Sermon: See and Tell

Text: Acts 1:6-14

Date: May 8, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

It must have been a stupefying thing to witness, the Ascension. Stupefying. Difficult to absorb. If you read between the lines of the Ascension account in Acts, you get the impression that the disciples stood around for quite a while staring skyward. If they spoke, it wouldn’t surprise me if they said something like what you heard in that little drama—simple, inarticulate, stupefied, fuzzy-tongued things. Gone! Where? Up! How?? Just like that! What happens now? Dunno.

You get the impression the disciples are kind of stuck there, staring open-mouthed at where the Lord disappeared from view, stuck like an old vinyl record with a scratch (remember those?). Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. What now, what now, what now, what now? They need a pair of heavenly messengers to give them a little nudge, just like we used to do to the record needle when it got stuck, stuck, stuck. “Why are you still standing here looking up toward heaven?” Nudge. Oh! Can’t you see them snapping out of it and deciding they had better get on with it, even though they weren’t sure what getting on with it meant? Then, the story says, they returned to Jerusalem and devoted themselves to prayer. Devoting oneself to prayer is always a good idea when one is stuck in a “what now, what now, what now?” groove.

It’s fascinating to me that the disciples needed the heavenly messengers to help them interpret what they had seen right after the Ascension. The disciples couldn’t quite figure out the meaning of what they had experienced, and their inability to understand it immobilized them. They needed the messengers to help them assign meaning to what they had observed before they could move on. According to the story, the messengers didn’t give them much. “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” It wasn’t much. But it was enough to assure the disciples that this was not the end of the Jesus story.

This was not the end of the story, but the beginning of Act III, which would be followed by Act IV at some point. The framework of Luke-Acts (two biblical volumes by the same author) implies that God’s drama plays out through several eras of time: the era before Jesus, the era of the lifetime of Jesus, the era of the church, and the era of the fulfilled Kingdom of God. Although the book of Acts focuses on the era of the church without much emphasis on the anticipated return of Christ, the heavenly messengers speaking here in the opening chapter put a frame on the whole story that very definitely includes future fulfillment or completion.

The messengers’ one-sentence interpretation of what was going on was enough to unstick the disciples and allow them to prepare to get on with Act III. They didn’t know everything, but they knew enough to trust that they had not just seen the final curtain. It was good of God, wasn’t it, to send those interpreters to the stupefied disciples? My little inspirational sayings calendar had this quotation from Pam Houston a few days ago: “Life gives us what we need when we need it.” You can read “God” in where the word “life” appears. “God gives us what we need when we need it.”

Houston’s quote has a second part that is equally true: “Receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing.” Yup. God gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what God gives us is a whole `nother thing. Sometimes I think we’re just too stupefied to receive the messages God is sending. But that’s another sermon for another time.

You know that the book of Acts takes a very dramatic turn in the next couple of pages. The Holy Spirit comes over the disciples while they are praying, and the same stupefied men and women who needed interpreters to help them figure out what was going on become interpreters themselves. Hilmer Krause says that following the Ascension the disciples begin to “stand as vehicles between the revealer and those who are to receive the revelation.”[1] They will now be vehicles—interesting word—between God being revealed and those to whom God’s grace needs to be revealed. They will carry the revelation to people clear to the ends of the earth.

They become witnesses. Witnesses—not just in the sense of having seen something, but now in the sense of testifying to what they have seen. This is what Jesus told them would happen in his parting words: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.” [Acts 1:8] They will not just be talking about what they saw God do in the past in the life events of Jesus of Nazareth; they will witness to the continuation of God’s work during the era of the church. They as witnesses will see and tell. They will interpret God’s work for those who are not sure what they are looking at.

There is great depth to the concept of seeing in the New Testament. Leslie Weatherhead points out that New Testament writers use different Greek words for “see.” They use blepo or theoro for what comes through the optic nerves, and horao for mental insight or spiritual vision. In John 16: 16, for instance: “A little while and you will see (theoro) me no more; again, a little while and you will see (horao) me.” Weatherhead declares, “I have no doubt whatever what he intended by using the word theoro for Jesus’ physical presence and horao for His spiritual or resurrection presence.”[2] Ascension Sunday on the liturgical calendar is where the corner is turned between seeing Jesus in the world along the pathways of the optic nerve and seeing Christ in the world along the pathways of the inner eye, along the pathway of insight.

Those who have seen with the physical eye will see with what Ephesians calls the eyes of the heart. But seeing alone will not be enough; they are called to help others see Christ/Spirit in the world, or to help others make sense of what they are seeing in the world so that Christ/Spirit is revealed. Called to be interpreters, called to be witnesses. See and tell. It was those first disciples’ new calling, and it is ours as well.

Once we have been touched and changed by Christ/Spirit, we are to be witnesses, vehicles of the revelation of grace to those to whom grace needs to be revealed. Witnesses. Vehicles. Theologians. God needs theologians to interpret God’s ongoing creative action in the world. We may think of being a theologian as a calling that is a little beyond most of our abilities. Maybe you have favorite theologians whose work you enjoy reading. Do you? Who are they?

