May 29, 2022 “Staying Power” – Luke 24:44-53

Luke 24:44-53
“Staying Power”
May 29, 2022 – Ascension Sunday

Staying is a trick we often teach to dogs. When his master points at him and firmly says “Stay!” Fido needs to learn not to jump on your house guest or go snarf up a tasty crumb that fell under the table or chase off after the squirrel that just ran down a tree. For his own good and the good of others, Fido must learn staying power.

Staying was a difficult lesson for Jesus’ disciples. Their failure at it was embarrassingly revealed as Jesus drew near the Cross. Peter, James and John could not stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane. And after the Last Supper, when Jesus predicted they would all desert Him and run away, Peter vehemently denied that he would do that. But when the time came, he did. Mark 15:50 says simply, “All of them deserted him and fled.”

Yet our Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of second chances, often more. We read from the Gospel of John a few weeks ago how Jesus forgave Peter his desertion and brought him back into relationship with Him. Now, for the Sunday on which we remember Jesus ascending into heaven, we hear Jesus offer them all another chance to obey His command to stay, to remain where He wanted them to be for as long as needed. In verse 49 he said, “so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” In Acts 1 we read verse 4, “he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”

Perhaps you realize there is a small Gospel harmony problem in that command to stay. In Matthew and Mark, the disciples were told to meet the risen Jesus in Galilee, far from Jerusalem. That reconciling conversation with Peter in John 21 was part of how they met the risen Jesus along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So why do the other Gospels talk about going to Galilee, when in Luke they’re supposed to stay where they are in Jerusalem?

Luke makes that disparity feel even greater by the way he tells the story. Chapter 24 goes from one episode to the next, with just the little word, two letters in Greek, “then,” to move on to the next scene. It leaves us with the feeling it all happened on the same day, including the Ascension, on Easter.

Yet Luke could not have meant that narrative, with Jesus rising, then meeting the disciples, then telling them many things about the Scriptures, then telling them to stay, then being carried up to heaven, all happening one thing right after other, to mean everything occurred in 24 hours or even just a few days. Luke wrote Acts too. H told us himself in what we heard today that Jesus’ time on earth after the Resurrection was forty days. That’s why Ascension Day, this past Thursday actually, is forty days after Easter. So it’s likely there are a number of days, maybe a few weeks between verses 43 and 44 in the last chapter of Luke.

That larger span of time makes it possible to give a pretty simple explanation of why Matthew, Mark and John talk about the disciples going to meet Jesus in Galilee, while Luke has Jesus telling them to stay in Jerusalem. That command to stay put came only after they had gone, as commanded by the angels, to Galilee and then come back to the vicinity of Jerusalem. That’s when Jesus told them to stay and wait there, then ascended to heaven.

That last event in Jesus’ time on earth resulted in the somewhat strange Christian celebration of the Ascension. “Jesus is gone, hurray!” is a pretty awkward thing to even say, much less get excited about. A new Facebook meme for this year puts it as “The Feast of the Ascension: celebrating the day that Jesus began working from home.” We like to talk about the presence of Jesus with us. Why do we have a day to remember His absence?

I thought about that question, “Why was Jesus flying off to heaven a good thing?” and realized that His direction for the disciples to stay points us toward the answer. The reason Jesus gave for the disciples to stay and wait is also the reason for His departure. Jesus said it in John 16:7, “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

Jesus went away so that His disciples could stay and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. We will celebrate that glorious event next Sunday on Pentecost. He needed to go and they needed to stay, in order for Pentecost to happen, in order for the Holy Spirit to show up and make them ready then to go all over the world.

The Ascension, especially this year, makes me think about the stayings and the goings in my own life, and yours. Here I am getting ready to go away from serving as your pastor, after 29 years. Yet, just saying that, I realize that I’ve stayed a long time, and that staying has been a good thing. It was time enough for the Holy Spirit to show up in many wonderful and good ways, both for me and for you.

Next week you all will share in the rite of Confirmation for two young people who’ve grown up in our church. I’m glad I could stay long enough to have them in a Confirmation class and hear each Sunday a little of what is happening in their lives. I won’t be here when those two start thinking about things like college or getting married or careers, but staying here long enough has blessed me with the privilege of seeing other, older students do all those things, like Alison there who followed the leading of the Holy Spirit to Haiti. That was worth staying for.

I probably first learned the power of listening to Jesus tell me to stay in my first church. I was only three or four years in to serving there and it got hard. There were many wonderful and gracious members of that congregation, but there were also a few recalcitrant but vocal folks who seemed to feel nothing should change in their nearly hundred-year-old church. I began to wonder if I should even be a pastor, much less stay there.

Back then I had an almost freshly printed Ph.D. in hand and I loved to teach. So I quietly freshened up an academic vita and sent it off to three or four different colleges and seminaries with open positions. The answers I got were all polite notifications that they were considering other people, with more teaching experience. When I read them I heard another voice, the voice of Jesus and His Spirit, telling me to stay where I was, to stay in ministry, to wait for His power, the blessing of the Holy Spirit, to arrive.

So I did. I stayed there another few years and saw many good things happen. I got to celebrate that church’s 100^th anniversary with them and the fact that they had stayed, stayed to serve that community for a century. Now they are going on 130 years, and a young man, one of my Confirmation students there because I stayed longer, recently became their pastor. That was worth staying for, worth remaining in pastoral ministry.

Now even though I’m going soon from this church, then, I’d like to urge on you today the power of staying. Several of you have lived in this community as long or longer than I have. You probably realize that’s a rarity in today’s world. It may in fact be a privilege that younger people will not have as often, as the need to move for employment and economic reasons grows.

