Don’t Just Stand There

Earnest Pool tells the story of a little boy who loved to watch the outgoing ships from his home on Brooklyn Heights. One day, the little boy heard Henry Ward Beecher preach on a harbor as a place of refuge into which storm-tossed ships put for safety. “You big chump,” he said. Now, why would the boy call the preacher a big chump? The little boy explained, “… what was this he was saying? Something about ‘the harbor of life.’ The harbor! In an instant I was listening hard; for this was something I knew about. ‘Safe in the harbor,’ I heard him say; ‘Home to the harbor at last to rest.’ And then, when he passed on to something else I didn’t know about, I settled disgustedly back on the pew. ‘You big chump,’ I thought contemptuously. To hear him talk, you would have thought the harbor was a place to snuggle down in, a nice little place to come home to at night. I guess he has never seen it much. The harbor is a place of restlessness, heaving, changing, it has never seemed a place where ships come to dock, but always a place from which ships start out – into the storms and the fogs of the seas.’”

The disciples are looking to Jesus for a safe harbor, and if we are honest, we have a tendency to as well. Over the weeks since Easter, we have focused our attention on Jesus’ appearances to his followers after his resurrection. The writer of Luke and Acts tells us 3 of these stories in the Gospel of Luke, and then begins Acts by saying, “Jesus presented himself to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”

But, he writes that when they had come together they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God, but they are still thinking about the kingdom of Israel. Dr. Albert Winn, who was a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, said of the disciples’ question, “They rightly understood Jesus’ resurrection as God’s decisive victory over all the forces of evil. Would it not be immediately followed by the complete and visible establishment of his Kingdom? The prophets and even Jesus himself had said things which would lead them to regard the Resurrection as the opening act of the final drama. In the same way, it was natural for them to think of Israel as the center of God’s coming Kingdom. It is so pictured in the Old Testament, and Jesus’ own ministry had been largely confined to Israel. Jesus’ answer is a gentle correction of both of these misunderstandings.”

The disciples were ready for safe harbor. The time…is the time now…to come to the dock and tie up? Your people…will you gather your people into the harbor? But Jesus says that only the Father knows the times for the kingdom to come and rather than gathered in, the Holy Spirit it going to come upon you and send you out. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jerusalem and Judea might have been expected. But Samaria? Most Jews walked the long way around Samaria to get to Galilee. Jesus hadn’t. He had even talked to a woman at a well there once. Associating with Samaritans made you unclean…and now he was including them in his commission. Clearly, this was no gathering into a safe harbor.

They couldn’t believe it. They were trying to understand it. And as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud too him out of their sight. Remember, throughout Scripture a cloud represents the presence of God, so he was taken out of their sight into the presence of God.

And they were left standing there. Looking up. I can just imagine their thoughts:
What just happened? Did I really just see what I think I saw? What now?

While they were gazing up suddenly, two men in white robes stood by them. “Why are you standing here looking up? He’s coming back the same way you saw him go.”

Don’t just stand there. He gave you instructions, and he’s coming back. Go…

First, go to the harbor, to Jerusalem, to the Temple, to worship. This is the place where the ships start out. This is where the disciples start out. Here, in worship, here at Christ’s Table, this is the place where the ships start out. Receive the Holy Spirit.

And then go – into the storms and the fogs of the seas. Into Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Into the places you are comfortable, and the places you wouldn’t want to be, and to the ends of the earth. Remember, they thought the ends of the earth were the seas…and the seas represented chaos and evil and unknown. We are called even there as witnesses. We are called to live Christ’s message and mission.

Not just when the water is calm and the sun is shining. Not just when we find ourselves welcomed to Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor where all the women are strong, the men are handsome and the children above average.

We are called to live Christ’s message in the midst of strength failing and what should be beautiful turning ugly and in moments of struggle and failure and disappointment and disillusionment.

This week I posted an article on facebook about offering advice to cancer patients. The author shared that. One of the last and most frightening lessons he learned with his sister in her final days was the importance of being with another when there is nothing to say or do. It is terrifying, to just be with a loved one and to admit you’re powerless to stop their death.

But it can be the most powerful, quiet and loving gift you can give each other.

Trust yourself to love them in the condition they’re in. That’s what witnesses do. We love.

We are sent out of the harbor to love. So why do we just stand there? Sometimes it’s easier to say we are waiting for a sign, or to say we are awaiting for the right opportunity. It’s easier to say we aren’t holy enough or studied enough or that we are waiting for the right time in our lives. We aren’t like those people we read about in the Bible. Life was simpler then, right? Annie Dillard writes about such musings in her book Holy the Firm:

A blur of romance clings to our notion of these people in the Bible as though of course God should come to these simple folks, these Sunday School watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves while we now are complex and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? There is no one but us. There is no one to send nor a pure heart on the face of the earth but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time. But there is no one but us. There never has been. There are generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day.”

There is no one but us, not in this time and space. And so we come into the harbor, to worship, to the Table. Here God fills us with God’s Spirit. And sends us forth to be witnesses. Witnesses to God for his love, revealed to us in Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.

From The Harbor, by Earnest Poole (The Macmillan Co.)
The Layman’s Bible Commentary, Acts of the Apostles, by Dr. Albert Curry Winn (John Knox Press)