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Dear Friends,
I have never been a very patient soul. I am one of those who finds not knowing the worst of all possible forms of torture, so I have some sympathy with the disciples who were simply told to wait. We know the story and so can easily wait out this time between Easter Sunday and Pentecost, but imagine how it must have been for those who really did not know. What did this risen Jesus have in mind? What would happen next? What were they to wait for? It must have been an agony of not knowing - and a real test of discipleship.
On the whole it is fairly easy to be a disciple of Jesus when you think you know what it is that God expects of you, when you can predict the high-days and holidays, the times when God will appear and make a demand on your time and on your life. It isn't so easy when you have no idea what to expect except, that is, to expect the unexpected.
The church stands on the resurrection side of Easter - we believe in potential, in opportunity and in life, but we are waiting for the Spirit to enable us to do something with the knowledge that we have. We sit in our locked rooms behind our church doors, waiting. Waiting for something to happen, waiting for Jesus to appear to us, but he has already gone ahead of us - and calls us out of our fear into new life. Will we go?
We will not see Christ in our churches - unless we also seek Christ where he leads us - outside in the world of the ordinary. Jesus takes his disciples back to where it all started, back to their homes, as a reminder that the gospel is not meant to be kept locked away for 'Sunday Best' - but is meant to be a part of what we do everyday. This is what is so unexpected about our God - the God who tears down temples of stone, tears in two dividing curtains, and brings the holy into the street, away from the control of the priests and into the commonplace, into the common people.
We have no way of knowing or controlling what God does, but this is especially so outside of our buildings, outside of our services, outside of our comfort-zones. We are in the same place as those first disciples. We know that something remarkable could happen - probably will happen, if only we are prepared to go where Christ has asked us to, to follow his instructions and wait for the Spirit to come upon us.
It's a risky venture, and an agonising wait... but well worth it when we think of what might just happen if we could be persuaded to take our faith outside of our comfort zone and into the waiting world.
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