Saint Luke :1-4 & 24:44-53
In the second of his two part series on the adventures of Jesus and his disciples Saint Luke, whom we celebrate this day, after he describes again the ascension of Jesus puts an important question on the lips of a couple of angels: “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky?’”1 It is a great question because that was probably what they were doing, gazing up into heaven.
At this point they may have suffered from what the French call, l'esprit d'escalier, or in English “wit at the bottom of the stairs.” It is that pithy comeback to a snarky comment made to you that you think of not at the moment, but when you are driving home, or two days later, or literally when you have cleaned up all the dishes and are at the bottom of the stairs heading for bed. It is that moment when the witty rejoinder comes to you and you snap you fingers, or slap your forehead, and say to yourself, “I wish I had said that.”
Excellent scholar that Saint Luke is he records no reply except that they returned to Jerusalem where they might have replaced staring at the sky with staring at the ceiling.
So, as the self-proclaimed master of the quick comeback to people who are being snarky, and with almost two thousand years to think about it, I’m going to begin by taking up the disciple’s cause and suggesting what they should have said to that know-it-all pair of angels.
"Why are we gazing up into heaven? Why are we just standing here looking up into the sky? I’ll tell you why!
“At an impulse we tied ourselves to this man Jesus and his mission. We had three wonderful years with him and watched him do some amazing things. He healed countless sick people! He catered a banquet for a few thousand with provisions that were meagre at best. He reached across boundaries and talked to people, helped people, that we would have never thought to speak to much less heap. These were high times.
“Sure, on occasion, he upset the political and religious apple cart and called into question some long held and cherished beliefs of both state and church, but we never thought that would be enough to get him killed, crucified.
“Then, listen our two fine winged friends, he came back! Not in spirit, not as a ghost, he came back, and we had resurrection parties. They started when two people, dressed a lot like you two, told us he had risen.
“Sure, he was not with us all the time like he used to be, but two members of our group met him when they sadly took a hike to Emmaus and he came to them, broke bread with them and blessed them and it was if their hearts were on fire with new life, new hope.
“Then, later that evening he showed up again! He invited us to look at the scares in his hands and feet! He had supper with us. Had a little broiled fish that he seemed to enjoy a lot.
He was in and out of our lives countless times. Ask Thomas who couldn’t believe but now does! Ask Peter, and the rest of the fisherman who saw him and ate breakfast with him on a beach.
“Now he’s gone ‘vanishing into the fog like the end of a dream too good to be true.’2”
The disciple’s had that “deer in the headlights” stare because they didn’t know what to do with all this and they faced a societal, political and religious landscape that was openly hostile to Jesus' message.
Here we might be able to begin to understand them better because the landscape we face is not so much hostile but indifferent.
I can think of no better example for this than last Sunday’s sermon preached by Dr. James Keck, at Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. He told the story about a student who had just graduated and was struggling with what career to go into. “At one point,’ Dr. Keck reported, he suddenly said to me. ‘I want to do what you do, but without all the religious stuff.’”3
The young man wanted to do a lot of wonderful stuff that should be commended – tutor after school, serve in a soup kitchen or overnight shelter, even build houses with Habitat for Humanity – he just didn’t want all the religious baggage that went with his good deeds.
There are so many people like this young fellow that we even have names for them. They are the “Spiritual But Not Religious” or they may be the “Nones”. {N-O-N-E-S} who seem to be a fast-growing group.
“In a Pew Research Study of religious participation in America ... Nones now make up 23 percent of adults, up from 16 percent in 2017.” 4
People who answer the question that way are probably our friends and neighbors. They are some of my best friends and sometimes I enjoy their company infinitely more than of the people that I know who are churched. They too, like my churchy friends, are moral men and woman, active in their communities, kind to children, puppies, and older people like me who need help with our coats every once and awhile. They are not only good people, but they are fun, great fun.
The problem, the always wise and wonderful, Dr. Lillian Daniels points out in her book, I’m Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To, is how some church leaders reacted to the revelation of their existence, which wasn’t really a revelation at all.
“What’s wrong with these Nones? Why aren’t they joining the church” many asked. When it was pointed out that if you are under thirty, there is a one in three chance that you’re a None, the religious leaders responded with predictable blame casting, “What’s wrong with these young people? What’s wrong with their parents?”5
Oh yes, that will bring them back!
I’ve had people say this to me on more than one occasion. “Where are they? Why aren’t they here? What’s wrong with them.” Like it is all their fault.
In business you know you have a disaster on your hands when you start blaming the customer or potential customers.
Once, after I was leaving another church after saying in a sermon that some of my best friends were unchurched, a member said to me as I was walking out the door, “Why don’t you get some of your unchurched friends to come here, we sure could use them.” Never one to suffer from a lack of wit at the bottom of the stairs or at the door of a church I responded, “I think that’s your job. I’m not even a member here.”
All of us need to remember that the church of 2022 is not the church of the 1950 when, to put it in crass terms, we lived in a seller’s marker. Now there are many choices to make both religious and secular.
