I thought I might spend some time with you today musing on the Christian ministry of waiting. For I think there’s a real and valid Christian ministry of waiting that ties in with the theme and story of this Sunday, the Sunday that falls between Ascension Day and Pentecost. Today we think back to the friends of Jesus waiting in Jerusalem; waiting, as their Lord asked before he left them, for the gift he would send upon them. We think of them waiting for the Holy Spirit, waiting too for the call and summons that would launch the Church, that would send them out to do mission, that would begin their story and ours of active and apostolic mission and ministry across the world.
Waiting: “I seem to spend all my life waiting,” said one of the women at the stop as we waited for the bus from Shrewsbury to Welshpool last week. I don’t often catch the bus, usually I’ve got my car, so it’s a sort of waiting I don’t do very much. She obviously did it every day. There were other people waiting that day in other ways and for other reasons. Along the street there’d been some kind of accident or disturbance which had resulted in a shop window being broken. I’d passed a young policeman waiting there, standing in the gutter facing the shop, keeping an eye on things I suppose until his mate came back in the car. I’d also passed a motley crew of urban beggars; they were also waiting, sitting at one end of the footbridge across the river. Theirs was not a very purposeful sort of waiting, but I suppose waiting was a way of life for them, waiting without much reason and with little reward. Maybe it was one of their number who’d broken the shop window. If so, maybe he’d at least get a bed for the night, albeit in a police cell.
So how would a Christian ministry of waiting be different from other kinds of waiting? Well, the first thing to say about the disciples waiting in Jerusalem was that they were waiting prayerfully. They were waiting purposefully. And they were waiting joyfully. Their waiting wasn’t just empty time, but preparation for what was to come. They had seen Jesus go from them, but what they saw on the hillside wasn’t only departure, it was also coronation. And now they were waiting to be commissioned into the service of their King.
My son came up to visit last weekend, and we found ourselves talking about one of the last times I was down in London with him. We’d met in Borough Market in London, near Southwark Cathedral. John had come from work, but I’d been at Southwark Cathedral to attend a service within which new bishops were being consecrated. And thinking back now, that service was itself a conscious act of prayerful waiting, as is every service of ordination or consecration or commissioning. On one level it’s about people being given jobs to do, or maybe people being accorded a new status in the Church. But there’s more than that going on. We’d been calling on God to send his Spirit upon these two people who, within all the ceremonial stuff, were being called and commissioned into a new and demanding role - that of being shepherds to God’s people, and leading and preaching and serving and loving according to the call of Jesus and after the example of Jesus and in the name of Jesus. And, as at every service of that sort I’ve been at or taken part in - ordaining a new minister, welcoming a minister into a new charge, baptizing or confirming new Christians or new members of a church, all of us there were drawn to reflect on our own call, and on the presence of God, of his Holy Spirit, in our own lives. All of us were being drawn to wait on God.
One title given to the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. But God’s Spirit is as much Disturber as Comforter, for he’s not soothing us into a holy huddle but turning us round to point us out into the world. The Church Spirit-filled won’t be inward-looking and all tied up with its own affairs. If we’re waiting on God we’re surely waiting, like the first disciples, for a change of mind and heart and vision. God calls us to love our neighbours as ourselves, whoever and wherever that neighbour may be.
Years ago I remembering listening to the then Bishop of Coventry talking about what in Germany is called Nagelkreuzgemeinschaft, and in this country the Fellowship of the Cross of Nails. It connects Coventry and Dresden, it connects Britain and Germany, but more than that, it seeks to be an agent of reconciliation and peacemaking globally. The Bishop described how his wartime predecessor, standing in the burnt-out ruins of the old cathedral in Coventry, the ruins that still stand next to the new church, said: “Those who did this thing must become our friends.” The first cross of nails was formed out of three medieval nails found on the floor of the cathedral; it became a symbol of hope – of the Christian hope that by God’s grace and his power within us, even bad and tragic and hurtful things can be turned round and used for good.
The Spirit is not to be contained by human borders. The friends of Jesus waiting in Jerusalem were fishermen and ordinary folk, not travelled people, but they were about to launch into the unknown. The story of the Ascension ends Luke’s Gospel of Jesus and begins the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s ‘Gospel of the Holy Spirit’, where he tells of the Spirit releasing the good news of Jesus Christ from its Jewish setting out into all the world.
Christian Aid Week is just around the corner, starting next Sunday, and it is itself a witness I believe to the way in which a Spirit-led Church will dare to cross borders and make friends. Those who this Christian Aid Week will be distributing and collecting envelopes door to door, or standing on the street with a collecting tin, or organising some special event to raise funds but also to tell stories - if we’re doing any of this we’re showing the world how Christians care for our neighbours. Remember the question Jesus was asked: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ He replied by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, of a man who reached across the boundary, the division, the enmity between one kind of person and another. My neighbour is anyone; anyone who needs my help, my support, my vision, my love. Their need puts them in my power. I can help, or I can walk away. I know what the Samaritan did. I know what my Lord would do. The disciples in Jerusalem were waiting for new vision, and waiting to see the world – and to recognise their neighbour - through the eyes of Christ. We should wait and pray for the same vision.
But there’s a sort of waiting I’m all too prone to, that I need to confess to you. Maybe in fact you share my problem. There is that waiting which is about putting off the evil day when you’ve to start doing that thing you really don’t want to, or when you have to begin that job you fear might be too big for you. ust now at home, it’s my decking. It’ll be a big job, so I think: better not to start yet. Time’s not right. I need a week of good weather. I need the loan of my son-in-law’s power washer. I need . . . actually what I do need is just to get on with it. And that applies just as much to the spiritual tasks I find reasons to postpone. For all their uncertainties, the disciples waited in hope, waited with a deep desire to get on with things. There was nothing of the avoidance tactic in their waiting.
A few months back I was listening to a talk given by a youth worker from the Church of South India. She was very young herself, and full of enthusiasm and commitment. She talked about the 150 evangelists that were at work in her remote, poor and very rural part of India, travelling from village to village, but finding it hard. So they were equipping all of them with bicycles. So far they had fifteen; only 135 to go. She was very excited about that. Her church was very poor, and there wasn’t much chance they’d be able to raise enough money to buy all the bicycles they needed, but she was sure they would arrive somehow, because she was sure this was what God wanted.
So for now they were waiting, waiting for help to arrive from friends and partners. But what struck me as she spoke was that just because you need to wait doesn’t mean you don’t also make a start. And for the young woman who was addressing us and for her co-workers back home, the fact that they’d been able to make a successful start was all the assurance they needed that they’d be able to finish the job.
A week today is not only the start of Christian Aid Week but also the Day of Pentecost. Today we wait on our King ascended into heaven but at the same time always with his people. We wait on his promised gift of the Spirit. May we wait prayerfully and purposefully, may we wait with confidence and hope, may we wait with enthusiasm, wanting to make a start, ready to offer ourselves in the service of our Lord and in his mission of love to the world. Lord, lift our vision, and help us to wait with the hope of a better world in our hearts. Renew us in eager faith and in mutual love. And as we see what you would have us do, help us to begin now, but always to expect more. Amen.
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