Disciples in Lockdown

Provoking Faith at Bloomsbury

19 April 2020

Acts 1.1-14

Last Sunday we finished the series of readings from Mark’s gospel

            which have carried us from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry

            through to the empty tomb of Easter morning.

And today, we start a series that reflects

            on what life-after-resurrection might mean

                        for those who want to continue following Jesus in his physical absence,

            as opposed to those first disciples

                        who followed him when he was physically present with them.

Today’s reading from the book of Acts

            picks up a time-between-times story,

with the resurrected Jesus mysteriously both still with his disciples

            and yet also absent from them.

We meet the disciples just a few days after the events of the Easter weekend,

            with both the horror of crucifixion and the joy of resurrection

                        still fresh in their minds,

            and we discover that they are, in effect, in lockdown.

There can be a temptation to think that the resurrection

            set in place the immediate and inexorable expansion of the gospel:

                        from Jerusalem, through all Judea and Samaria,

                                    and to the ends of the earth,

                        as Jesus puts it in verse 8.

But whilst the promise was given that this is what will happen,

            it certainly wasn’t the experience

            of these earliest disciples gathering in Jerusalem.

Their post-Easter experience was one of confinement,

            under orders not to leave the city (1.4)

                        except, it seems, for a permitted Sabbath day’s exercise walk

                                    to the Mount of Olives and back (1.12);

                        a round trip which, as those of us who have been to Jerusalem know,

                                    takes comfortably less than an hour.

On their return to the city they went back up

            to the presumably rather overcrowded upper room,

                        occupied as it was by the eleven male disciples,

            and joined by Jesus’ mother, his brothers,

                        and some of the other women.

And this became their daily routine.

            Sitting in a room: waiting, talking, praying, and waiting some more.

Perhaps a quick walk up the Mount of Olives and back again to get the blood flowing,

            but predominantly waiting.

And I don’t know about you

            but something in me find this all rather comforting.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to work out

            how to proclaim the gospel in a time of pandemic, and lockdown,

            and sometimes it’s been easier than others.

For myself, I found it fairly easy to preach a Lenten Lockdown.

            The Good Friday sermon almost wrote itself on the subject of grief and loss.

Easter Sunday and resurrection was a challenge,

            but we were helped by Mark’s ambiguous ending

            leaving us with more questions than answers.

However, I confess that I’ve been puzzling over what a post-Easter,

            post-resurrection gospel-for-lockdown looks like,

when everything that should have changed

            is in reality still much the same:

with fear and grief and suffering still all around us.

So here at the beginning of Acts,

            with the post-Easter disciples also in lockdown,

                        waiting for things to change,

            I wonder what they can teach us?

What lockdown lessons of discipleship

            can we learn from the first disciples?

Well, the first thing it seems that they had to learn, following the resurrection,

            was how to wait.

For many of us, this doesn’t come easily.

            Like Peter, James, John and the rest,

                        our discipleship is often built upon activism:

            getting out there and changing the world,

                        relentlessly busy in the cause of the kingdom.

Being confined to an upper room waiting for things to change,

            when the gospel of new life burns within,

            is a hard lesson to bear.

But bear it they did, and bear it we must.

Some of the things we long to do,

            which we believe we are called to do,

                        are denied to us;

            and we, like them, will need the gift of holy patience.

Another lesson the disciples had yet to learn

            was the true nature of the kingdom of God.

You’d have thought, after all the teaching from Jesus

            that his kingdom was not of this world,

they might have realised that the coming kingdom

            wasn’t the promise of a restored kingdom of Israel;

and yet here they still are, asking once again

            if Jesus is about to fulfil their dreams of triumphant nationalism (1.6-7).

And we don’t have to look very far in our world of Coronavirus lockdown

            to find narratives nationalism, protectionism, and racism.

We have to discover our calling as the followers of Jesus

            to speak clearly a gospel of a kingdom of inclusion and love for all,

and to challenge those

            who would divide humanity into segments of seclusion.

And then the disciples had to learn to pray.

            We’re told that they ‘devoted themselves to prayer’ (1.14),

                        and I wonder if I dare ask, how we are praying as a community?

Are we making the time and effort

            to bring our hurting world before God,

and to listen for God’s voice whispering to us of the coming kingdom?

Sometimes, when all else has failed,

            and when for all our efforts we find ourselves powerless,

the prayer of hopeful resignation,

            that God’s will be done,

can open a path to peace and restored souls.

And one more thing that the disciples had to learn,

            was that they didn’t have the power

            to change the world on their own.

Acts tells us that the purpose of their waiting in the upper room in Jerusalem

            was specifically to receive the power of the Holy Spirit (1.8),

to discover that it was only through God’s gracious gift

            that they would be able to live into being the good news

            of a new way of being human before God.

All the way through Jesus’ ministry,

            as we have seen on our journey through Mark’s Gospel

the disciples kept trying to act in their own strength:

            arguing, for example, about who was the greatest,

            or what their roles would be in the establishment of God’s kingdom.

But now, post-resurrection,

            they needed to internalise what they had seen in Jesus,

which was that the power to live differently

            comes not from will-power, nor self-discipline,

            nor even from sheer bloody-mindedness.

But rather, the power to live the kingdom into being,

            comes as a gift from God.

The disciples had seen that power made manifest in Jesus,

            but now they needed to encounter it for themselves,

            making a daily difference in their own lives.

And this is the key purpose for the locked-down disciples:

            they needed to learn together to put self aside,

            and to re-orientate their lives towards Christ.

And I wonder if it is something we could own for ourselves too,

            as we face several more weeks of lockdown.

Can we devote ourselves to prayer, and to one another;

            to the study of scripture

            and the discovery of the true nature of God’s kingdom?

And can we hear once again the whispers of God’s Spirit,

            forgiving us our sins, restoring our relationships and our souls,

            and teaching us of a new way to be human before God,

                        where self is secondary to service,

                        and love drives our deeds?

And as that whisper grows louder,

            will we hear God shouting in anger at the injustices of the world,

calling and calling us follow the footsteps of Christ,

            growing in power in our lives

so that we, like the first disciples,

            can find a way out of lockdown

            which takes us to a different world to that which we left.

One of the great tragedies of this current time

            would be if the status quo reasserted itself unchallenged

            over the months and years ahead.

And we who have a vision for God’s kingdom

            will need the power of God’s Spirit

to help us shape a new and more Christ-like world.

And this starts today,

            as we wait, and wait, and wait,

            learning lessons of discipleship in lockdown.