“Now What Are We Gonna Do?”
Acts 1:1-14
In the next verse, which I didn’t read, we are told that at this point the believers were a group of folks numbering about 120.
It’s not a huge mass of people.
It’s just a little less than the number of people we have worshiping here on any given Sunday.
And who were these folks that were huddled together between the time Jesus Ascended back to heaven and when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost ten days later?
Well, they weren’t much different than you and me.
They were real human beings, with names, identities, histories, and fears.
They had followed Jesus as far as they could; then they waited for the coming of the Spirit.
They are the ones who made up the first Church.
And it is we—you and me—who make up today’s Church, at least the part of the Church which gathers at 3800 Dayton Boulevard in Red Bank, Tennessee.
And so, like the first disciples, we gather together—but not as together as we will be next week when we start worshiping as ONE CHURCH with ONE WORSHIP SERVICE rather than TWO.
I think it can be easy to sort of romanticize the first followers of Christ.
It was they, after-all, who had met Jesus face-to-face.
It was they who sat and listened to Him teach.
It was they who watched as he healed the sick, touched the lepers and ate with tax collectors, prostitutes and all manner of outcasts who were called “sinners” by the religious elite.
And, many of them had been the prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers and sinners—perhaps most or all had been.
But aren’t we as well?
Who among us doesn’t have a defect?
Who among us doesn’t struggle with temptation and sin?
And who among us have it all together?
Who among us has all the answers, knows everything there is to know about this universe, this world, this life and even Jesus and God?
Who among us knows exactly what Red Bank United Methodist Church is supposed to be doing that we are not currently doing?
Who among us knows our future or if we even have one?
Kind of freaky isn’t it?
A couple of nights ago, my 4-year-old son Owen asked me a question as I was putting him to bed.
He said, “You are my daddy and I am your son, right?”
“Right,” I replied.
“And your daddy died and it makes you very sad.
And you miss him,” he continued.
Then he said: “But you are never going to die, right?”
What was I going to say?
He’s really too young to understand all this, and I don’t want to scare him.
So, I replied, “Right, I’m never going to die. You have nothing to worry about. Good night sweet boy. I love you.”
Jesus’ first followers were pretty confused and, I would imagine, scared.
A lot had happened.
They had signed on to the Jesus movement and been extremely close to Him and yet they really didn’t understand much about Him.
He told them things over and over and over again but not much of it stuck.
Their world-view was too small.
God’s ways were too different from their ways—how could they understand what Jesus was really talking about?
They became convinced that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah—the one who would be like King David in the Old Testament.
They believed He would restore Israel.
The whole world would be turned around at last.
Israel would be the top nation, ruling over the rest of the world.
All this can be summed up in the question they ask Jesus in verse 6 of our Scripture lesson for this morning: “Lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
And notice how Jesus doesn’t really answer their question, or kind of skirts around it?
Instead of saying something like, “You’ve got it all wrong”, He says, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Do you think THAT confused them?
I mean, if they didn’t understand what was happening before they asked Jesus that question, they were really in the dark now.
“We will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes?”
“We will be Jesus’ witnesses?”
“What kind of power; what kind of witnesses?”
And then, Jesus is somehow “taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
And they are just standing there staring at the sky.
And who wouldn’t be?
What are they supposed to do now?
Two angels come and tell them something about Jesus returning in the same way He left—and then—that’s it!
What in the world lay ahead for them?
What did the future hold?
Again, they had thought the kingdom of Israel was going to be restored in all its ancient glory.
When He had been with them, Jesus had kept talking about the Kingdom of God.
Apparently, they weren’t the same thing.
And apparently, they wouldn’t be returning to the glory days of the old Davidic Kingdom.
Jesus wasn’t going to drive out the Romans, overthrowing the rich and powerful.
And yet, Jesus had told them that they would receive power.
Did that mean it was up to them to topple the empire?
Were they about to be sent to war…
…a rag-tag group of disciples, with no political clout, no weapons, and no experience in arm to arm combat?
Not to mention that there were only 120 of them.
Wow.
Talk about a scary and confusing situation.
What would you do if you were in their place?
Would you run for the hills?
Would you leave this group as fast as you could, disassociate yourself?
Would you sink into a deep depression and despair?
We are told that instead of all that, they returned to Jerusalem.
And they went upstairs to a room—probably the same room where they had eaten the Last Supper.
And “they all joined together constantly in prayer.”
There is a story about a tribal chief who lay dying.
He called to him three of his people and said, “I must select a successor.
Therefore, climb our holy mountain and return with the most precious gift you can find.”
The first brought back a gold nugget.
The second brought back a priceless gem.
The third came back empty-handed, saying, “When I reached the mountaintop, I saw on the other side a beautiful land, where people could go for a better life.”
The chief said, “You shall succeed me.
You have brought back the most precious gift of all: a vision of a better tomorrow.”
Even though they didn’t fully understand what He was talking about, Jesus had, indeed, given His followers a vision of a better tomorrow.
Otherwise they would not have followed Him in the first place.
And although they didn’t understand what kind of power Jesus was going to bestow upon them, and what kind of responsibilities they would be shouldered with, they chose to believe that it was going to be better than what they would face without Him and without one another.
And so they “joined together constantly in prayer.”
And that’s not all, under Peter’s leadership, they decided to choose Matthias to replace Judas as one of the twelve.
In other words, they didn’t give up.
They prepared for the future.
They decided to trust God.
And when the Holy Spirit did come at Pentecost, which we will celebrate and talk more about next week, they did—indeed—receive power.
But it wasn’t worldly nor was it military power.
It was the power to love, even their enemies.
It was power to humble themselves.
It was power to give themselves for the good of others.
It was power to give up their grip on material possessions.
It was power to share.
It was power to transform their very lives.
Nothing was ever the same again.
And although they still dealt with pain and difficulty, they were given a joy and a peace which transcends all understanding.
They found themselves living right in the midst of the very Kingdom of God Jesus had been talking about.
And after just one day, 3,000 people joined their ranks.
Are we willing to believe that God has exciting things planned for this church and for our lives, even though we can’t quite understand what those things are yet?
In Jesus’ first sermon way back in Luke Chapter 4 Jesus proclaimed: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In our Scripture passage for this morning, Jesus promises that same gift of that same Spirit to His disciples—and that includes you, and that includes me.
Will we decide to take that step of faith and stick with one another and stick with Jesus, and pray and prepare and receive the power--which God provides--to do God’s will to proclaim freedom and recovery and sight and release and hope and love to the lost and dying world around us?
I believe we will.
Praise God.
Amen.
