Already There

I preached this sermon last Sunday (May 4th) on Acts 1.

I am seeing more and more families with small children here, and one of the distinct pleasures you will have as they grow older will be taking road trips together

We have taken lots of them over the years- traveling to Myrtle Beach to see friends and Family .. to DC.. to Orlando..to the Floriday panhandle… My children, like most children on roadtrips get impatient. They want the trip to be finished.
Inevitably, they ask me many times, “Are we there yet?”
I have a few stock responses:

“No, we’re here…”
“Look out the window at the cows….”
“Hunt for license plates from other states..”
And MY personal favorite, “Well, you look around and tell me where we are.”
And I often use the old standard, “Not yet..”
Or, better yet, “We’ll get there when we get there..”

But grown ups are also obsessed with “getting there.”

Take a look next time you are out on the highway at the other cars. You’ll see GPS receivers in at least every 4th car.

GPS receivers that tell people where they are with nearly pinpoint accuracy. They tell them when exactly they will arrive at their destination. It’s an electronic answer to the question, “Are we there yet?”
It seems that each moment of our road-trip, we want a little guide to tell us exactly where we stand on the road, where we are in relation to the end and how to stay on the path.
It’s very comforting.
It satisfies our impatience with not knowing where, exactly, we are headed.

Our Apostles today ask Jesus, “Lord is this the time when your Kingdom will come?” They might as well have asked Jesus, “Are we there yet?”

They want answers! They want surety, security-on the road – on their journey following Christ. They’re unsure about their exact place on the path, unsure about their place in the universe, unsure about when they will arrive in God’s kingdom or when it will come to them and how, exactly, it will happen.

They’re uneasy, uncomfortable and scared because they are not going to have Jesus- their guide, their friend, their savior- in a bodily form.
They want to be finished with their journey- to have God’s kingdom now. They want a map: a spelled out, detailed plan that takes away their uncertainty and delivers them to their final destination.

Jesus gives them a good “front seat” answer to their “Are we there yet?”- reassuring and still vague! :

“….you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

You will he assures them. Not you may or you can or you have to option. You will! You will get there and you WILL be OK.
.
But, in spite of hearing all of this from the Son of God (and I find this kind of amusing) they continue to gaze heavenward, wondering wistfully just when, exactly, all of this will happen.
They don’t realize that the answer is already among them in the present.

Sounds kind of like all of us, doesn’t it?

We often find ourselves gazing heavenward, wondering when God will come. Then, the Holy Spirit comes and suddenly we find ourselves making unexpected pit stops on the road
We find ourselves doing things that we might not normally do!
The Holy Spirit moves us beyond the borders of our mapped territory The Holy Spirit moves our eyes to the road as it unfolds before us.

This life of the Spirit is kind of scary and unpredictable, isn’t it?
There is a certain lack of control we must live into - discomfort we must live with- to find our place on the journey. Our discomfort makes us wonder , “When, Lord, will you do what we want you to do?”

We want answers- we want certainty- we want to know just where , exactly, this road of the Spirit lead us to??

When the apostles ask a form of the question, “Are we there yet?”-

“Is this the time your kingdom will come, Jesus?”

Jesus says to them ““You’ll get there when you get there” by admonishing them with, “It is not for you to know the times or periods the Father has set by his own authority…”

Then, After watching Jesus ascend into the clouds, their gazes are still locked upward, wondering (wistfully) when exactly he will return. Then two “men clothed in white” (I like to think of them as angels), give them a nice scolding, I think, as they look upward for Jesus, instead of all around themselves and ahead..

They say, “Why do you stand looking up to heaven?”

God’s kingdom- is not up there- they tell them- God’s kingdom will come only through the love that Christ has set in motion with his life and his death. God’s kingdom will come but only with the help of the Holy Spirit- with “God’s help” (as we like to say in our prayer book) and the love of Christ.

Love Christ set in motion through faithfulness that lead to his death on a cross. See, they don’t realize that Christ has already
given them the map they need to get there.

I like the movie Bruce Almighty. God, Morgan Freeman, says to Jim, a man who is “playing God” in the movie, “People want me to do everything for them. What they don't realize is that they have the power. You want to see a miracle? Be the miracle.”

God urges Bruce to look ahead by directing his gaze downward, seeking God’s kingdom through being the miracle.

Next week, at Pentecost , the “miracle” will happen to us, the Church. The Holy Spirit will come. The church will be born
But, we hear that right now, right now- we are to be the miracle!

We are supposed to be God’s kingdom…

What does this kingdom look like,? What is it God has set us free to do- right now- with God’s Holy Spirit? What exactly do we do while we are “on the road?” How do we “be the miracle?” Is it through sacramental purity?? Biblical accuracy?? Orthodoxy??

I think maybe not…
A way I feel we can do it is we practice what my friend Father Terry Martin calls “radical inclusion.”Radical inclusion chooses grace and love as the default position when all else is in doubt.
Radical inclusion causes us to open our arms to all people and say “You- each and every one of you- are a child of God.”

I liked what Bishop Gene Robinson had to say when he was interviewed recently by Terri Gross on Fresh Air upon the release of his memoir, “Eye of the Storm..”

This specific question was regarding his lack of invitation to the Lambeth conference- he was not invited, like all the other bishops of the world, specifically because of who he is as a Gay man. I expected anger and bitterness.

Instead he gave us all a lesson on the Holy Spirit.

He said, “ Jesus says this amazing thing on the night before he died. He says to his disciples, ‘there are many more things I want share with you but you are not able to bear them right now.
so I will send you the Holy Spirit to lead you to all truth. ‘ “

He further commented, “I will go on to argue that full inclusion of Gay and Lesbian people is just simply another way that the Holy Spirit is leading us to a fuller understanding of God’s love for all of God’s children.”

I can imagine he has wondered, as a Gay man, “are we there yet?” as he walks on his journey

On days when he had to bear death threats- days when he had to wear a bullet proof vest to mass- the day he did not get his invitation to Lambeth.

But, his experience has not left him gazing heavenward,
asking God, “When???” It has lead him to a fuller understanding of the Holy Spirit.

We can learn this week that The Church- all of us who are God’s children-all of us who feel bewildered and lost -wondering why we are on this journey and where will it lead us-

We can learn we are called to find our place by directing our gaze down from the heavens to here on earth, where we are.

Here , where we can find a fuller understanding of God’s love and be lead to God’s Love through the Holy Spirit. Not from any “road maps” we feel compelled to follow and certainly not from craning our necks looking upward for Jesus in the clouds.

The kingdom of God comes – we get there- when we affirm to one another and treat one another as if we are all precious, Holy children of God.

Then we are already “there.”