“Jesus Has Left the Building”

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 1: 6-14

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Second Sunday of Easter, April 12th, 2015

They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Act 1:11 NRS)        
When I worked with young mission volunteers in Germany, I would always try to reward them by taking them to the Restaurant of their choice in Berlin.   Even though I would suggest a cultural experience at a German Restaurant, they would, without exception, choose “The Hard Rock Café” in Berlin. 

I enjoyed going there too to have some American food.  What used to grab my attention in this particular Restaurant was not the food, but stained-glass window that was the centerpiece of the entire Restaurant.   This stained-glass window did not depict any traditional religious image, but it portrayed a larger-than-life image of Elvis Presley.  Presley was at height of his popularity when he was drafted by the US Army to spend two years stationed in Berlin. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley%27s_Army_career).

Elvis was so popular in those days, that after his concerts, fans would be waiting in the hallways for hours (and sometimes days) in hopes of getting an encore of his music or having a  single glimpse of him when he left.   In order to encourage those fans to go home, managers would come out to the star-gazing crowd and inform them, “Elvis has left the building”.  Those words became so legendary they became the title of a movie and today are often used to inform that a performer is permanently off stage. (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/elvis-has-left-the-building.html).

In today’s Scripture, we could also say that “Jesus has left the building.”  Our text tells us that when Jesus ascended into heaven his disciples were not only ‘watching’ (1.9) but they were   ‘gazing toward heaven’ (1.10).    They appear to be “star-struck” as Jesus left so that angels had to help them cope (1.11). 

LORD OVER ALL

In his book, ON A WILD AND WINDY MOUNTAIN, Will Willimon tells of being in New Haven, Connecticut as a student at Yale in 1970 during the famous Black Panther Trial. Those of you who remember that turbulent era recall the strife and discord that tormented our society.

During the week that the crisis at New Haven reached its peak, Willimon attended a choral mass at a nearby Catholic Parish. A boy's choir was singing, "Deus Ascendit, "God Has Gone Up."   Willimon mused, "Just as I thought.  God Has Gone Up. And isn't that typical? Gone up, up away from New Haven and the angry shouts of the mob and the gunfire of the cops and the revolutionaries."   In other words, Willimon was saying to himself, "God has abandoned us."

As he continued to listen, however, the idea struck him that the choir did not sing, "Deus Abscondit." The boys were shouting "Deus Ascendit." God has gone up. "God has begun in heaven what is yet to be accomplished on earth.  Christ is gone, not to forsake us, but to continue to redeem us. He has gone to take charge, to rule, to put all things under his feet." Deus Ascendit. God has ascended.

While it is easy for modern minds to miss what is going on here, Luke’s point is not that Jesus was blasting off into galactic space, but that Jesus is ascending to take his rightful place of power at the father’s right hand.   The ascending Jesus is a powerful and potent theological picture of God’s vindication and validation of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.   In all that Jesus endured and suffered, he has earned the right to be ‘highly exalted with a name above every other name’. (Phil 2.9).

In one of the picturesque mountaintop villages Austrian Alps, a small stone chapel sets on an elevated ridge. The chapel is only 20 by 35 feet, but inside the walls are decorated with old, faded frescos from another time and another culture.   One of the frescos depicts Jesus as Christ the King over all the earth.   Imagine - someone came to the top of that mountain some 1,200 years ago to paint their conviction that Jesus is the ascended one who is Lord of all.   They did it then, but Luke did it first.

PRAYER AMONG ALL

Whatever it has meant to sing, preach, and witness to the world that Jesus is Lord  over not just Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and also ‘to the ends of the earth’,  the question we need to still answer is what does this mean for us today?   What does it mean not only to announce that Jesus has come and gone, but what does it mean to say he ascended to be Lord over all, because we still live in a world that lives and believes to the contrary?  

We can only answer what it means to proclaim Christ as Lord  over all in what we observe  happening after Jesus ‘left the building’ and  we find what those 120 disciples (Acts 1.15), including women, were doing next (1.14).   Luke says that after Jesus left, they came together to do exactly what Jesus asked them to do.  They did ‘not leave Jerusalem’ but they ‘waited’ there for ‘the promise of the Father ‘(Acts 1.4).    It is what they were doing, while they were waiting, that should most impress us.  Luke says ‘all these constantly devoted themselves to prayer together ‘ (Acts. 1.14).   This word ‘together’ is the event we must not overlook.   The King James and other translations follow the original more closely saying, ‘these all continue with one accord in prayer’.    What they were doing and who were becoming ‘together’ was the reason Jesus came to save.   In Jesus absence, the people of God are becoming the very kind of people God wills the whole world to be---one people together devoting themselves in common prayers and a united purpose.

