When you’re in hospital, however briefly, you’re placing yourself in the hands of people who know everything (or at least, you hope they do), while you know nothing. You’re quite helpless to help yourself, especially once they’ve got the line inserted and the sedative is flowing. That can feel a bit uncomfortable, but the staff were very reassuring as I checked in.
I’d travelled in by bus, and as I waited for it, I could feel I had some control over my own immediate destiny. After all, I knew what time the bus was due, and what route it would take, and if there was any great delay I had my phone and I could make other arrangements. It was a bit late, as it happens, and I got a bit annoyed as I watched for it without seeing it come. But then the driver kept his foot down, and the roads were fairly clear, and I was still on time at the hospital.
How in control of their own destiny were the disciples as they waited in Jerusalem, having said farewell to their Master on the hill outside the city? Not at all, really. Over the period from Easter Day to the Ascension they had offered themselves to him completely. They were, as Paul later described himself, his people, his possession, and no longer their own. So was their waiting worrisome or frustrating? No. They waited joyfully, and purposefully, and prayerfully. Whatever they thought might happen at the event we celebrate next Sunday, the first Christian Day of Pentecost, nothing could really have prepared them.
On that day they were so overtaken by the joy of knowing God’s active and dynamic presence right where they were that they could only describe what happened to them using images like wind and fire, things that are essentially wild and uncontrollable. So the Church was born in an explosion of joy. But before that could happen the disciples needed to wait, and to pray as they waited. Christian action needs the stillness of prayer as its starting point, for prayer is about tuning ourselves in to God.
“Go into all the world, and make disciples of every nation.” That was a big ask for a tiny group of people who just a month and a half earlier had been hiding behind locked doors, full of fear, with nothing to do but to try and pick up the pieces of their old lives. Things had changed for them, even before the dramatic gift of the Holy Spirit? And a single word - trust - sums it up.
Waiting in hospital the other day, I needed the reassurance with which I was greeted, because I needed to trust the doctor and nurses who’d be examining and treating me. Actually, I was a bit nonplussed to be asked if I’d mind a trainee doing the work - to be honest, the image that floated into my mind was of some young spotty oik on work experience. “Don’t worry,” said the check-in nurse, no doubt seeing the expression on my face, “the doctor will be there the whole time.” I didn’t actually spot any trainee - but I didn’t know who anyone was, so I needed to trust the uniforms and the name badges and the assurances I’d been given.
We take a lot on trust every day, when you think about it. Even on the bus in, I needed to trust the guy behind the wheel to convey me, and quite a few other people, safely and speedily to where we were going. There are multiple checks in hospitals, and I was asked by several different people for my full name and date of birth, which they checked against my wristband. That helped me to trust I wouldn’t get mixed up with someone else, but you still have to trust they’ll be doing the job right.
As they waited in Jerusalem, the disciples had trust in Jesus - and it was a different trust from how they’d trusted him before, as they followed him along the road, village to village. They trusted then him as their teacher, as a rabbi, a man of God. But now they trusted him as something more, and it was Thomas who said it first, when, on the Sunday after Easter, he declared, “My Lord and my God.” Now they trusted that all that had happened - the cross and what looked like a final defeat - that all of this had been God’s plan of salvation being decisively worked out, a great battle won - not only for them but for all the world. They had thought he would restore the Kingdom of Israel and be a new King David: now they knew that in him new life and hope and freedom was being offered to all people everywhere. And they could trust the promise he now gave them: that what they waited for would be given - the power and vision and authority to carry through the immense task entrusted to them - to go out into all the world, and make disciples of every nation.
That work still continues; the Church exists to do mission, and to live a faith we’re called to share with all the world. We’re small and few, but no smaller and fewer than the group of men who started this ball rolling. And the promise still applies. I’m not good at waiting, but I know I need to do it, because I know I need to pray. Each celebration of Pentecost begins a new chapter in our life and ministry; and to be part of that I need to be tuned in to God, and open to his will and to the gift of his Spirit. So in these days of waiting I need to set aside time to reflect and to pray and to get right with him, so as to hear what he’s saying to me, and to accept what he’s offering me, and to be fruitful in his service.
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