I have been helped and blessed by the work of some awesome theologians who have helped me make sense of the whole God scene: John Cobb, Marjorie Suchoki, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Huston Smith, John Shelby Spong, to name a few. United Church of Canada pastor Douglas Bacon remembers a seminary conversation about favorite theologians in which, after the famous theologians were named, the professor reminded the ministry students that unnamed theologians were the people who probably had the most influence over their life and faith. A person doesn’t need to have five degrees and a large vocabulary and a published work to be an influential theologian, because it is the people we know, people close to us who most often help us see patterns of grace in the world.

For me, Grandma Flodin, who showed me unconditional love and planted a seed of potentiality in me as a child by hinting that I might be the little child through whom God would lead. George Harper, who gave an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer at church camp one year, some of which I still remember 30 years later. Bob Holmes, who helped me see evidence of God’s design in the balance and beauty of nature. My brother Steve, who startled me by giving his heart to Jesus one summer, showing me how a pure heart can shine even in a teenage brother with stinky feet. My mom, whose steadfast commitment to the church has weathered so many seasons in a little country chapel. There are some big fancy words in theological lingo for what I was learning: soteriology, epistemology, hermeneutics, exegesis, ecclesiology. None of the people I’ve named would have sat down and thought in advance about their actions or words as Lesson #17 in any of those “ologies;” they didn’t have to. God so often gives us what we need through the people right in the room who are quite unselfconsciously “ologizing.”

God will have witnesses. Does it unnerve you to realize that you, as a person of faith, are among them? We are among the witnesses at this end of the earth. We’re needed to help our neighbors interpret their lives as if God were a part of them. Don’t panic. A great deal of witnessing takes place when we’re not conscious of it; we witness by the way we live our lives and the way we carry on a conversation in the grocery store. Attentive listening while someone close by is trying to work out the meaning of their life is also a great witness. We don’t necessarily have to be up on all things biblical and theological before we can be a witness.

Sometimes, however, we’re called upon to be articulate about what we believe and why. Don’t panic! A recent article in the national UCC newspaper gave some useful “tips for would-be witnesses.” Let me share a few of them with you. One was, “Get prepared. Rehearse your own story.” The Apostle Peter reportedly said, “Always be prepared to give an accounting of the hope that is within you.” Take some time for spiritual inventory. Make some order out of the evidence that God has presented to you. It’s likely your story could use a little practice. Ask yourself why you’re here? Why do you go to church? Why is this important to you? Think through the answers to such questions in advance so that when the time is right to tell your story, you’ll be ready.

The article suggests we “Focus on liturgical—not biblical—competence.” Biblical literacy is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that people tend to use the Bible to confirm their own worldviews. We can more fruitfully study the liturgy of the church and its major themes such as—for example—why we confess our sins and offer an assurance of forgiveness. We can focus on themes that come up year after year in the ritual calendar of the church: promise, hope, doubt, betrayal, suffering, forgiveness, grace, redemption, love, and so forth.

Another tip: “Emphasize God’s multiple promises.” Christians may have a tendency to “flatten out the promise in terms of heaven only.” But God has multiple promises: the wiping away of every tear, the strengthening of the faint-hearted, the place at the table for everyone, the beating of swords into plowshares, the turning of mourning into dancing, etc. I remember once telling a woman who was going through a horrible divorce about God’s vomit promise. That is, I likened her situation to being swallowed up like Jonah was in the belly of the whale, being in the dark, in the deeps, disoriented and afraid. But eventually she would be vomited up on the beach like Jonah was, back into full light and air and new life.

I have no idea if this was helpful to her, which leads me to the last tip offered: “Leave the results to God.” The outcome of the way we share our faith is in God’s hands. A few moments ago I paraphrased Patricia Houston saying, “God gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what God gives us is a whole `nother thing.” We’re not responsible for what the receiver of our witness does with it. We may be planting a seed that won’t germinate for another fifty years. We’re just called upon to do our best and let God worry about what happens next.

We run into plenty of people who are stuck, stuck, stuck in some kind of rut, rut, rut, brought on by confusion, despair, apathy, unexpected opportunity, sudden changes, all kinds of things. Plenty of people need a witness or an interpreter to help them see how God might be at work in their situation so they can move on in a positive direction. You may well be the heavenly messenger that’s being sent. Be prepared but don’t worry about being polished. Just tell what you’ve seen.

See and tell. There’s a story told about an old man who had taken his grandson fishing off a pier in Florida. They had had a wonderful day, and the old man had been very patient with his grandson's questions about things, such as "Why does it rain?" and "Where do birds go when they die?" At last, the sun was setting and it was time to pull in their lines and go home. "Grandpa," asked the boy, looking up at his grandfather, "does anybody ever see God?" The old man paused over the hooks and lines. He looked out at the colors of the gathering twilight, then down at the lovely face of the boy. A tear slipped onto his cheek and he felt something clutch at his heart. "Son," he said, "it's getting so I hardly see anything else."

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[1] Krause, Hilmer Charles Word and Witness May 23, 1993, Vol. 93:3, p. 140

[2] Weatherhead, Leslie The Resurrection of Christ Hodder & Stoughton, p. 50