Why Do You Stand Looking?

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Acts 1: 1-11 Sermon Title: Why Do You Stand Looking? Preached on June 2, 2019 My family and I spent the last week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We traveled there with Sara’s family. All of us were in one big house, which was an adventure in and of itself. There was also the challenge that fell mostly to Sara, of managing all the wants and needs of this group of people who all wanted to do different things while also wanting to stick together. One day during the trip we drove out to a pilgrimage cite. That trip made its way to the agenda because, while both their daughters married protestant ministers, Sara’s mother and father are Roman Catholic. Since we were staying so close to El Santuario De Chimayo, a shrine and pilgrimage cite that attracts about 300,000 people each year, they both wanted to go and check it out, having heard that it is like the Lourdes of the Southwest. I was excited to go too, as Presbyterians don’t often get to go to these kinds of places. All over the site were pictures of people who had been healed. Crutches left by those who didn’t need them any longer. It’s a place with a supposed miraculous soil that comes from a holy well, where a man named Don Bernardo Abeyta found a crucifix in 1810, while doing penance. According to this legend, Christ met him out there in the New Mexico desert. This is a story that many people believe, but Presbyterians tend to be skeptical of this kind of thing. However, thinking of Acts, it should come as no surprise that the Lord would be present in New Mexico, for just as Don Bernardo found a crucifix there in 1810 while doing penance, last week we celebrated the Apostle Paul who went all the way to Macedonia and joined God who was already at work there. Likewise, in Acts, Peter went to visit a Roman Centurion named Cornelius, only to find that God had prepared even the heart of one who served the Empire to hear him preach the Gospel. It’s miraculous, and I’ve had the same experience in my life of being surprised by the presence of God in faraway places. As a High School student, I thought that we were sent by this church to bring the light of Christ to Mexico. We went there to build houses just as a group from our church is doing now, only, every time we went, we discovered that God had beat us there. We have to remember that, because the disciples saw Jesus ascend into heaven, and they were stuck for a moment, still staring up at the sky. Of course, they were, for too often we become obsessed with where we saw God at work last, rather than focus our attention on where God is at work now. I believe the life of faith is something like learning to ride a bike. It must be, because in one moment, just as the disciples had Jesus there, so we knew that our father was holding the seat, but as we and the bike moved forward, even though he promised not to, a good father always let’s go. For moments everything was fine, we were riding a bike and it was as miraculous as Peter walking on the water. Then, we looked back to where our father was, and not seeing him where he was, we lost balance and fell, because life, like riding a bike, requires that we pay more attention to where we are going than where we’ve been. Christ ascended into heaven, and the disciples were transfixed, staring up at the clouds. Suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” It’s as though they were saying: He’s not up there in the clouds anymore. You have to stop looking for him there or you’ll fall. While we were out west, we visited the Cliff Dwellings at Bandoleer National Park. This was an exciting place to go and be because there we saw human residences, thousands of years old. They were ancient apartment buildings made of wood and mud. It was incredible. So incredible that Lily and Cece’s cousin Sam wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. He was looking up, and so he slipped and fell and scraped his knee and elbow. It happened on my watch, so I picked him up and brushed him off. He needed a Band-Aid, which of course, I did not have. Luckily, a woman in a blue hat stopped and pulled one out of her little purse. That made him feel better. Icing on the cake was the piece of gum that she pulled out of her purse next. When Sara caught up, this lady said to her, “He did just fine.” I said, “Thank you,” because I thought she was talking about me. She wasn’t. She was talking about Sam, and now I see this experience as one of those little miracles. So far, this woman in the blue hat has worked more wonders than the dirt I got out of the well at El Santuario De Chimayo. That’s not immediately obvious however, because so often we just brush off such acts of the Spirit off as though they were happenstance. Years ago, I was visiting a lonely woman in her home. She was going on and on about how no one from the church ever speaks to her. I was empathetic because it’s always tragic when the church fails at being the church, but it happens, so I apologized. However, then the phone rang. It was a member of the church calling to check on her. I could hear the conversation, “I’ve missed seeing you and just wanted to see how you were,” says the church member on the line. Once she hung up, thanking this woman from the church, ironically, she just launched right back into it, “no one from the church even knows me!” She failed to see Jesus right before her, focused somewhere else. Too often we are the way. Chaining our focus on where he was, we fail to see where he is. In this way, the past becomes a prison to too many, despite the fact that God is even now opening the door to freedom and new life. So rarely do we open our eyes enough to recognize, that Christ is still at work, just not always where we expect him to be. This is an important lesson for our church today, because we have not yet reached the Promised Land, though we are tempted to mistake the bygone days for it. Nor have we missed out on it, for we have yet to see the peak of what God will do among us. However, how God is moving in the present may look different from the past, and where God will lead us demands that we leave so much of our past behind. We don’t really know how God will move among us next, but we must choose looking for Him at work in new and mysterious ways over nostalgia or regret. There’s danger in both. Nostalgia doesn’t seem dangerous. Neither does looking up at the clouds, but there are Christians who are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good. There are living people so consumed with ancient history that they risk becoming dusty relics themselves. We sometimes honor the memory of the departed, over paying attention to the newborn. So regretful that we abdicate the promise of the future. So, used to hurt, that we fail to see the miracle worker even when he stands before us. We just look up at the clouds, blind to God all around us. That’s why we must hear them asking, “Men and women of Marietta, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” This God of ours incarnate in Christ Jesus is alive and well, leading us into a new future. I know it’s coming too. Because as I was working on this sermon, we were way up in the clouds, flying back home from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I didn’t see him there, but I remembered where he promised he would be: For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. [for truly the king of heaven said,] just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. Let us look into the future knowing that he’s leading us onward. And let us go out into the world today expecting for him to meet us there. Amen.