The only strategy there is
Ascension | Acts 1:1-11
One of my strongest memories from college may best be described as the classic Midwest Goodbye. As I came back to my apartment, I saw a young couple standing by a car, door open, holding each other, talking. And after collecting all my stuff, packing up my car, and pulling out of the lot, that couple was still there.
My thought at the time was Just rip the band-aidI You’re torturing yourselves.
Of course I understood the feeling of wanting to stay and also needing to go. That sense of things changing and fearing that this, too, would change.
There’s clarity, decades later. Most of us can speak to our own times of lingering because we didn’t want to go and because we feared what would happen next.
And we know what does happen. That many of the fears are based in reality. That things really do change. Love does fade. A deep infatuation that can compel you to do stupid stuff can be gone by mid-summer and close friends can be a memory by fall.
In a sense, Jesus gives the disciples the ultimate Midwest Goodbye. He comes back for forty days—nearly six weeks! That’s long enough to think he’s back for good.
Jesus doesn’t engage in such foolish daydreaming, though. He makes it clear that this is temporary. Nor is it without purpose. There is some learning yet to do.
Owning Responsibility
What is it like to leave? Some of us have experience with moving every few years. So we know how it works. Others have stayed in the same place for their whole lives, so leaving is more of an abstract, metaphorical idea. But just because we move or don’t move, that doesn’t mean we know how to keep up relationships or our own spiritual growth.
This is why the Ascension experience for the disciples reminds me of leaving college. Because I went to school before social media. I didn’t have contact info for most of my friends. And as much as I was dwelling in memories and hopes, calling these people my friends, I also knew I’d see so few of them again. For most, this leaving was forever.
The question is not about justification. We aren’t talking about “the right thing to do” when leaving school. Or a job. Or when we move. It’s what most of us just do.
And we do this to start over rather than work to maintain a relationship. To own our half of the responsibility. We decide instead that we ought to start over.
Jesus helps the disciples see the arrangement differently. That it isn’t about maintaining a relationship at a distance by email and letters, right? They maintain the relationship by living out Jesus’s Way of Love.
No long goodbyes for us, because we aren’t planning to be done with this relationship.
We are wishing it were different.
I think most of us would love to be in the room during those forty days and the days immediately after. To both hear what Jesus tells them and what they say to one another. Their planning and praying and crying and remembering and hoping and fearing. You know, it’s probably like a vestry meeting without worrying about the budget or attendance metrics.
But it’s probably better that we don’t have that account. That we don’t get to be there. And for the same reason that we don’t need another instruction manual for being good people.
Jesus told them what to do. And most of their conversations are likely about perfecting the imperfectable. About whether to do something one way or another when both are just fine. Because that is what we do.
We are spared the sausage-making of apostle meetings and are treated to the generosity of their behavior. We see what they did.
And what they did was not build an institution. They spent their days in the temple, praying and blessing. It involved going out among the people and sharing. And it involved being together, praying together, pooling resources together.
In short, they spent their time doing the work, not worrying about the best way to do the work.
And the work is to love.
Of course, they didn’t get everything. They understood that what they were to do was to do that.
The apostles still ask if this will lead to the restoration of Israel’s power. If God will glorify the nation. Perhaps install a new, legitimate, godly king. And Jesus assures them that none of this is not in the cards.
Instead,
“you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
They are not warriors of a divine nation, but witnesses of a Way of Love, of a different model of reigning power with generous, shared, inclusive authority.
Essentially, their job is to do what they are doing. Praying and loving and sharing.
And it is our fear and desire that leads us to complicate that work; to set up lines of authority, worry about preserving our institutions, our nations, our vocations. That takes us away from praying and loving and witnessing and, instead, into strategizing, perfecting.
Notice that this isn’t a lack of strategy. It is the presence of trust.
And the presence of understanding what apostles are called to do.
Which is to be witnesses of Jesus’s Way of Love.
And this means choosing love over perfect, certainty, and order. That love is simply more important. And the right posture for the apostles of Jesus.
They love, pray, and share first. They don’t need to debate or get permission. There is no running it by the vestry. It’s actually the reverse: the vestry would be composed of people continually in the temple blessing God. Because that is first.
We don’t strategize how to love. We love to understand the strategy. And we can often put that cart before the love horse because we’re afraid of love.
For the same reason Midwest Goodbyes take so long. Our love scares us. Heartbreak scares us. Thinking we did something wrong (another secret identity for perfectionism!) scares us.
We are afraid to say goodbye because we’re afraid it will be the last time. And we will hurt. So we pretend that if we never have to say goodbye we can’t be disappointed. And if we get our plans just right, then we can’t be disappointed. And if we have enough people and resources, we can’t be disappointed.
But none of this looks like sharing love. Witnessing to Jesus’s Way of Love. It is fear. Perfectionism is fear. Over-strategizing is fear.
And we know what Jesus says about fear.
Don’t.
Instead: trust, love.
And do what we know we are to do: share. Our love, our joy, our everything of faith. We start here, trusting in love.