Creekside Church Sermon of May 16, 1999 "Gazing or Witnessing? " Acts 1:6-14	Rev. David Bibbee
Send this sermon to a friend

Today's passage finds the disciples saying goodbye to Jesus all over again. Trying to imagine how it might have felt, I recalled the scene near the end of the Wizard of Oz. Surrounded by a sea of Munchkins in the center of Emerald City, the Wizard, Dorothy, and Toto are about to leave in a hot air balloon for Kansas. Seconds before they were to depart, Toto took off after a cat and Dorothy took off after Toto. She ran back to the platform but the balloon had been released from its moorings. I still swallow hard at this point of the film as the Wizard disappears into the heavens and poor Dorothy weeps because she thinks she has lost her only way home. A single violin plays a sorrowful rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

It was wonderful beyond words that Jesus was raised to life and again accessible, but he was leaving them ... this time for a very long time. He told them to stay in Jerusalem until they had received power from on high. Then in a way which can only be seen through the eyes of faith, Jesus was taken up, up and away. You know what it's like to have a house full of folks over for a dinner party. The air is filled with the sounds of conversation and laughter. But when the last guest leaves, it's suddenly silent and you feel a little wave of loneliness sweep over you. There are the pangs of pain a parent feels when their child leaves home for college, and with it the knowledge that from then on, home for them will be somewhere else. The looks on some of your faces says you know exactly what I mean.

I imagine it was like this for the disciples, only more so. I imagine they were sad, lonely, and feeling very much abandoned. Eleven men alone in a cold, cruel world saying to themselves, "What do we do now?" Then two white-robed men appeared. "We're glad you asked that question. Why are you standing around gazing at the clouds and holding hankies in your hands? Jesus has been taken up into heaven. One day he'll come as he went. Until then, you have business to tend to."

It would be easy to read this story and get caught up in how Jesus ascended, or get lost in the particulars about the temperature or terrain of heaven where Jesus now presides. But the scales of this story tilted more toward earth than heaven. The focus is not upon the mechanics of the ascension but upon the mandate to mission. Christ has something more for us to do than stare at the skies. Somebody said, "The knowledge of heaven isn't for us ... not yet." Don't dwell on what you don't know. For Christians, the promise is all we need. "I will go and prepare a place for you. In my father's house there are lots of rooms."

The future is God's. This present time and what to do in it is ours. If ascension Sunday holds meaning for us, then this is it ... we must be in mission. John Henry Neuman once said, "God has entrusted to me a mission like no one else's. God has equipped me to do a particular task in a way unique for me." But there is a broader mission which is to be assumed by every Christian. We are to be witnesses for Jesus Christ. "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the end of the earth."

A witness is simply one who tells the truth about what they have seen or experienced. A Christian witness is not polished or perfect. Christians are not better than others, just better informed. A Christian witness shows and tells others what they know about Jesus and how he has impacted their lives.

The Christian faith has not made it to the present because of supernatural events or the contributions of just a very few gifted leaders. The power of the church has been and always will be the power of one person telling another person what has happened to them. No polished presentations. No gimmicks. No arm-twisting. Just ordinary people sharing what Jesus means to them. Of course, witnesses often needed encouragement. The disciples weren't exactly thrilled about going to Samaria. All their lives they had been taught to despise Samaritans. No way could they see themselves going out among the idol worshipping pagan populous. They would much rather stick together and have discussions about heaven. That's why the men in white had to shoo the disciples off Mount Olivet, just as we need to be shooed out of our pews to participate in the mission we all have by virtue of being Christians.

On Wednesday I spent three hours at O'Hare airport. I arrived an hour early only to discover Lisa's flight was delayed over an hour. For the next two and a half-hours I walked around terminal three studying thousands of people. I imagined how it would be to be invisible ... to sit next to people, listening in on their conversations undetected. But then it occurred to me as I walked the crowded concourses that I felt invisible. I experienced a sudden wave of discomfort and loneliness. Everyone seemed enclosed in their own little worlds like thousands of ants in an ant colony, going every which way, except that the ants work for a common purpose. Sharply dressed executives were doing business over their cell phones while briskly walking to their flights. I watched people of every conceivable description and noticed that very very few of them spoke to anyone. The lady who sold me a four dollar and fifty cent hot dog didn't say a word ... she just gazed at me with a blank expresssion. Waiting at the gates, people were fixed on newspapers, laptops and spreadsheets.

