Prayerful Waiting

Only Luke tells us about the Ascension. He tells the story twice, to close his first book, his Gospel, and to begin his second book, the Acts of the Apostles. Acts is sometimes called Acts Luke’s Gospel of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel takes us with Jesus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and in Acts we go with the disciples on from Jerusalem to Rome, and into all the world.

It’s in Jerusalem, or just outside at Bethany, that Jesus takes leave of his disciples. And they return to Jerusalem to wait prayerfully and joyfully for the gift of power and prophecy and insight that he’s promised them. The Gospel tells how the disciples travelled with Jesus from Galilee to Judaea, along country roads and city streets, listening, watching and learning, and growing more and more certain that this was the man through whom God would act to save and restore his people. But then their hopes were dashed; they fled in terror as he was arrested, quickly condemned in a staged trial and put to death on a cross. But then there is Easter: their Lord was with them again; over a period of forty days he taught them how in the prophets and psalms the servant who would suffer and die to save God’s people was foreseen. They came to see that what had seemed so much like failure and the ending of all their dreams and hopes was in fact God’s salvation being brought to its wonderful fruition. The cross, the ultimate sign of degradation and defeat, was instead a throne, the place where we are drawn to know the wonder of divine love.

And this good news, God’s love triumphant over sin and death, isn’t reserved for any one place, or any one time, or any one people. There is what we call the Great Commission: "Go into every place, preach the Gospel to every nation." The disciples were about to begin this work.

Next Sunday, Pentecost, the Church recalls how the disciples were given the power they needed to be God’s witnesses to the world. As he left them on that hillside at Bethany with his hands lifted in blessing, Jesus told them to stay in the city until they were clothed with the power from on high. Today we remember those days of prayerful waiting, and in our diocese and across the Church of England we’re asked again this year to spend time ourselves in prayer for the Church in mission; to wait prayerfully, for God still has work for us to do.

We may think we’re too weak and small to do that work; we may well think the task’s too much for us, but it isn’t. Those who waited in Jerusalem were a tiny band of folk: not well educated, not well off, not well known. They had no buildings or organisation, and they were probably quite frightened, too, for Jerusalem was a dangerous place for any friends of this man who’d been crucified.

But they waited, and they prayed. I doubt they prayed for anything in particular; how can they have known what to pray for? But prayerfully they placed themselves at God’s disposal, to be used as he desired. Often as the Church we are tempted to set our own agenda, whatever that agenda may be. To keep things how they’ve always been, perhaps? To defend the Church’s prestige, its standing in society? To make sure our Church is large and growing - but isn’t faithfulness to God’s word more important? To keep our Church rich and secure - but shouldn’t the Church of Christ be taking risks with poverty and generosity?

Last Sunday, Aldersgate Sunday, Methodists looked back to what happened to John Wesley when he waited prayerfully on God. he was already a Christian, a son of the vicarage and himself a Christian minister, but on that day he experienced God’s love and God’s call in a new and deeper way. His heart was, as he put it, strangely warmed, and a new ministry began.

Wesley’s words are used in the annual Methodist covenant service: “Christ has many services to be done; some are easy, others are difficult; some bring honour, others bring reproach; some are suitable to our natural inclinations and material interests, others are contrary to both. In some we may please Christ and please ourselves, in others we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. Yet the power to do all these things is given us in Christ, who strengthens us.”

The power to do all these things is given us in Christ. I was given a copy of those words not in my local Methodist Church, though I do go there quite often, but at our Cathedral last year, at an evening of sharing resources, ideas and expertise in mission and ministry, discovering some of the good things that are happening round our Diocese. Next Sunday there’ll be another event at the Cathedral, which I hope to attend, to follow this time of prayerful waiting that reflects how those first apostles waited on God in Jerusalem. The gifts of the Spirit are promised to us as to them - to equip God’s Church for the challenge of mission in this confused and often hurting world, a world so much in need of his love.

Like those first apostles, our prayer is mostly about listening for God, waiting expectantly for his call. His promise hasn’t changed: "Commit yourself to me, to my way of love, and my Spirit will be your strength, your guide, your hope and your vision."