While staying with them, [Jesus] ordered them not to leave Jerusalem,
but to wait there for the promise of the Father.
“This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
So when they had come together, they asked him,
“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Acts 1:4-6
“Wait there for the promise of the Father.” It’s not the first time the faithful were told to wait for something. In fact, I suppose one could say the invitation to wait seems to be one of God’s favorite invitations to us. This is probably why one of the favorite questions in the Psalms is: “How long, O Lord?”
Here at the beginning of the Luke’s account of the doings of the early church in Acts we have a bit of a different prayer that we pray the midst of enduring the wait. The disciples essentially respond to Jesus’ admonition with the question: Are we going to get what we want at the end of that wait? “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?” To put it another way: Do you want us to hang out in Jerusalem so we can watch you kick Roman butt and be ready to take on our roles in your transition team?
Jesus responds to their request, “It is not for you to know the times and the periods that the Father has set by his own authority (Acts 1:7).” In other words: Don’t get ahead of yourselves. For now, let’s just say stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Spirit of God to reveal what the Spirit of God will reveal. Wait.
Waiting is never easy work. Whether we are weeping alongside the waters of Babylon longing for the end of captivity (Ps 137), or on tiptoes of expectation joyously anticipating the coming of the King of Glory (Ps 24), waiting means delaying gratification and that is not something we enjoy. But if the truth be told, waiting is the norm. The Scriptures tell us again and again what Mick Jagger wails in the Rolling Stone’s song: “You can’t always get what you want.”
Covid-19 is also teaching that lesson. We’re all waiting for things to “open up” again. We want freedom from this stay at home order. We want things to get back to normal, and as the end of the Governor’s order looms, and we’re all talking about what “opening things up” looks like, we are all hoping that we can get back to the way things were. But of course there are all sorts of reasons why the definitions of “opening up” and “normal” are a bit ambiguous.
The disease that early on was manifesting itself primarily as a respiratory disease with a 14-21 day life cycle spread by cough delivered droplets is now known to attack other parts of our bodies as well and spread in more subtle ways. Fulfilling the amount of testing needed to define more clearly who needs to stay sequestered and who should be able to go out, is something that has been added to the list of things we are waiting for. The predictions about resurgence once this current spread has abated seem plausible as we look at places like Singapore and China seem to be engaging round two.
So we probably can’t get everything we want and at some level will need to continue to wait. Yet in the waiting there is some Biblical advice that turns waiting into something active rather than something that is merely passive. Waiting in a Biblical worldview is largely about living in hope: holding on to what we know to be true and looking for the signs of God’s presence in the midst of our wait.
Waiting informed by hope is more than standing still and lamenting all that isn’t. It is about pivoting. If we can’t move forward in the direction we want to go, we can pivot on one foot, change our perspective and ask ourselves what we can see, what we can know, what we can do in the space where we have to remain. It’s the invitation that Jeremiah called the exiles in Babylon to consider:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer. 29:5-7)
Pivot. Change your perspective. Take in where you are and do what you can do in that place. Live in hope and not just in a state of longing informed mostly by despair. We all have our own versions of what such a pivot might bring into view and many of us are acting on the invitations that have come into view. Some of those invitations that have come into view for us at Emmanuel are: caring for a portion of our grounds and so participating in the stewardship of an important part of the gift we give to our neighborhood especially in this time when parks are closed, living in the hope of the harvest we will reap at Emmanuel Farm by taking some time to help out with the tilling and tending of our garden, making cloth masks for the season when we can get “out there” again but not without some protection and the continuation of our need to give each other space, and using our building to distribute food to Maywood Hills Elementary families who without the school food program find it hard to feed their families.
Pivot. Take in what you see. Ask God to show you what you have not yet seen. God’s love has not stopped. God’s presence is still something on which we can rely. Let’s give witness to both of these truths as we seek the welfare of this city to which God has sent us.
David Rohrer
April 29, 2020