By Joe LaGuardia
I once watched my father knock his brother half-way across a boxing ring with a single right cross.
I saw it on one of those old black and white films, homemade from some ancient camera and later transferred to a DVD. There they were, sparring: My dad, the short, stocky 18-year old with what we–his kids–liked to call his Popeye arms; and my uncle, the tall, athletic Golden Gloves champ. They were both in their signature Everlast trunks.
My uncle had the awards, the height and the reach. He is beautiful to watch in the ring, like Muhammad Ali, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” My dad, however, was the slow one, more passive. All he had to go on were the size and strengths of his short arms.
In the film, I saw my uncle dancing around my dad. Jab, jab, jab. Body blow, slap to the helmet. Jab, some missed crosses.
Then I saw it: a split second and a misstep by my uncle. He got too close, and bang!–my dad’s right cross, like a cobra strike. My uncle went across the ring into the ropes. I’d never seen anything like it.
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When I was young, I asked my father why he didn’t become a boxer like his brother or his father, Grandpa being the one in the family who coached his kids and the neighborhood kids, who trained the likes of Tony Danza and others who lived in their Brooklyn community.
Dad gave all kinds of excuses: bad knees, too smart to box, too busy, spending too much time chasing the women and marrying my mother.
When I pressed him again years later, the truth finally came out:
“I couldn’t hit another man,” he said, “I felt bad about it.”
The fact is that the man, my father, had hands of stone, but he couldn’t put them to good use in the ring. He wasn’t at home there. It was familiar, but foreign.
That’s how I feel when I look at the disciples on the day of ascension in Acts 1:1-11. There Jesus was–back from the dead, a miracle, and the disciples did what all of us who lost a loved one only dream about doing: they held his hand again, was able to hug him and heard his voice.
But just as soon as Jesus came, it seemed, he left again and they thought all was lost. It happened again, but this time Jesus whisked away into thin air. Jesus couldn’t stay; he wasn’t at home on earth, not yet at least. It was time for him to ascend to his father in heaven. Just as Christ birthed the divine life into this world, it was time for him–as Barbara Brown Taylor once noted–to birth flesh into God’s world.
And just as my father wondered what good it was to have hands of stone without being able to use them, the disciples were left with hopes and dreams and an anticipation that seemed all but lost yet again.
They asked Jesus, “Now will you restore God’s kingdom of earth?” And Jesus left them.
How do you live after a miracle like that? How do you take the next step when that kind of question goes unanswered?
It was at that very moment that two angels showed up and tapped the disciples on the shoulders.
“What are you doing? What are you looking at?” They asked, like divine security guards waving people on, “Nothing to see here, folks, keep it moving!”
The disciples, however, were just in the ring with Jesus. Jesus was on their side, a spirit of stone, but now Jesus was gone just like that. No butterflies and no bees.
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I think that the disciples did what any of us would have done: They headed back to a familiar place, an upper room in Jerusalem. Maybe they figured that since Jesus appeared to them in this room after he resurrected from the dead, that maybe he will appear to them there again. They stayed there and devoted themselves to prayer.
Peter seemed to be the first to speak, but its not about the future and there is no sign of some anticipation of things to come–that doesn’t come until Pentecost. Rather, Peter seems to be just filling the time to do something, which is often better than doing nothing. He speaks about Judas, talks about the scriptures for a few minutes, and gets down to business.
There, between Jesus’ ascension and the downpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, we have what may have been the first Nominating Committee meeting in the church: They have to replace Judas, twelve is such a godly, biblical number after all.
There doesn’t seem to be any power in it, though. There is no life, no authority–and theologically, that’s correct. Jesus had yet to send the Spirit, the Comforter, whom Jesus promised would give the church power and authority to do what Christ did, to change the world, and continue to bridge heaven and earth.
The disciples had hands of stone, but no use for them yet. They had a ring, but no authority to wipe the floor with their greatest nemesis, Satan. And, although we feel badly for them, we get this eerie feeling that we somehow know exactly how they felt.
Who among us hasn’t had a dry spell? Who hasn’t had a day or even a season in which we felt powerless, short-sighted, a day in which we only piddled around with busy work rather than anything exciting that has the power to change the world?
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In a sermon on this passage of Scripture, one-time priest Barbara Brown Taylor commented that we feel for the disciples because we are no different from them half of the time. We join them on that mountain with our necks crooning up towards heaven, and we wait. We become aware that, at times, God seems absent, as if we are left in the ring to fight life’s fights alone.
But it is that very absence that also has the power to provide a sense of wonder and awe, that, in Taylor’s words, “brings us to church in search of God’s presence,” to go back to that sacred, familiar place again and again, where we saw Jesus last, “to recall best moments and argue about the details, to swap all the old stories until they begin to revive again,” to remember, to pray and rejoice.
Another scholar, John Polhill affirms that this text reveals a major plot thread in the book of Acts. Acts does not have endings or conclusions. Even as far as the last chapter, the book does not really end. Rather, the book shows intermissions, followed by opportunities, promises, and new beginnings. We are never sure whether church is an intermission or a new beginning, or both.
It is in that very search as a community of God’s people, however, in that recollection and retelling of the old, old story, that extraordinary things begin to happen because we do have an Advocate who fights on our behalf. In a week, when we recall another old story of Pentecost, we will be reminded that we are not in the ring alone — we have all the power and authority that heaven can muster. We will learn how God will put our hands of stone back to work, not to harm or punch or hurt, but heal and deliver and reconnect.
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For now, I guess we just have to live with the fact that we are looking up. Angels may come and tap us on the shoulders and tell us to move on, move on because when we get stuck looking up, we fail to look around.
When you look around, that’s when you start to notice things–that’s when you begin to see Jesus working in your midst, when you sense the Holy Spirit ready to empower you.
It may not lead to living into the New Heaven and the New Earth that is promised us just yet, but we’re getting awfully close. Awfully close.
“People of God, 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….Keep it moving, keep it moving. Nothing to see here.”
Baptist Spirituality 