Waiting for Power
Acts 1:1-11
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
September 15, 2024
Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqBaRIJPx04
The book of Acts begins with a recap. Luke, the author, reminds Theophilus, who might be his benefactor, that there is a prequel to this book which contains a lot more details about what Jesus did and taught. The prequel is the Gospel of Luke. He wraps it up his summary by saying that Jesus spent about 40 days showing that he was alive, demonstrating the truth of the resurrection and talking about the reign of God. This book is about a time of huge disruption and transitions. Transitions so momentous that much of the world now orders our calendars around the before and after of these changes.
As Jesus is preparing to depart, he spends his time talking about the reign of God which is what he talked about at the beginning of his ministry. He is transferring leadership, putting his life’s mission into the hands of his disciples. His mission will become their mission. Their mission will be passed to the next generation and the next and the next until it reaches us and becomes our mission.
Jesus reminds them about the big picture, about God’s intention for deep peace and well-being for all of creation. He shows them the scars of his suffering, which signify both the terrible cost of this mission and the victory of resurrection. Maybe he repeats some favorite parables, answers a few more questions, but eventually he says “I’ve got to go. And you have to be my witnesses, here, there, and ultimately everywhere. It’s in your hands.”
I was reading Acts a few weeks ago, at the time of the Olympics. And I thought about the pressure on Olympic athletes . . . the fear, the excitement, the unbelievably high expectations. Maybe it was something like that for the disciples. This was what they trained for for so long. This is what was set in motion when those fisherfolk dropped their nets and followed Jesus years ago. Just like for first-time Olympians, it is familiar and also brand new. They’ve never been here before. What if they fail? What if they succeed?
There’s a viral Tik-Tok video which shows a young girl being picked up by her Mom after school. She opens the back door and immediately buries her face in the seat of her carseat. She says, “I done so much at school, I just need to take a second.”
Her Mom says, “Are you tired?”
Yeah.
What did you do at school?
The girl says “I just do too much at school.”
The Mom asks again, “What do you do?”
The girl takes her head out of the car seat and looks at her Mom. She says, “Like I go to lunch. . . and I. . . It’s a lot for me.”[1]
I imagine the disciples and all that they’ve been through, especially most recently. The abject terror surrounding the crucifixion and then the unreality of resurrection, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and of all of them and then his death by suicide. And now, Jesus wants them to fill his shoes, to keep telling his story, to do all the teaching and healing and loving enemies without him. I could understand if they were overwhelmed and said “That’s a lot for me.”
But maybe something else happened. Maybe in the 40 days they shared after resurrection, they had time to process and come to terms with the incredible experience of knowing Jesus. Maybe in touching his scars, they recognized the One who had defeated death. Maybe they had time to say I’m sorry and be forgiven, time to hang out and laugh, to hug and share some memories. And maybe in that time, they accepted and embraced their mission.
Jesus announced their mission – Be my witnesses. It’s a fairly open-ended job description. And then he said, “But first . . .wait. Before you do anything wait for power.”
Tony Robinson is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. He does a lot of writing and lecturing. One time he was teaching a class on leading change to about 40 mainline pastors. In one exercise, each student had to choose from three possible answers what motivated them most, what got them into ministry and keep them going. The most popular answer was affiliation. These pastors, 26 of the 40, were motivated by forming and attending to relationships. A second group of about 12 identified as achievers. These were people who wanted to produce visible results with projects or programs. The third group was the smallest, only two or three pastors, who said that their major motivation was power and influence. They wanted to change hearts and minds. So, the motivations were 1) relationships,
2) achievements
and then, in last place, 3) power and influence.
Tony invited the class to reflect on those results. The first responses were self-congratulatory. Several said, “It’s good. We care about people, not power.” The comments went like that for a bit, but then one student said, “I’m not surprised that so few indicated an interest in power and influence. After all, our denomination has been telling us for years, in all sorts of ways, that power is bad.” Someone else agreed, pointing out that when power is unacknowledged or suppressed usually goes underground and pops up in unhealthy ways. Finally, Tony concluded the discussion by saying that he would be concerned for a church organization where only 5 percent of the leaders wanted to change hearts and minds, wanted to influence people and communities to be more healthy and Christlike and functional by exercising their power.[2]
I wonder if we can put ourselves into the place of those first Christians. Can we imagine Jesus telling us to wait for power? Can we imagine receiving power from the very same source as Jesus – the Spirit of God? Can we? I don’t think we claim our power or even the promise of power very often.
Maybe it is because we have seen too much publicity around churches or church leaders that abused their power. Some of us have been harmed by those churches. We don’t want to be lumped in with those power-mongers and we definitely want to avoid inflicting that harm. Rather than harness power for good, we prefer to see ourselves as powerless.
