Acts 1:6-14
Faithful Witnesses
James Sledge May
26,2020
“Lord, is this the time when you
will restore the kingdom to Israel?” It seems like it would be a good
time. Jesus had been raised from the dead a little over a month earlier. He’d
been hanging out with the disciples, talking more with them about the kingdom
of God, and telling them to stay in Jerusalem awaiting the promise of the Father… waiting
to be
baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Something big was about to happen.
Maybe now God was going to straighten things out, set the world right. And by
the time the two volume set of Luke-Acts gets written, likely over fifty years later,
the world looked like it needed even more straightening out. The Romans had
completely destroyed the city of Jerusalem, its magnificent temple totally
obliterated. Jews and Christians alike had fled to various parts of the
Mediterranean world.
By that time, the break between
Judaism and Christianity was pretty much complete. Christians were no longer a
sect within Judaism, and so they no longer enjoyed the special religious
exemption that Rome gave to the Jews for being an ancient religion. And then
there was the problem with that basic faith statement, “Jesus is Lord.” Rome
said Caesar was Lord, that the emperor was a god. Christians were clearly
trouble makers, a threat to the social fabric that held the empire together.
Lord, this would be a really good
time to restore the kingdom, to straighten things out, to make life easier for
the faithful. It’s a mess, God. Do something! But Jesus answers, “It
is not for you to know the times and periods that the Father has set… But you
will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my
witnesses…”
Fast forward nearly two thousand
years, and it’s not hard to sympathize with those early disciples. Lord, this
would be a really good time to do something. Many scientists are worried that
we are perilously close to a tipping point on climate change, if it isn’t
already too late. COVID-19 is decimating communities, sending countless people
into poverty, and exposing our broken healthcare system. The partisan divide in
our country has become so extreme that even the pandemic cannot overcome it,
and wearing a mask in public, a simple act of loving one’s neighbor, has
somehow been politicized.