Second Sunday of Easter
April 9, 2023 | Sunrise Service

I Believe in Jesus Christ, Who Ascended into Heaven and Sitteth at the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty
Human Beings, Not Human Doings
A Sermon Series on the Apostles' Creed

Nanette Sawyer
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Romans 12:3–13
Acts 1:6–14

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Today we continue in our sermon series on the Apostles’ Creed. We’re talking about the section about Jesus, and we have come to the line “he ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.”

We wouldn’t normally leap from Easter Sunday immediately to the ascension of Christ the next week. After all, Jesus walked among the disciples for forty days after the resurrection and before he ascended. Luke describes it this way: “After his suffering [Jesus’ death and resurrection] he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” (Acts 1:3)

Before hearing our scripture for today, we need to know that while Jesus was staying with the disciples during these forty days, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of God. “Stay here in the city,” he said to them in Luke’s Gospel, “until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).

And now in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, just before our scripture for today, Jesus tells the disciples that they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. That will be on the day of Pentecost, of course, and that’s often considered the birth of the church, fifty days after the resurrection. That day the people receive the Holy Spirit and are sent out to share the good news of God’s love, carrying it beyond former boundaries. In receiving the Holy Spirit they are clothed in power from on high.

After these words of Jesus about the baptism by the Holy Spirit, we arrive at our scripture reading for today, where we hear that the disciples were constantly devoting themselves to prayer after they saw Jesus going up in clouds, out of their sight, towards heaven.

They were encouraged by Jesus’s own words, of course — his assurances that they will receive power from the Holy Spirit. By his words he invites them to trust in his promises of receiving this power. And he commands them to be his witnesses, to the ends of the earth.

But don’t do it now, he says. Don’t do it yet. Wait. Wait to be filled with the Spirit.

And they do as Jesus tells them. They return to Jerusalem. They stay in the city. They wait. And they devote themselves to prayer.

This is an in-between time, a liminal time. There’s a little bit of “already” and little bit of “not yet.” Jesus has already been resurrected. He has already shown himself to them by many convincing proofs. They believed it was him. Jesus alive. Jesus with them. Jesus continuing to teach them and guide them, to give them commandments and offer them visions of the kingdom of God.

The world can be different, he taught them. When he healed individuals he healed the whole community around them, bringing people into wholeness and into relationship with each other. The kingdom of God is like this, where all are welcome, where all are cared for, where justice and peace and mercy reign. There’s a little bit of “already” and a little bit of “not yet.”

It’s hard to catch that vision of the kingdom of God. The first thing the disciples ask in today’s scripture is “Will this be the time when you restore the kingdom?” What they’re thinking of as the kingdom is not the same thing Jesus is thinking of.

In the Gospel of Luke, “once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’” (Luke 17:20–21). Or some translations say “The kingdom of God is within you.” That’s a different kingdom than the one the disciples ask Jesus about just before he ascends to be seated in the throne room of God.

Where is the kingdom of God when Jesus is taken up in a cloud toward heaven? It’s still in the same place. It’s within his disciples. It’s among his disciples. And this is some of what they will witness to when they leave Jerusalem and go to all Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth.

They will testify with their lives. They will serve and love and heal and cross borders to bring the love of God, the kingdom of God, as far as they can. Their witness will be their service.

As Pastor Matt mentioned, today is Volunteer Recognition Sunday here at Fourth Church, and we give thanks for the service of all of our volunteers. We have 1,400 active volunteers here — their names are listed in our bulletin — people who have given their service in the last year. And if we forgot your name, please forgive us, but tell us, so we can fix that going forward.

Now we have volunteers who are not Christians, and we welcome you. We’re grateful for you. We have Jewish neighbors who volunteer on a regular basis with the Meals Ministry program. We have nonreligious volunteers who find their meaning in other ways and through other stories. On Volunteer Recognition Sunday we recognize you all! And we celebrate you.

For those of us who are Christian, our service, our ministry, is an expression of our discipleship. And our discipleship is rooted in our identity as some of the people of God and specifically as followers of Jesus Christ. Or as we sometimes like to say, as followers of God in the Way of Jesus Christ.

We humans look for meaning in many places; as Christians, we look to the stories of our faith and the spiritual practices of Jesus, the practices of his disciples and apostles, and to the scribes and reciters of our scripture. We look to theologians and interpreters and scholars who devote themselves to study of scripture and Christian tradition.

We knit ourselves together as the church by all the service offered and all the gifts given. All of the ways we give and serve, all of the ways we help and lead and dream dreams together — it all comes together in what we call the body of the church. We are the church because we participate in all these ways.

As we heard from the book of Romans today, we all have gifts given to us by the grace of God. They are different gifts and different skills that we first receive and then offer. Paul writes in Romans that just as one body has many members with different functions, we too, “who are many, are one body in Christ and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12:4–5). We belong to each other, and we belong to God.

