Acts 1:1-14 “Living in Between”

That day on the Mount of Olives marks a pivotal transition in the life of the church.  Luke is the only Gospel writer to report this ascension. We don’t do much with the ascension in our theology.  In fact, some people are embarrassed by the way Luke presents it. Is heaven really up? (After all what is up in the United States is down in “down under” Australia.) Aren’t we a little too sophisticated in our theology to fall for Luke’s “beam me up, Scotty” approach to the cosmos? Perhaps we are.  Or perhaps we can’t see what Luke was trying to convey with this image.

Luke is the only gospel writer, as far as we know, to write a two volume work.  Volume one, the Gospel of Luke, deals with Jesus of Nazareth and his life, death, and resurrection.  Volume two, the Book of Acts, deals with the continuation of that story in the life of the early church.  Luke had a special interest in the fleshing out of Jesus’ mission in the life of the church.

But Luke also realized that Jesus is not with the church the same way he had been with Peter, James, John, Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, and all the others who walked those dusty roads of Galilee and Judea in the good ole days.  Times had changed. Conditions were different. The Crucified Jesus had been vindicated by God and raised in glory as the Lord of the world. With the cross and empty tomb, all of history has changed. But the problem was that they now found themselves living in a world which did not know about or reflect that change.  Tiberius Caesar was still on the imperial throne. Pilate was still prefect of Judea. Herod Antipas was still Tetrarch of Galilee. Caiaphas was still high priest. Greed, violence, and hatred still seemed to determine everyday history. How can a church live in such a world when the church knows the truth about Jesus?

In his story of the ascension Luke addresses this challenge as he calls the faithful to live in between. First, he calls us to live in between the physical and the spiritual, between earth and heaven.  When Jesus was taken up, the eyes of the disciples were fixed on heaven and they were chided for this fixation. A temptation in religion is to keep our eyes, hearts, minds, commitment and just about everything else about us fixed on heaven.  Do we ascend with Jesus, or do we stay and do his work in the world? If we stay fixed on heaven, then we are of no earthly good. We fail to live out the life of Jesus in our time and place.

But if we become just fixed on the world, then we can easily become of the world.  Luke tells us throughout Acts how the early church did the work of Jesus “down there” in the midst of greed, violence and hatred.  They did not neglect their mission. But Luke also tells us that those of the early church were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” They found their strength, direction, and foundation in communion with the Risen Lord.  They lived every day between earth and heaven. You see, it’s not either/or. It’s both/and. We live in the world, but we live out of our communion with Christ. To live in the world without Christ is to become parched, withered, and jaded in our discipleship and eventually to become so much like this world that not even Jesus can tell that we belong to him.  But to live with our eyes fixed on heaven is to abandon our calling as his disciples and to repudiate his example of loving this world in the name of God. We are called to live in between earth and heaven, constantly flowing from one into the other until truly it is on earth as it is in heaven.

Secondly, Luke calls us to live in between the “now” of everyday life and the “then” of God’s Kingdom – that time when God’s will shall be done, when the lion will lie down with the lamb, when compassion, justice, and love shall reign in every heart and every place.  

The church does not often succeed in living in between the now of everyday life and the full realization of God’s Kingdom. Too often we have settled down in the “now”.  Sometimes that settling reflects a concern for being relevant. We shall do our best right now and bring what goodness and justice we can in the here and now. But most of the time our settling in the “now” is a result of being seduced by the glitter and values of this world. We want our churches to sanction the world’s agenda (or at least the agenda of our part of the world) and we want ministers to be chaplains of the status quo.

At other times the church has tried to live solely in the Kingdom – looking to that future age when God’s will shall be done. “Yes, it’s terrible now.  But there is not much we can do about it. The hungry will have to starve. The oppressed will have to suffer. The rape of creation will have to continue. But one day, in the sweet by and by God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. In the meantime, we shall sit on our blessed assurances, passively watching and waiting.”

Before Jesus ascended, the disciples asked, “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?” That question amazes me.  After years of intense training in discipleship, after witnessing the crucifixion and the resurrection, Jesus’ followers still don’t get it.  They think God’s agenda in Jesus is to restore Israel’s former glory. Salvation is still understood to be parochial, limited, and exclusively for Israel.  The promise of God’s Kingdom is much larger than they can imagine. God’s final, realized Kingdom will exceed any of our agendas, dreams, prejudices, programs, and efforts on this earth.  And as such, God’s Kingdom stands in judgment of every effort by the church to live faithfully in this world.

So, on the one hand, Luke tells us, “Yes, the future is in God’s hands and will be better and fuller than anything we have yet known or can ever imagine. And we are allowed to be inspired by this hope. And we must let this hope judge all our temporal efforts to be faithful. But meanwhile, we must live from day to day in the present.  God’s future Kingdom may inspire us, but it must inspire us to faithfulness in the here and now. We are not allowed to sit on our blessed assurances, watching and waiting like a child anticipating Santa Claus.  To strengthen us here and now, Jesus promises we will “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon us.” The Spirit rooted in God’s will for this world will empower us to live as faithful witnesses to that final Kingdom which dawns, however tentatively, in our everyday lives.  Only that Spirit will allow us to live between the “now” of daily life and the “then” of God’s Kingdom.

Finally, Luke tells us that the church must live between the local and the global.  These people from Galilee, ordinary fishermen and village women, are given an awesome task.  They are to wait in Jerusalem for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then they are to build up the fellowship in ever larger concentric circles–“in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” They are to be faithful where they are, but always looking to the wider world as the object of God’s love and desire.  

Jim Wallis, one of the founders of the Sojourners Community in Washington, D.C. said, “we have learned through years in community that we have no more to give the world than we have come to experience ourselves.”  In other words, we must first experience love, forgiveness, truth, mercy, justice, and compassion within our own fellowship before we can ever offer such good news to the world. Our local congregation must be a place where God’s Spirit abides and bears fruit in each heart and in the fellowship as a whole.  We must be faithful where we are.

But we must not fall to the temptation of turning inward.  Our outreach must not be limited to our local community – to “our own.” Such limited compassion is not worthy of the church of Jesus Christ.
 If we are the Body of Christ, then we must act as a bridge to the wider world. The greatest text of the Bible is not for God so loved me or you or the United States or white people or straight people–the greatest text of the Bible is “for God so loved the world.”  God’s heart is that big. And so must be ours.

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