After awhile everyone seemed to look alike to me. There were no connections between anyone. It was everyone for themselves. I thought of a line from Robert Frost in which he said, "I am against homogenized society. I want the cream to rise to the top." Our mission is to be different and to make a difference. By witnessing to the difference Jesus is making in our lives. I wondered how many had ever been told in a personal, sensitive, and respectful way about Jesus Christ. Day by day they do what the world says they should do. They think as the world says they should think. I studied the faces of those travelers and wondered who was depressed, who was hurting or grieving or hanging on to life by a fingernail. And I could swear I heard someone say, "You are my witnesses to the ends of the earth, so why are you standing there gazing?"

From the masses at O'Hare my mind went back to something which happened among one hundred fifty people on a Sunday morning in South Bend. Carol had a very tough life. Her alcoholic husband left without a trace leaving her with two young children. Carol took the microphone during the sharing of prayer concerns. What began as a concern about the church having a program for neighborhood kids became a concern about her own needs. Her pain and her anger came out in a torrent and she didn't know how to shut it off. She just stood there weeping, "You don't know how hard and how lonely it is, and I need help but I don't know what to do because unlike the rest of you I don't have an all together family." Well I didn't know what to do, either. I was smart enough to know that "Thanks for sharing, Carol." would be slightly inadequate.

But before I said anything, the witnesses went to work. A young mother stood and said, "We need to help Carol." Another person and then another went to the back of the sanctuary where Carol sat weeping in the pew. Six witnesses formed a huddle around her. Then they went into the lounge where they listened to her and prayed for her and each made a personal commitment to help in any way they could. Six people were witnesses to Carol about the gracious truth of Jesus Christ in word and deed.

In that moment the church showed that it understood its mission. The cream rose to the top. I'm afraid that much of the time we act as though we don't have a clue about our mission. Ask the question, "What's the purpose of the church?" and you'll hear things like, "Our purpose is to make this world a better place," or "Our job is to work for world peace, or help people cope, or give sugary consolations to help the world's medicine go down." But no ... our mission is something very different ... something more specific and straightforward ... something that can't be done by sheer resourcefulness, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our mission is simply this-to witness to Jesus Christ and tell others what we have seen and heard and known. I won't ask for a show of hands, but I wonder if any of us have spoken with another person about Jesus in the past week. Jesus said, "You shall be my witnesses in Judea." Have you spoken with someone in the past year about Jesus and who he is to you? Jesus said, "You shall be my witnesses in all Judea." Have you ever stepped outside your comfort zone and shared Jesus with anyone? Jesus said, "You shall be my witnesses in Samaria and to the ends of the earth."

Well, are you? Are we? Are we gazing, waiting for something to happen or are we witnesses who are making things happen? Jesus ascended to the Father. His body is gone. There's no point in looking up. Look straight ahead-look at each other because you are his body now. Christians aren't better than non-Christians, just better informed, and it's our mission to share our information and continue what Jesus began.

The Italian composer Puccini gifted the world with many moving, musical scores. In 1922 at age 64, Puccini was diagnosed with cancer. At the time he was working on the opera Turandot, considered by many to be his best. He continued to work on it despite his sickness and against the advice of those who told him not to spend his remaining days on a composition he would not finish.

When his death was immanent, he told his students, "If I don't finish Turandot, I want you to finish it for me." Puccini didn't finish the opera. Immediately after his death in 1924 his students gathered all the scores, studied them, and with deep love and respect, they went to work.

The opening performance of Turandot was in 1926. It was directed by one of the students who was Arturo Toscanini. The orchestra played the majestic music and when they reached the point where Puccini had stopped composing, Toscanini put down the baton, turned to the audience and said, "Thus far the master made music, but he died." There was silence for several minutes, then Toscanini picked up the baton and with tears and a great smile he said, "But his disciples have finished his work."

Jesus turned an unfinished work over to us. I wonder...will we help him finish it?

All of the sermons that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996 are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.

Sermon Search:



Exact phrase    All words (AND)    Any word (OR)