Don=t Just Stand There

Polk City UMC

May 27, 2001

Mark Haverland

 

Acts 1:1-11 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This,'' he said, "is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.'' So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?'' He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 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.'' When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 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.'

 

I identify with the disciples and Elliott.  Leaving has never been easy for me.  The great tears of my life have always been at times of great change.  I remember the summer after I graduated from high school I developed an odd problem.  I found that I couldn=t throw a baseball.  I had played baseball since I was 8 and was the captain and star of my high school and American Legion team.  But over the summer before leaving for college I had periods when my arm acted as if I had never thrown a ball before.  Since I was a catcher and had to throw a lot, this was very embarrassing.  The ball would dribble back to the pitcher or sail over his head.  I read a few months ago that many athletes develop this sort of malady.  It=s a form a stage fright.  What once was an automatic motion can suddenly disappear usually as a result of stress.  Some famous major league pitchers have experienced my exact symptoms, I was pleased to read a few months ago.  I=m now convinced that leaving home caused so much stress that it had to pop out some how.  Parting may be sweet sorrow for some, but for me it=s just sorrow.

 

I inherit this trait from my mother who was really averse to change.  She designed the home I grew up in so that it could accommodate only one arrangement of furniture.  For the twenty-five years my parents lived in that house, the furniture never moved.  She bought such good furniture that it never even got replaced.  I have some of it in my house yet today.  Her greatest disappointment was leaving that house to move to Florida.  She spent a great deal of her life looking back, trying to hold on to what was, trying to stop change.  My mother never appreciated the way change can enrich and enhance and educate.

 

I heard a woman say the other day what a wonderful relief it was to leave her first kid at the college dorm.  It was so nice to have her life and house back.  She welcomed the change that took her from one stage of life to the next.  Change which keeps us from staring off into space is almost always good for us.  Someone told me the story recently of a young son who wouldn’t leave home, enjoyed the free food and lodging and showed no sign of leaving.  Finally, the parents managed to set the kid up in an apartment of his own.  On their first visit, the kid had just come back from the grocery store with bags of food and an angry look on his face.  AThis is awful,@ he said to his parents.  ADo you know how much food costs?!". Sometimes we are amazed at what we learn when we stop just standing there gazing into the sky. 

 

In other words, Don=t just stand there, do something. Let go of that distant spot in the sky, now fading from your vision. Don=t try to live off your sweet memories of the past, as though God has nothing for you in the future.  There are always more friends, more adventures, more joy in the future.  It must have been hard for the disciples to see Jesus disappearing, after all that had happened. They=d been his followers for a long time, knew the anguish of his passion and death, the joy of restoration when he rose from the dead.  Now he was leaving them, and they were uncertain what the future held.

 

That speaks to me.  I have spent an anxious week as we took the decisive steps toward our building project.  Will my legacy here be an education wing that burdens future congregations with an expense they can=t afford.  Can we really afford to do this? The cash flow projections are okay but not without risk.  Darrell has been helping me get over my buyers remorse, a common fear that makes us regret what we have only just decided to do.  But my faith is that during this 20^th anniversary year, we should spend a minimum amount of time looking back at where we=ve been.  We won=t stand still gazing into the clouds.  Not if Darrell has anything to do with it.  We=ll plan for a future in Polk City with continued growth for our church.

 

While in Washington DC a few weeks ago I learned some more about the use of technology in worship.  The digital culture is now the dominant culture and the church must choose the new language of the new age to communicate its message effectively.  So we will continue to experiment and increase our use of the projector and screen for worship.  We=ll continue to search for new ways to use music which has a more contemporary beat, tune and lyric.  I=ll try to do this slowly so that we can adjust and evaluate.  So far, your tolerance for the new media in worship has been very gratifying.  I have certain standards of quality and theology so much that others use doesn=t work here.  We=re having to invent lots of things ourselves.  But I=m having fun looking forward rather than standing around gazing into the clouds wishing we could return to the worship of the past.

 

I was at a meeting the other day of people getting ready for our Annual Conference which comes up in June.  I introduced the material on the changes in communications in the conference.  I was involved in the planning and implementation of these changes and now publish the CONNECT which you no doubt have noticed in the bulletins every two weeks.  We decided that the Internet and email would have to play a more prominent part of our communications strategy.  But some in the conference are distressed about all this.  Many people are still not on the Web and find email difficult and impersonal.  My response is that such people have got to stop staring off into the clouds wishing for a past that is not coming back.  The Internet and digital communication are here to stay and we had best get with it.  We=re not taking any prisoners here.  The churches must learn to speak the vernacular of our day.  I laughed when a year or so ago someone tried to give us an old Hammond organ.  Churches and funeral parlors used them for decades but you can=t give them away now.  Any church with any sense has replaced these old fashioned instruments with the new digital pianos, as we have.  I=m desperate to build on our digital piano by adding drums and guitars and a bass.  I haven=t quite figured out how to do that.  The recordings we have used work fine, but I can=t find a ready source for them.  We can=t just stand here while the rest of the world moves on to new styles and forms of worship music.

 

To just stand there gazing into the sky is above all else an act of disobedience.  Those first disciples were commanded to go somewhere.  They were told to do something.  The easiest course for the early disciples would have been to continue to meet privately, with people like themselves, with words that were comfortable and familiar, repeating the good news that Christ was raised for them and people like them.  They feared witnessing in public places to strangers whose languages and customs they didn’t know. 

 

Perhaps the first church fight was over whether or not to stay in Jerusalem and speak Hebrew or whether to venture to distant lands and speak Greek, a language not native to Jesus nor to his early followers.  The Christian church in the first century choose Greek and has been reaching out to the new languages and cultures of the people ever since.  We may not notice this so much here in Iowa and especially in Polk City, but the United Methodist Church, we can be proud to say, has an enormous emphasis right now in training Spanish speaking preachers. The growth of our church as the growth of Iowa depends on people who speak some other language than English.  George W Bush knows this, too.  He is the first American President to broadcast a national speech in Spanish.

The church and our country must learn to speak a new language.

 

This will not be without a struggle, of course.  There are those who want to return to a rigid orthodoxy of worship, just as there are those who want to protect and preserve the current language and culture everywhere.  There are those who want to resist the new fangled music and technology.  The Catholic church spoke Latin until less than fifty years ago, more than a thousand years since it died to everyone else.  We United Methodists sometimes have a worship style with robes and vestments which make us look more like medieval monks than contemporary citizens.  I think I have worn a robe in worship for pretty much the last time.  This church in Polk City has convinced me that it makes little sense to dress in medieval garb for a 21^st century audience.

 

The angels said to stop dreaming about the past.  Don=t just stand there - do something.