Rebecca Manley Pippert, tells of a brilliant young college student named Bill who became a Christian.  He was a part of a generation who resisted dressing in conventional middle-class garb. He never wore shoes in rain, snow or sleet.  When he visited the local campus church he came dressed in his usual manner a tee shirt, jeans, and, of course, no shoes.  Since the church was packed, Bill walked down the aisle searching for a seat.  Not finding a better place to sit, he sat down on the carpet in front of the first pew. You can imagine the tension in this very traditional church when this young man, dressed in blue jeans, a tee shirt and no shoes, sat on the carpet right in front of the altar.

In the midst of that mounting tension, from the back of the church an elderly man began walking the aisle toward Bill. People looked at each other. They were certain that the gentlemen was going to ask the young fellow to leave the service. When the older man came to where Bill sat he stopped, slowly lowered himself to the floor, and the two of them worshiped together. There was not a dry eye in the church except perhaps for the two at the front  (Out of the Salt Shaker and Into the World,  Rebecca Manley Pippert,  IVP Press, 1979).

That is what church ought to be and how God wants us all come together.  It is not that we all have to look alike nor think alike, but it is that know we are all in this together.  This is the kind of love and acceptance that ought to exist in every congregation and it is the kind of unifying prayer we have to take to the world.   When we believe that Jesus is Lord, we don’t have to ‘lord over each other’ (Mk 10:42-43),  as Jesus said,  but there should be a bond, a cord, that binds us to one another that is bigger than our differences and this is what should make us ready to be church for the world.

But again, how and where do we find this kind of unity and oneness, in a world that is increasingly more complicated and more diverse?   People don’t even believe in Jesus the same way, let alone the fact that we live in the world where there are many religions, many beliefs, and more and more differences all the time.   Besides, we can even imagine that  “hippie” at that college church, probably won’t even walk into a church today, let alone, walk down front?   Can we even imagine a unity, a prayer, or a faith that could bring us together, not pull us apart?  

LIFE FOR ALL

What holds this entire passage together for me is not simply this incredible picture of the ascending Jesus, as beautiful as it is, nor is it also the people who wonderfully came together in prayer, as great as that is.   What holds this entire passage together is the purpose and the mission that brought the Lord to us in the first place.  

Notice that when the disciples came asking Jesus “when the kingdom would finally be restored” (1.6), Jesus responds that they, nor we, can know the ‘times’.   But what we can know is that we can be “witnesses….”  (1.8) to God’s powerful, redeeming presence in our world.   While we’d all like to have the answers to all our questions about how or when a better world might come, it is much better, that we decide to be part of the answer, than have all the answers.   It is also far better that we become ‘witnesses’ to the truth that brings us together in prayers of hope, rather than pull us apart in fear and hate.

Do you notice that Jesus did not say to his disciple, ‘you can be my witnesses’, nor did he say, “you may be might witnesses”,  but Jesus said, “you shall be my witnesses!”   Jesus also did not say that ‘you shall be my witness’ only where you live, but he said, ‘you shall be my witnesses….to the ends of the earth’!   By giving us this command, Jesus is not simply becoming Lord of hope for us, but he is becoming the Lord of hope through us.   This may be the most important message of all!   Is this not why he is leaving?  Jesus leaves the world so he can return to the world through the spiritual power that is “received” by you and me.  When we are his witnesses,  we can , should, and will do ‘greater works’,  through his Spirit, than he ever did in his own flesh (Jn. 14:12).  Can you believe this?

Recently I’ve been reading a book about ‘The Threat of Islam” in our world.  Interestingly, the book I’ve been reading was written by an Islamic expert before September, 11, 2001.    One of the most powerful theme that keeps surfacing is that Islam is a religious movement built on the back of the failures, shortcomings, neglect and limits of both Judaism and Christianity, as well as, the West.   This was not only part of the reason Islam developed, but it also the reason that radical Islam continues to grow in the world.  While there are no excuses for the violence and crimes of radical Islam, part of the reason Islam has become radicalized as a religion is because of the failures of West and also the failures of Christians to be the ‘witnesses’ we were commissioned to be  ‘to the ends of the earth’.

When Christianity is a faith just for me, or just for us, and not for them, it can do more harm than good.  When the people of God fail to take seriously Christ’s command to be his ‘witnesses…to the ends of the earth,’ these “ends of the earth” can come back to haunt us.  The message of Christ’s love, good will, hope and salvation is a message for everyone or it is a message for no one.   And this is not a message of God’s salvation in Jesus we can or should force upon the world.  Jesus did not say go and ‘win the world’, but he called us to be ‘witnesses’ and allow God’s Spirit to do the convincing, converting and the winning.

Today we live in the ‘significant pause’ (Karl Barth) between God’s mighty acts on Easter and the coming final restoration of God’s kingdom.   This interim time is the time for witness, for preaching, for sharing and for going into all the world with good news (Matt 24: 14).   This is also the time to wait, to pray, to receive God’s Spirit, and to work and witness to what God has done in us.  Yes, Jesus has left the building and the reason he has left the building is so that each one of us will be ‘witnesses’ of God’s love.  Does Jesus you have a witness in you?  Amen.