the holy gospel according to luke, the 24th chapter. glory
to you, o lord.
44Then Jesus said
to his disciples,
“These
are my words that I spoke to you
while
I was still with you—
that
everything written
about
me in the law of Moses,
the
prophets,
and
the psalms
must
be fulfilled.”
45Then he opened
their minds
to
understand the scriptures,
46and he said to
them,
“Thus
it is written,
that
the Messiah is to suffer
and
to rise from the dead on the third day,
47and
that repentance and forgiveness of sins
is
to be proclaimed in his name to all nations,
beginning
from Jerusalem.
48You
are witnesses of these things.
49And
see,
I
am sending upon you what my Father promised;
so
stay here in the city
until
you have been clothed with power from on high.”
50Then he led
them out as far as Bethany,
and,
lifting up his hands,
he
blessed them.
51While
he was blessing them,
he
withdrew from them
and
was carried up into heaven.
52And
they worshiped him,
and
returned to Jerusalem with great joy;
53and
they were continually in the temple
blessing
God.
the
gospel of the lord. praise to you, o christ.
-----
throughout
the readings for today—and, in fact, on this day itself—we are in a liminal
time. today we celebrate jesus’ ascension. the day jesus—in bodily form—leaves his
disciples and the disciples begin the wait for the holy spirit.
the
texts themselves are the end of luke and the beginning of acts—two books likely
written by the same author. this
is a time of transition. we are
moving from “all that jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day
when he was taken up to heaven” in luke to the work of the holy spirit through
jesus’ followers throughout the book of acts and even into today.
we
are on the edge—the margin between two places—liminal space. it can be confusing or
frustrating. even the disciples
are confused about what’s going on and what time it is. they ask, “lord, is this the time when
you will restore the kingdom to israel?”
we
can hear that question, 2000 years later, and scoff a bit. we know the answer and we know that
jesus is about bigger things than mere human institutions, yet there’s
something compelling about the question. … “is this the time…”
it
is important to point out that in greek there are two words for time: chronos
and kairos. chronos refers—as you
might guess from the sound of it—to linear or chronological time—minutes, hours, days, months, years. it is the time that we tend to be most
familiar with and it is the time the
disciples are referring to in their question. have enough days, weeks, months, years passed that we can
rule ourselves again like before?
jesus,
however, recognizes what’s going on.
the disciples are confused, and, maybe, a little worried. this bonus time they’ve had with jesus
since the resurrection has been great, but they know it can’t last forever and
they’ve got their own agenda that needs to be taken care of. they’re still holding onto this idea
that jesus is here to overthrow the roman occupation—to give rule and
sovereignty back to israel—they’ve forgotten that the kin-dom should be and, in
fact, is god’s in the first place.
so,
jesus addresses their concerns by affirming the validity of their uncertainty,
saying, “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the father has set
by his own authority.” in
affirming their uncertainty, jesus does two important things:
he
brings the focus back onto god’s
power and authority—confronting the disciples’ assumptions about human power and authority. jesus contrasts the disciples’ desire
for israel to rule itself with the
reality of god’s supreme authority
over everything.
jesus
also introduces kairos into the conversation. the disciples ask about chronos—human time—and jesus tells
them that it is not for them to know the human times (chronos) or the periods—the
divine time (kairos).
here
it is important to understand kairos.
so, while chronos is linear and horizontal, kairos is vertical. i like to think of kairos as
heaven-time—this cloud-like nebulus floating around that will occasionally
crash into the chronos that’s just chugging along fairly steadily. those moments are what i like to call
kairos moments. it is when god’s
timing interrupts our steady human time.
these
kairos moments happen throughout our lives. for me, when i was getting ready to graduate from luther
college, i knew that i didn’t want to go directly into seminary, but i was
uncertain about what to do when i graduated. i ended up applying for and getting into the elca’s young
adults in global mission program. i
interviewed with two places and when i came out from the second interview, i
called my parents and told them that i knew where i needed to be the next year.
and i did end up in slovakia as i thought.
that
was a kairos moment in my life—that moment; that time, god interrupted and as i
was open to the moment, god broke in and pointed the way. coming into the interviews, however, i
didn’t have certainty about any of it. yet i was willing to jump into that uncertainty, trusting
that god was up to something. and
when i did jump, god was there to catch and guide me.
going
into the interviews, i had no idea that they would become a kairos moment, and
yet, looking back, i am certain that it was
a kairos moment. god interrupted
my life. my chronos was
interrupted by god’s kairos.
today,
with the disciples, we wait for god’s timing, for kairos moments of our
own. the hard thing for us is that
there’s not much in the way of a warning that the moment is coming and a lot of
the time the build-up to a kairos moment is filled with uncertainty and can
feel like the end of our time.
today
we as individuals may be losing a job, facing a serious illness, graduating without
any prospects or ideas for the future—unsure of what the future might hold.
as
a country and world, the weather is increasingly erratic as we’ve seen even
just this week; the legislative sessions are quickly coming to an end seemingly
without the changes we want; and pain and suffering seem to be everywhere.
and
as a congregation we are facing a million dollar building debt, we are
grappling with what it means to live out the hospitality and welcome we have
first received from god at the table, and we wonder where and how god is at
work in it all.
it
is a scary time as we wait—confusing and frustrating, filled with uncertainty,
yet we know that the holy spirit comes in those scary moments most of all—the
liminal times, the times when we are unsure and confused. when we are open—and sometimes when we’re
not—god breaks in and shows us, as paul states in ephesians, “the hope to which
god has called you, the riches of god’s glorious inheritance, and the
immeasurable greatness of god’s power.”
jesus
broke into the disciples’ fearfully locked house after the resurrection and in
this time after his ascension, we wait with mounting urgency for the holy
spirit to break into the house where we wait in jerusalem
and
even now we catch glimpses that this might be a kairos moment in the
making. we may now have
opportunities to branch out and pursue a new passion or try our hand at a new
position, invest more time in the relationships we have or try that thing we’ve
been thinking about for a while.
we hear of the people who are running toward crises seeking to help, of
more pressure to provide safe workspace for workers around the world,
especially in bangladesh, of changes in how we approach the environment. people seem to be stepping up to fill
in where they see a need.
and as a
congregation we are discerning a new welcoming statement, starting a task force
to be creative in exploring finances for the future.
urgency
is building and glimpses are increasing that the holy spirit might be stirring
something up. can you feel her
whisper? can you feel the
approaching pentecost—chronos becoming kairos?
is this the time?
can
you feel the energy mounting?
change is coming; the holy spirit is stirring. what might god be up to? where is god leading us? how will you be open to the approaching kairos moment?
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