I have a question for you: Are you ready?
Ready for what?, you might ask. Ready for the lockdown to truly be over? Ready to return to church? Ready to go back to work or school? Ready to go to a pub? Ready to get on a plane and head off for some sunny realm and lie on the beach?
I’ll tell you what I think of automatically when I hear the question “Are you ready?” In the States, during the autumn, which is the season for American football, there is a weekly match on television that starts with someone shouting, “Are you ready for some football!” And of course everyone watching the match is ready.
So we might be ready for all sorts of things. But I’m asking for another reason today. I’ll tell you about it in a little while.
But I ask because the disciples themselves are having to get ready. This is an odd Sunday in the church year. It’s the Sunday after Ascension Day, and the Sunday before Pentecost. Now Ascension Day is a major holy day, but it sometimes gets forgotten, because no one quite knows what to do with it. It’s the day, always a Thursday, 40 days after Easter, when Jesus ascends into heaven. He has already died and been resurrected, so he can’t die again. As we say in the Easter Anthems, “death no longer has dominion over him.” He has been around for 40 days after Easter continuing to teach the disciples. But he has to leave, so that the power and authority in him passes to them, and then they can go forth into the world spreading his word and speaking in his name. So he ascends into heaven. It is a holy moment, and the disciples watch it happen, and then two men in white, presumably angels, say to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?”
So that’s it. Jesus is gone. He has told them that something will happen, but he has not told them when. The “what” is that the Holy Spirit will come upon them with power. He has told them this a few times: right before he ascended into heaven, and he had said it to them back in that Upper Room where they hung out together. He had told them that God would send the Holy Spirit to them as an Advocate, and a Comforter.
So Jesus has told the disciples what will happen, but he has not told them when. In fact, he has said that they are not to know when. He says, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”
So the disciples are just waiting. You might say they are in an in-between time. In between Jesus being with them, and the Holy Spirit coming upon them with power (except they don’t really know what that means). In between walking the countryside with Jesus, and them walking the countryside and far beyond, in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth, Jesus has said. In between Jesus teaching them with authority and their being the students, and them becoming the teachers and teaching others with the authority given to them by Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
It’s called being in limbo — an in-between time. You know something else is coming, even something good, but you don’t know how good, really, and you don’t know when it will happen, and all you can do is wait. Wait and prepare yourself, so that you are ready.
What the disciples do is they go back to that Upper Room where they hung out with Jesus. It was the eleven closest disciples — eleven instead of twelve, because Judas had betrayed Jesus, and by now he has died. But it wasn’t just those eleven who gathered. The group also included Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Jesus’ brothers, as well as others. The eleven also had to replace Judas so that the leaders of the group, you might say, again numbered twelve. They chose a man named Matthias who had also been a follower of Jesus from the beginning. And they devoted themselves to prayer, in this in-between time.
What else could they do? They did know how the Holy Spirit would come, they did not know when, they did not know what would happen when the Holy Spirit did come, with power, as Jesus had said. So they waited. They got their house in order, you might say, by spending time with one another and by replacing Judas. And they prayed, so that they might be ready for whatever came next.
We know what will happen next, because the Scripture tells us. The Holy Spirit will come upon them ten days later, on the Day of Pentecost. And it will come with power. We celebrate Pentecost next Sunday, the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Some even call it the birthday of the Church, because from that day the disciples become apostles, spreading the word and going forth to spread the word about Jesus.
Are you ready? Not for the lockdown to be over, or to go to a pub, or to get on a plane and go somewhere sunny. We all might be ready for these things. But are you ready for the Holy Spirit to come upon you, with power? Are you ready for the Holy Spirit to fill you with life? Are you ready for the Holy Spirit to shake up your whole way of seeing the world and open your eyes so that you see anew? If you are troubled with a heart of stone, are you ready for the Holy Spirit to turn it into a heart of flesh?
Are you ready? The Holy Spirit is coming.