Yet, if you have stayed a while somewhere, in some job or type of work, maybe in a marriage for a long time, like Marlon and Kathleen, then you also have seen some of that power which arrives when you stay. It may not be the rushing wind or bright flames of Pentecost, but it is the gracious gift of the Father, the gentle filling and sustaining of the Holy Spirit.

One reason to stay in place, particularly as a Christian among other Christians, is that what Luke says in just a few words here takes time, a lot of time. In verse 44 Jesus told them “everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Verse 45 goes on, “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.”

That opening of their minds to the Scriptures did not happen in a moment or a day or two. As we read about the early church in Acts and look at the first centuries of the church, it’s clear that a more complete understanding of what God taught them about Jesus took decades and even centuries to unfold.

Our Confirmation students just heard how it took 300 years for the Council of Nicaea to happen and for Christians to fully get a grasp on the fact that Jesus is both God and human. Followers of Jesus had to stay and think about Him a long time, stay with the truths they had received and process them, in order to receive the Spirit’s guidance to express that truth in a clear way.

That need to have our minds opened to the Scriptures is a reason for you and I to stay with our faith and with a community of people where God’s Word is opened and studied and discussed regularly. We are waiting for the Holy Spirit to arrive in those discussions and show us what God is saying to us for the present time.

Yes, I know, in the very near future, I’m going rather than staying. So where do I get off preaching this today? Part of my answer to that, for myself as much as for anyone else, is that the staying Jesus asked of His disciples was not meant to be forever. They were told to stay in Jerusalem until “you have been clothed with power from on high,” until that glorious baptism of the Holy Spirit came upon them. Once that happened, many of them went out in all directions, guided and directed by the Holy Spirit, sharing the Gospel of Jesus with the world.

My own going after staying here at Valley Covenant for many years is not at all like the apostolic mission out into the world, but I can say that I’ve felt the Holy Spirit say it is time to go, giving me permission to lay down ministry here and find whatever He has in store for Beth and me next. Which brings me to another answer for why I’m talking about staying even as I prepare to leave.

I’m stepping away from being your pastor, but Beth and I are not immediately leaving Eugene. We’ve thought about a move, maybe to the coast, but that seems less likely in the current economic situation. So we are following advice given by our friend and your friend Mike Fargo. We’re not making any really big plans or decisions for the future in the next year. We’re going to simply stay here in Eugene and wait for God to show us what He has in store. We’re going, but in another way we are staying, waiting once again for the Spirit to arrive and guide us.

I probably have no right, but I would ask that same willingness to stay from each of you. Just this past week, we completed the last membership class I will share here. I don’t know when I started the practice, but for years, near the end of every class, with tongue-in-cheek, I’ve offered what you might call a “disclaimer” about joining Valley Covenant Church. What I’ve said is, “Sooner or later, I or someone else in this congregation will disappoint you. We are Christians saved by grace, but we are still sinful human beings.” Perhaps you yourself remember hearing something like that.

You might wonder why I would say such a thing to a new person, excited enough about our church to explore being a member. The reason is what I go on to ask. “When that disappointment happens,” I say, “please don’t just pack up and quietly leave. Stay and talk with us. Talk with the pastor or a church council member. Wait and see if the Holy Spirit might guide us together through this, help us make it right or at least better for you.” So again I’m asking for staying power, for the power which comes when you and I are willing to remain in place and wait on the Lord and on His Spirit.

Please don’t think that I think or would suggest that my retirement is anything like or comparable to Jesus’ great ascension to glory on high. I’m just fumbling around to find what that event might teach us about staying and going, both for myself and for you.

Thus I’d like to reiterate that membership class “disclaimer” for all of you. At least some of you may be disappointed that I am retiring. I am so sorry to disappoint you. But please let me gently ask you to stay. It will be especially important now. And I have complete confidence that our Lord watches over you from on high, just as He did that little band of disciples who stood looking up at the soles of His feet disappearing into the clouds. They too wondered, “What happens now?” But they stayed as Jesus asked and He sent them His Holy Spirit, just as He will continue to pour out His Spirit here on you.

It wasn’t all gloom and moping around after Jesus was gone. The last couple verses of our text, 52 and 53, give us a picture of people who aren’t just sitting quietly in a dark room waiting for something to happen. Luke tells us, “And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” That’s no disheartened, hopeless little community which has lost its leader. Those are hopeful, joyful people who knew that the Lord in whom they believed had promised wonderful blessings to come. That’s true for you all too.

When I came here in 1993, I heard the story about what happened in the interim period, a period between pastors, like you are about to begin. Valley Covenant was then about the size it is now, but in the interim, without a full-time pastor, it had grown. The people of that congregation themselves offered a membership class and welcomed several new members who joined the church during that time. They continued with a worship team who met each week with interim preachers and prepared joyful, wonderful music. They recorded a video-tape that celebrated the blessings of living in Eugene and of being part of this church. During that time, most of them stayed and worshipped and waited for the Holy Spirit to come and show them their new pastor; and this church flourished in that interim. That is exactly what I prayerfully trust will happen once again.

I invite you to stay as Jesus directs you and discover the power of staying. Whether it’s in this church, or in your neighborhood, or in your family, staying and waiting on God is often how we find God coming to us in His time. It doesn’t mean you won’t go sometimes. As I said, the disciples did not stay put for that long. By all means, if the Spirit says, “Go!” then go. But please try also to stay when that is what He asks. Jesus’ first followers learned to stay when their Master said “Stay.” May you and I learn that lesson as well.

Amen.