Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
Here we are again.
Here we are again in a place that despite its ostensible strangeness may seem hauntingly familiar to us, a kind of déjà vu, as if we may have been here before.
Here in the “betwixt” and the “between” (see Charles La Shure, “What is Liminality” 18 Oct. 2005, retrieved 16 May 2015).
Here betwixt that which was so familiar that we may have begun to take it for granted and that which is as yet unknown and unknowable.
Here between an old paradigm so comfortable it is much like a well-worn, beloved blanket we can wrap around ourselves and a new paradigm yet to be broken in.
Betwixt and between. Much of our lives will be spent there—betwixt and between. So much that it actually has been given a name—liminal space. “Liminal” from Latin “limin” or threshold, a crossing space, from one reality to another reality.
For many—perhaps for most—this betwixt and between, this liminal space, is as uncomfortable as it is uncertain. As we find ourselves upon the threshold of a new reality, our minds (and hearts) tend to return to that which has been so familiar to us that it is ever in danger of becoming distorted through rose-colored glasses.
Consider the Hebrews, delivered from bondage in Egypt and now headed to the Land of Promise. There in liminal space, we find them grumbling, not just a little but a lot, as they, tired of the bland food God is providing them in the wilderness, forget the harsh reality of slavery and hearken back to that time when stomachs were full of savory food.
And we know what they do not yet know, of what is to come in the promised land of milk and honey, of judges and kings, and, one day, of the King of kings and Lord of lords.
It is in liminal space where the first disciples find themselves today, betwixt the ascension of Jesus last Thursday and Pentecost ten days later (seven days from now), between the leaving of Jesus and the coming of the Spirit.
Those first disciples who had not yet made it to Pentecost and its Spirit-filled signs of wind and fire and tongues.
Those first disciples are not there, at least not yet. They are still caught in the betwixt and between of Jesus’ returning and Jesus coming, coming through the Spirit to be ever present on earth in his body, the church, at least until at the end of time itself his coming again in power and great glory to judge the living and the dead.
Those first disciples are between paradigms, when Jesus (with the marks in his hands, feet, side) is gone and Jesus through the Spirit is not yet present, in that threshold between the known and the unknown.
Franciscan priest and popular spiritual teacher Richard Rohr says that liminal space is a “unique spiritual situation that human beings do not want to be in but God tends to lead us there [where . . . w]e arrive at this place . . . between an old comfort zone and . . . new possibility.”
We would not choose it. Of our own accord, we do not want to be in this place. It is uncomfortable. And yet, this is the place God has called us to, placed us in, at in the betwixt and the between where we are tempted (more so if we are type A personalities, as Sid Batts, a Presbyterian pastor in Greensboro has observed) to scream, “Don’t just stand there, do something”(Faith in Not Knowing, 1 June 2014 viewed 16 May 2015).
Rome is burning and we don’t want to be like Nero just fiddling. Do something for God’s sake. . . ..
For God’s sake? Really? We must do something to save ourselves? be our own saviors? Or find someone else to come and save us from that very place where God may very well have led us to be? so that we might move from bondage to freedom, from death to life?
And do we really want to be rescued from that, “rescued” from resurrection?
“Don’t just stand there, do something!”
We aren’t told everything that was going on in the minds of those disciples between the Ascension and Pentecost, but Luke does tell us, both in the his gospel account and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, that Jesus’ instructs his disciples not to do something but to wait, to wait until you “have been clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24.49), until you have been “baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1.5).
“The don’t just stand there, do something” (as Sid Batts notes) has morphed into “Don’t do something, stand there” or, better, “Don’t just do something, but pray there.”
What if we were to do that? What if we were to do that when we find ourselves, as we so often do, there in liminal space, there between and betwixt what was and what is yet to be?
What if, or this, uncomfortable space is the space of God’s own choosing for us? And what if we were not to rush do something, anything, but to wait, to wait and pray, that we too might be “clothed with power from on high,” that we too might be baptized with Holy Spirit and with fire?
What if in the betwixt and between we prayed to God, waited for God, trusted in God? What if we fully believed God’s promise?
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Is 40.31)
What if? What if indeed?