“Faltering steps”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Acts 1:1-14 (Forward, p. 90) CEV p. 1133
As a parent and grandparent, I have taken great delight in watching a youngster, a toddler, in his or her first faltering steps as he or she attempted to walk. The child is so ardent, so determined, and yet stumbles and falls repeatedly. But then, oh what a delight when that child succeeds in walking all the way to some chair or sofa or to the outstretched arms of some waiting adult.
Now, for an adult who has been immobilized by some accident or disease, the desire to be walking again is no less ardent or determined, but here it is also frustrating as the person knows fully well from beforehand what it was like to walk.
In some ways, it seems to me as if the earliest disciples were in a stage somewhere between the two. They knew what it was like to walk from having been with Jesus and having actually ventured out on their own on one or more mission trips. And so, there was that previous experience, that memory. But now, they were in some ways more like the toddler as they were now forced to do it without Jesus as backup. They would need the promised Holy Spirit to steady them and give them ‘sea legs’, but they didn’t know that quite yet.
I must say that they were really quite confused, quite in the dark, about where their future lay. On the one hand, they were told to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise of the Father. (Why wait? It made no sense. They had carried out ministry before this.) And equally in the dark was their sense of what Jesus was up to. They still were full of the ardent and eager expectation that Jesus might set up His earthly kingdom here and now. After all, if He could conquer death, what could possibly lay in His way! They had absolutely no idea that Jesus was about to be taken up into heaven and away from them physically, forever. Here the Spirit’s power would become absolutely crucial and necessary!
Meanwhile they resigned themselves to doing what is incredibly hard for us, and that is, to wait. No more feeble attempts at walking just now; that would come later once they had the strengthening power of the Holy Spirit.
Instead, for now, they just had to be patient and just let things be. The faltering steps, the walking, and later, the running, would come later, in its own sweet time, and what they would be able to accomplish would amaze them—and us. The wonderful thing in all this is that the Spirit’s transforming and strengthening power is available to all of us, even if none of us ‘happen’ to be tarrying in Jerusalem. Perhaps we too might have to wait a bit for it, but nonetheless, it is available to each and every follower of Jesus. Amen.
Forward notes: :When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (verse 9).
“How our readings get put together by the lectionary is a bit of a mystery sometimes. Today you’ll read Matthew’s gut-wrenching account of Jesus’s final moments on the cross [Matthew 27:45-54], together with the slightly slapstick murder of Eglon [Judges 3:12-30] as well as Christ’s ascension to heaven. Perhaps you are as tickled as I am to imagine the disciples all standing around, staring at the sky, while Jesus departs from them in a manner not that different from a helium balloon.
“What I see today is the movement from the particular to the universal. In Jesus’s death, the meaning of his life is transformed. His cross stands not just on Golgotha but over all humanity. By his resurrection and ascension, Jesus transcends living in one place and one time, visible to just one community of people. Jesus of Nazareth is now God who has lived with us, who knows what it means to be human, the Son, who with the Father and the Spirit, is accessible to all people, in all times and in all places—one God who is above all and through all and in all.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Research the history of the lectionary. Why do you think specific readings are placed together?”