Quit Looking to the Heavens
Acts 1:6-14
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But 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.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 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.”
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying: Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
Many times in my life I have sacrificed the present trying to get to the future — and done the reverse, romanticizing the past when the present was hard. As a boy I couldn’t wait to be grown up. As an adult I sometimes longed for the safety of childhood. One of my clients put it plainly: “I’m tired of adulting.” The disciples said the same thing, just in first-century language: Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?
The first century was brutal — occupation, persecution, the destruction of the Temple — the disciples’ question was not naive. It was desperate. “Is this the time we get relief? Is this time the world is finally set right?” It is ordinary and poignant. The answer is not comforting.
It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.
For people living under Roman occupation and watching their Temple burn, it was hard to believe in a sovereign God. It is hard to believe in a sovereign God when your world is being destroyed. Surely a loving God would do something about such carnage. But no. The promise is that relief will come in an entirely different way. Jesus tells them: But 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. Then, as he is speaking the words, Jesus disappears. He is lifted up into a cloud—out of their sight. They are understandably dumbstruck and left staring at the heavens.
This is the second time, within a narrow time frame of Jesus’ death and ascension, that the followers of Jesus are looking for him in the wrong place. The angels at the tomb say: He is not here; he has risen; go to Galilee. The angels at the Ascension say: Why are you looking up? He will come as he went; now go to Jerusalem. Both angelic commands redirect the disciples from a fixed gaze in the wrong direction toward the life and mission immediately in front of them. Jesus is neither in the grave nor in the clouds. And neither are we, when we keep looking. We look up when life is hard, waiting for rescue. We look back when the present is painful, wanting to return. The angels’ message in both places is the same: He meets you here.
Neither the disciples, nor we, get to know the plan, our job is to bear witness in the present. The ascension is not an absence, it is the gift of the Spirit and the beginning of the Church’s witness. It is the Holy Spirit that will give us the strength to live in the present. The angels’ promise was this: Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
Jesus’ life demonstrated that ‘doing the hard part’ is called living ordinary life in the present. When we follow Him, we discover Him. Don’t look back to ‘better times’. Don’t live your life waiting for things to get better. Live in the present, bear witness to the promise that love will not fail.
Notice the last few verses. Immediately after the ascension, this group — the eleven who had fled, the women who had watched the crucifixion, Mary who had buried her son, the brothers of Jesus who had not believed during his ministry — these specific people gathered and prayed. Not because they had certainty. But because they had each other and a commission. They had watched Jesus die. But they had also discovered the unexpected. Jesus lives. Their lives were full of ‘hard’—hard grief and hard political pressure in a hostile world. With the deaths and pain that surrounded them, it was nigh on impossible to bear witness to a loving God. Yet that is what they were called to do and what they were enabled to do.
That same call is for you and me. We do not know the plan. Our job, against all odds, is to:
Love in the present, trusting God’s presence and promise that Love will prevail. Let it be so.
