'When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.'
--Acts 1: 6-14
Those of you who are familiar with the church’s calendar of high holy days, will recognize that we are in the middle of two of the most sacred moments in the life of Christianity: the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost.
Depiction of the Ascension on a notecard from Chad, Central Africa.
The Ascension is the name we give to the event we heard about in our first reading this morning. This is Jesus’ return to heaven, and it is marked every year exactly 40 days after Easter, so it always falls on a Thursday. Many times we move the celebration of this day to Sunday so that we can hear the story once more of Jesus’ last action on earth, his physical return into the heavens with the words to his apostles that that they will receive power from the Holy Spirit and will go into the world to be his witnesses.
The Day of Pentecost, which we will celebrate next Sunday, is the fulfillment of that promise from Jesus, the day that the Holy Spirit comes among the apostles and inspires them to put their faith into action.
The Day of Pentecost, as depicted by El Greco.
Today, though, we are somewhere in-between those two moments. This is what we call a liminal space, a thin place, if you will, not quite this but not yet that. This liminality is an important feature in the way that the story of Christianity plays out. Jesus is raised from the dead on Easter Sunday and spends 40 days appearing to his followers. On the day that he returns into heaven he does not bestow the gift of the Spirit on the apostles right then and there, instead they have to go back to Jerusalem, back into their home, back into isolation—social distancing, maybe?—and there they must enter into a time of intentional prayer, a time of waiting for God to act. This is the only way that the story can play out.
That’s because right down to the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, the apostles still don’t really understand. In the moments before he ascends they wonder if this is the time that he will finally restore the kingdom to Israel. Think about what they are asking him in that moment. They wonder if this will mark a return to the past, the restoration of a monarchy long since dissolved. Their minds are not fixed on what is ahead, on what can be, but rather on what already has been. This is why they cannot receive the Holy Spirit in this moment, the reason why they need to return to Jerusalem and enter that period of intentional waiting. Jesus, for his part, immediately redirects them. It’s not about the restoration of something from the past, and what’s more it’s not their place to even begin to figure out how, when, or even if God the Father will do such a thing. Theirs is to be recipients of the promised Spirit, to embrace the presence and power of the Spirit in their midst, and to be agents of that power and presence out in the world. The only way they can do this, though, is to enter that liminal space of waiting, watching, and praying.
The day Jesus ascended into heaven the apostles must have been filled with so much curiosity about what all of this meant, and maybe they were considering what the coming days were going to be like, or they just wanted to bask in the moment, staring up to heaven and taking it all in. Then like THAT they’re told in no uncertain terms by these angelic figures in white that they need to stop what they’re doing and go home. I wonder what that walk down from the Mount of Olives to their little apartment was like. Maybe they complained or wondered who those angels thought they were to tell them what to do. Or maybe there was a gentle acceptance. Regardless of how they got there, they did go back, and what’s most important is that they entered into that time not knowing when God was going to act but trusting that God would. Someday.
That trust took the form of their constant devotion to prayer and caring for one another in the context of community. It was because of this period, this in-between time, and the way that they used it, that the apostles were able to not only receive the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost but transform the world as we know it by the Spirit’s power.
We are in a liminal space right now, not just the liminal space between the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost, but the liminal space between what was and what is to be. Like the apostles we have been driven back into our homes and told to stay there, to wait for…something. This is where we are now. There are a few ways that we can look at our situation, both as individuals and as members of communities. We can be stuck here, bored out of our minds, frustrated by all of the unknowns—about the virus and about if and when things can be normalized—or we can see this time as a gift, the gift of liminality. Now is the time for us to pray for guidance, for comfort, for strength, and for patience. Now is the time for us to care for one another in the context of our various communities—and yes, caring does mean remaining separated. Now is the time for us to wait for…something, for the Holy Spirit to tell us when we, like the apostles, can go back out into the world. And when we do, thanks to this time of discernment and intentional prayer we will be poised, like them, to transform the world as we know it.
There are a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainties in our lives right now, but one thing that is certain is that whatever God has in store for us will not be a restoration of something from the past. Rather, whatever is to come will be a new future highlighted by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Neither the Ascension, nor Pentecost, was the day when Jesus restored the kingdom to Israel. That day never happened. Many of us have been hoping and praying that God will likewise restore our world to the version that we knew, to something familiar. Yet it is clear that this is not how God operates. Jesus tells the apostles before he leaves them that they are not to be concerned with such matters, but they are to be recipients of the Spirit, so that they may move the world forward, toward that promised Kingdom that we always pray will come on earth as it is in heaven. Christians are not a people who look to restore the past, but as a people of resurrection we look for new life and meaning in a future that is guided by the Holy Spirit and with Jesus at its epicenter.
There is no going back, there is only the forward movement of God. Likewise, some of us may find ourselves looking up into heaven, waiting on Jesus to return and fix everything, like the apostles staring into the sky when Jesus left them. But discernment and intentionality are not passive actions. We are not so much waiting for God to act, as we are watching and listening for the ways that God is calling us into action. These were the hallmarks of that liminal time in the lives of the apostles, a time that we find ourselves in now. It's a time that can be, if we let it, a tremendous gift from God.