Receiving gifts and sharing gifts are two sides of the same coin, two aspects of our discipleship. And we have this in common with the early disciples. They were given the task of being witnesses of God’s great good news, God’s healing, abundance, wholeness, and salvation. But before they could witness to it, they had to experience it.

And when I say witness, I don’t just mean seeing. A witness testifies to what they have seen, and the testifying is what a witness does. When Jesus tells the disciples, “You will be my witnesses,” he means not that they will simply say what they saw, but that they will live the good news and the good news will be seen in and through them. They began this witnessing when Jesus walked among them and he sent them out two by two in order to heal people and communities.

The kingdom of God that Jesus saw within them and the kingdom of God that Jesus saw among them — that will be seen by people not only in Jerusalem, not only in Judea and Samaria, but everywhere they go, to the ends of the earth. Their lives become their testimony. Witnessing in this sense is Being.

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in doing ministry that we forget how we are being while we do it. You may have heard the adage about human beings becoming simply human doings when we forget ourselves in this way. Our ministry then becomes transactional instead of transformational. We give, we do, we complete tasks, but we’re just going through the motions. We’re not being changed, and we’re not being agents of change.

When we become human doings, we’re not remembering who we are or whose we are. We’re not resting in God’s love, and so we’re not giving God’s love either.

And often we become depleted in the process. We think we are doing what we do out of our own power. But our power is very limited, while God’s power is vast.

Jesus embodied God, and his prayerful communion with God empowered him to do his ministry. When Jesus was baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened. His prayer was powerful. His prayer changed things. He would often slip away to deserted places to pray. When Jesus chose the twelve disciples, he went to a mountain and spent the entire night in prayer before he selected them (Luke 3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 22:41; C. Clifton Black, “Commentary on Acts 1:6–14,” 4 May 2008, workingpreacher.org).

And Jesus taught his disciples to depend on the power of prayer; he reminded them to turn to it again and again. He taught them to pray the Lord’s Prayer; he told them parables about prayer, encouraging them to pray always and not lose heart (Luke 11:1–2; 18:1).

The early apostles also turned often to prayer. Peter prayed when he healed Tabitha. He prayed when he went to meet Cornelius and had a vision from God that expanded his understanding of who was welcome and included in the community. The worshiping community fasted and prayed and laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul as they were preparing to be sent out by the Holy Spirit to Cyprus to preach (Acts 9: 40; 10:9; 13:3).

Prayer calls us back into remembrance of God. “You will be my witnesses,” Jesus says, “but don’t go out until you are clothed with the Holy Spirit.” Waiting for Holy Spirit power to be given also means preparing ourselves to receive it.

There’s a story about a woman who was “so heavenly focused she was no earthly good.” And there’s a Johnny Cash song about that, too. But we pray to God with the prayer that Jesus taught us, asking that God’s “kingdom come on earth as it in in heaven.”

In a world that feels a lot more like it is “not yet” the kingdom of God, we know that thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need to act. We know that there is a danger that while we are looking up to heaven, waiting for some heavenly action, we might forget to take our own action.

Holy Spirit power is given to us to empower us to testify with our lives. Clothing ourselves in Christ is a spiritual practice to help us manifest the “already” kingdom of God – among us and within us.

This is not about focusing on heaven and forgetting about earth. It’s not about focusing on the future and forgetting about now. This focus on God’s kingdom is bringing a heavenly focus to our earthly life. It’s here now; can we find it? The kingdom of God is among us; can we extend it? The kingdom of God is within us; can we feel it?

The ascension of Jesus does not mean the absence of Jesus. It is the beginning of the next part of the story, the part where Jesus’ disciples become clothed in Christ and carry on being the kingdom. This begins the part of the story where Jesus’ disciples practice being forgiven and forgiving others, receiving abundance and sharing abundance, receiving love and giving love, being seen and known by the tender glance of Christ and looking at all those we encounter with the same eyes of tenderness.

It is a spiritual practice to be clothed with Christ. It is a spiritual practice to receive the Holy Spirit. That means we have to practice it. These things do not come without focus and intentionality. When we forget who we are being and start to focus on what we are doing we need to remind ourselves and each other “You are a beloved child of God. You are clothed with Christ. You are filled with the Holy Spirit. You are alive with the breath of the God of all creation.”

Take a breath right now. Imagine the light of God’s peace, love, and healing power pouring into your body right now.

Go and do, yes. Witness and testify, yes. But first pray and wait. Listen. Open. Receive. Forgive. Practice. Practice some more.

Go and do, yes. But first, be. And know that Christ is being with you.

Do your serving. Do your ministry. Share your generosity. Use your gifts for the good of all people. You are a human being who does great things because God has given you gifts that are perfect for you.

So keep practicing.

Amen.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church