Walk around this neighborhood or any neighborhood and you will see them. The days when there were just a limited assortment of churches – Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, United Methodist, United Church of Christ, are long gone. Now there are non-denominational churches, almost too many to number, and wonderful other faith traditions and communities added to the mix.
Many of us are old enough to remember when things virtually shut down on Sunday mornings. You could barely find a place to buy a bottle of milk or get a prescription refilled. Now there are a host of options for people, and they are exercising them. Everything from Health Clubs to Starbucks, to boozy brunches. Not that I am against any of those things. {Especially the boozy brunches!} But they are our competition and it’s a good thing to know what we are up against.
Just as Saint Luke remembered in Acts the time when Paul stood on Mars Hill just a few meters from the Parthenon and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”6 And that you even have a shrine with the inscription: “to the god nobody knows.”7 Or, as President Eisenhower once really said, "In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."8
That may what the church in Saint Luke’s day and Saint Luke church in our day faces.
It may be well to think of where we are in light of the two books Saint Luke wrote. The first, Luke’s was about what Jesus did and the second, was about what his followers did because of Jesus.
Right before Easter I heard a podcast that featured Dr. Amy-Jill Levine who holds the very unique position of being both the Professor of Jewish Studies, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She was asked by a United Methodist Pastor, Dr. James D. Howell, what she believed about the resurrection, and she said: “It isn’t about whether you can catch it on a camera, but can you see what the payoff is? I think the followers of Jesus genuinely experienced him as being alive and it changed their lives.”
“Look,” she went on, “I’ve seen Elvis twice on West End Avenue pumping gas, but it didn’t change my life. The people who saw Jesus [the resurrected Christ] it changed their lives.”8
That’s Luke’s story. That is the disciple’s story. That is our story. And we can only tell it if we let go of the past. Stop mourning the glory days of times gone by when churches were full and all of God’s people were, as Garrison Keillor used to say, made up of “women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children above average.”9
We can only honor all of Saint Luke’s hard work if we, like the disciples: “Don’t stand gazing into heaven. Or, in other words, let go of that distant spot in the sky now fading from your vision. Don’t try to live off your sweet memories of the past, as though God has nothing to do in the future.”10
God had lots for them to do just as God has lots for us to do.
Lillian Daniels said it is all about the difference between being a tourist and going on an adventure.
When you are a tourist, you approach the trip with a certain set of expectations. I want to see the Taj Mahal and get my picture taken in front of it.
When you are on an adventure you have to relinquish your expectations. If faith is an journey, you may need to accept that you may not know how this journey is going to turn out.
The early followers of Jesus may have started out as tourists. But they discovered that faith in him was a nonstop adventure. There was no playbook... No itinerary {and} when he died, they had the biggest shock of their lives. death did not swallow him up, but he was raised from the dead. Talk about a whole new travel itinerary.
Before that they thought they knew where the journey ended. But in the resurrection, they realized that {his} death {and resurrection} might be the beginning of the biggest adventure of their lives.11
Jesus is still calling us to join him on that adventure. It’s our turn now. It’s our turn. The same Holy Spirit who blew the roof off the place at Pentecost and has sustained the church through good times and bad over the centuries is with us. And we just might need that Spirit more than ever.
So, I guess the only question then are? Will we wait at the bottom of the stairs for just the right words to come at just the right moment? Will we stare at the sky or at the ceiling waiting for a sign or a signal. Or will we heed Christ’s call and, like the disciples that Saint Luke so wonderfully told us about, follow him to new adventures.
Shall we continue to follow him down paths yet to be taken, and journey’s unknown? Shall we continue to trust in his promise to always be with us even to the end of the ages?
Looks like our adventure with Christ is just beginning. It’s a great offer! It’s a great adventure! Maybe we should all stick with it and see where it goes.
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1. Acts 1:11a. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1995), 80.
3 .James Keck, Sermon, Morning Worship at First Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. (October 9, 2022) https://www.facebook.com/FirstPlymouthChurch/videos/1038529783489785.
4. Lillian Daniels, Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don't Belong to: Spirituality Without Stereotypes, Religion Without Ranting (New York, NY: Faithwords, 2017), 27.
5. ibid.
6. Acts 17:22b. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
7. Acts 17:22-23. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).
8. Dwight Eisenhower, “Quotes,” Eisenhower Presidential Library (Eisenhowerlibrary.gov), accessed October 14, 2022, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes#:~:text=%22In%20other%20words%2C%20our%20form,t%20care%20what%20it%
9. Drs. Amy-Jill Levine and James D. Howell, “Jesus And...Holy Week,” Myers Park United Methodist Church Weekly Bible Study webcast (Charlotte, North Carolina, April 6, 2022).
10. Garrison Keillor, “Garrison Keillor Quotes,” BrainyQuote (Xplore), accessed October 14, 2022, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/garrison_keillor_137097.
11. Carol Marie Noren, “Ascension: An Inside Story,” Pulpit Resource 29, no. 2 (2011): pp. 39-42.
12. Daniels, op.cit., p. 175.
Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke
16 October 2022
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