Waiting and Praying as Easter People
The Sacred Story for the Second Sunday of Easter comes from Acts 1:1-14.
In this season of Easter, we’re called to remember the promises of Easter. We’re called to be Easter people, and we celebrate the promises of the resurrection even in the midst of uncertainty, upheaval, fear, and grief. We speak the truth of a hope and a love so resilient that even death cannot hold it back. We celebrate the resurrection of Christ which boldly proclaims that death will never have the final word, that life and love remain triumphant over even the most devastating circumstances.
We are called to do this in this season of Easter, knowing that things are not what they used to be.
Our world has changed, just as the disciples’ did all those years ago, when they, in shock and yes, still grieving, gathered together with the risen Jesus who ordered them not to leave Jerusalem. They gathered together, holding within them tensions as their grief wrestles with the joy of seeing their risen savior, and their questions and doubt wrestle with the facts they have in front of them. Gathered together and placed on a Stay at Home order, the disciples struggle to understand and rejoice.
They’re gathered together with Jesus, and Jesus speaks to them about waiting for the promises of God - for the moment when they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit and filled with a new kind of understanding and peace.
The disciples wait for these promises, struggling with their present reality while looking towards a hopeful future.
We too wait for promises. We wait for the promise of a return to our former routines, we wait for the promise of effective treatments and the development of vaccines.
I wonder what else you are waiting for right now.
I wonder, if on these Stay at Home orders, maybe feel like we wait for Jesus himself to arrive and answer our questions.
Questions like the disciples had:
“is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?”
“Is this the time when we will experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God?”
Other questions:
“Is this the time when a miraculous cure will sweep the world?”
“Is this the time when no one will have to worry about paying rent or buying groceries?”
To have hard questions and doubts and grief, even in the midst of this season of Easter Celebration is not something to be ashamed of. The disciples too, even with Jesus literally in the room with them, experienced celebration and joy muted by grief and uncertainty.
Jesus responds to their questions, by reminding them that God is a promise keeper, and that they need only but to trust in the faithfulness and steadfastness of God shown throughout all time and among all people.
And then Jesus calls the disciples to be witnesses to the message of Easter, and is taken up into the clouds. And the disciples depart in shock, after being reassured by two men, maybe the same angels who were at the tomb, that Jesus would return again.
They depart and go back to the city of Jerusalem, where they remain on stay at home orders - though their group is certainly larger than 10 people - and in response to God’s call to be a witness to the message of Easter, they devote themselves to prayer, and they continue to wait.
They wait, trusting that the promise of God is soon to come, because they are holding onto the promise of the resurrection. The disciples wait and pray and trust in God’s faithfulness even as they remain under their Stay at Home orders in Jerusalem.
And I don’t know about you, but trusting in God’s steadfastness feels to me like one of the most authentic witnesses to the resurrection that we can have. We don’t have to try and put on a happy face, or worry about the performativity of perfection that this world demands. We don’t have to do or feel anything other than exactly what we find ourselves feeling. Our whole authentic selves are a witness enough to the message of Easter.
And so, as we wait to gather together again, as we wait for a return to routines, as wait for the return of Jesus and the in breaking of the Kingdom of God, may we trust that our very lives are witness enough to message of Easter. May we look for opportunities to speak the message of Easter, of a quiet, persistent hope, that breaks in even when we are unsure or grieving. As we go on our way later on tonight, carry with you the hope of the resurrection. Take heart.
Take heart and breathe deep the breath of God, and know that in your waiting, God is there also.