Jesus said that we are to be his witnesses. Witnesses are those who tell the truth. Someone has said “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Maybe we do not claim the power of the Holy Spirit because we are afraid of being odd, afraid of paying too high a cost for speaking controversial or inconvenient truths.
Maybe it is low self-esteem. We do not recognize the power that we have or the difference we are already making. Not long ago, I heard from a friend in her 80’s. She had just received some bad news. A friend of hers, a young person in his twenties, had been diagnosed with cancer. He was fine one day and seriously ill the next. The news was a gut punch. She said, “There’s nothing I can do about this.” Before the conversation was over, I realized that she was helping him with his medical bills, which, as you might expect, is no small thing. The next time I talked with her, his treatment had started and she was feeling a bit of hope– I think in part because she recognized that she was doing more than she had given herself credit for.
Or maybe we don’t think in terms of power, as a church, because we believe our best days are behind us. We know that thousands of churches close every year. Denominational resources have shrunk and keep shrinking. Clergy are not seen as public moral leaders as they once were. A 2023 Gallup poll found only 32% of Americans described pastors as having high honesty and ethical standards. Clergy did rank higher than members of Congress though. A mere 6% thought they were honest and ethical. [3] We are caught up in a narrative and a reality that doesn’t lead us to feel powerful at all.
But consider the religious scene in Jerusalem in the first century. The civil religion, the Roman pantheon of gods, seems robust. It is enforced by local custom and by the sword of empire. Judaism was already divided by the theology and practices of groups like the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes, but now there is growing conflict between Jewish people who believe Jesus is the Messiah and those who don’t. By the time the book of Acts is written down, the magnificent building that was the Temple will have been torn down to the ground and the worship and pilgrimages that it supported will have been destroyed.
So, if we are hesitant to accept the notion that we might have access to the Power of the Spirit of God, the power of life and death, the power to change the world, we might stop to recognize that it would have been hard for those folks waiting in Jerusalem to think of themselves that way too. They were a decided minority, marginalized in so many ways, small and weak in the eyes of Rome, in the eyes of Israel’s religious authorities and perhaps in their own estimation. But to them, Jesus promised power.
He told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait. I never like to be told to wait. And in our case, at Emmanuel right now, there is an urgency, a sense that the window in which we can meaningfully take action is closing. That urgency is creating momentum. Surely the time for waiting is past. The book we’re studying is called Acts, not Waits. It is full of action. Our take-away today cannot possibly be that we are to just wait for God to do something.
There’s a whole genre of short videos circulating on social media. They all begin with a voice or words on the screen that say “wait for it.” It’s a cue to the viewer to pay attention, be ready because something is going to happen that you might not otherwise expect. Someone is going to have a funny accident or a wonderful surprise. A child is going to utter one line of wisdom beyond their years. A bear will suddenly appear next to the person in the middle of the screen. A parachute will open just in time. “Wait for it” means “Watch carefully or you’ll miss it.” “Wait for it” means “Don’t look away, don’t shut off the video, because it’s not a long wait and it will be worth it.”
That’s how I hear Jesus speaking to us. “Wait for power” means “anticipate it”. It means “it is really close and it will be so worth it.”
Having those instructions from Jesus, they did what he said. They stayed together. They prayed. They talked and listened to each other. And when the power fell, there was no mistaking it. With the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the disciples had the power and the courage to take on the specifics of the mission which became clear.
This is my take-away from today’s reading. We have access to the same gift of power, the same Divine Spirit that empowered Jesus. Can we claim that, lean into it, act like we believe it, until we really do? We are waiting for specific guidance. We are really close. Wait for it. . .
We are waiting together. We are praying together and individually. If you aren’t already doing that, then please start. We are talking and listening to each other. Next Sunday evening, we have set aside time with a skilled facilitator to be together, to talk and listen carefully, to discern our Emmanuel’s specific mission. Anticipate that the Spirit will be present with us too. Please do everything you can to be there. If you need transportation, if you need child-care, please share those needs with me today.
I love the way that Barbara Brown Taylor describes this scene in Acts 1 She says, “No one standing around watching them that day could have guessed what an astounding thing happened when they all stopped looking into the sky and looked at each other instead. On the surface, it was not a great moment: eleven abandoned disciples with nothing to show for all their following. But in the days and years to come it would become very apparent what had happened to them. With nothing but a promise and a prayer, those eleven people consented to become the church, and nothing was ever the same again, beginning with them.
The followers became leaders,
the listeners became preachers,
the converts became missionaries,
the healed became healers. The disciples became apostles, witnesses of the risen Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit, and nothing was ever the same again.” [4]
Oh friends, may it be so for you and for me. Wait for it . . .
[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@ehuber_192/video/7209300272957623598?lang=en
[2] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 123
[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/608903/ethics-ratings-nearly-professions-down.aspx
[4] https://www.christianitytoday.com/1998/05/day-we-were-left-behind/