus is going to “restore” some former glory and instead believe that there is something better in the future. I think this applies both personally and as a church.
Let’s reflect personally first. Can you let yourself imagine what God could do in your life today and in the future? Really – no limits here (it is, after all, God we are talking about!). Don’t think about just going back to some great time in the past. Look ahead… dream for a moment. What could God do in your life? Maybe there are some places of brokenness – what could God do with those? Maybe some deep places of hurt – what could God do with those? Maybe some deep needs to be loved, to be part of something beyond ourselves, to be valued and challenged and empowered to put these things into action and see them start to become realities. I really believe we get stuck sometimes in these things, and sometimes the best we can imagine is a “restore our kingdom” kind of backwards mentality. But my friends, here is the truth: what God has in mind for us ahead is far greater than that which we have already experienced. This is true of eternity, but also of our experience in this life. There is love – vibrant and real and empowering – waiting for us in the Kingdom of God. There is freedom – to be, to give love, to walk through all the stuff of life with no fear and no hesitation because we walk with Jesus. There is newness and joy. There is a purpose so grand and captivating that we would gladly sell everything we have to just be a part of that which God has for us next.
I sometimes wonder if we’ve given up believing that God has great and amazing things ahead for us. I sometimes wonder if we get grabbed by the present, whatever the stresses and hurts and feelings of loss and lostness, and we give up believing that God has great things ahead. Well He does. Our job is to believe it, live like it, and wait for it. After all, the disciples in the story never did find what they thought they were looking for. They found something better.
Let’s also reflect on this idea corporately. I think this is a good season for us to begin to dream again and anew about what it means to be God’s people in our world, not looking back to some previous time of perceived greatness, but instead looking ahead. There is a freshness lately, related to our physical renovation but not limited to that at all. I see God stirring up new things again, beginning to plant dreams, with some of the spiritual opposition that for me just substantiates the moving of God. I think it will look different, this new Kingdom of God among us, than it has in the past, and I want to be open for that. More, I want to be eager for that! Excited for that!! Gladly embracing and working to see God’s Kingdom come, not our kingdom, and certainly not our ideas of some former kingdom restored. I believe God’s got something better in store for us.
So then I want to be like the disciples again, “when, Lord”?? And “what will it look like??” And “what is the great plan???” And the answer I get seems very very similar… God knows, and you don’t know the times and dates and details. That is not for us.
“But”… see that word of Jesus’? It applies to us as it did then. We don’t know the details, personally or corporately, BUT we will receive power, to witness. See that theme creeping up again? And maybe in that theme we find the first steps in our journey. Not the whole road map, just the first steps! We receive power, to be witnesses. And as we obey, receive, and start to act, we see the next steps.
So that becomes my challenge today, personally and corporately. To not stand still looking backward. To not stand still until the whole plan is rolled out in detail either. But to believe that God has something great in store for us because of how much He loves us, and then for us each to allow God to fill us with His Spirit so that we can be His witnesses. I believe, completely and with excitement, that as we do we’ll start to see something amazing – God’s Kingdom coming, God’s will being done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Conclusion:
The story ends with the disciples staring up into the sky. “straining to see”. And then the challenge from the angels: what are you standing around for? The future will come. It will be great when it does. Implied, I think, was the message: so get going. Get started on the first thing, the thing you know you need to do. Maybe it’s a choice to believe. Maybe it’s a call to wait for power. Or maybe it is just to do the thing God has already told you to do but which you haven’t yet. I say, let’s get started. God promises it will be good.
