Easter 7

Love it or hate it, we live by our calendars.There was a time when many of us carried them in our pockets, briefcases or purses. Paper calendars showed us when we had to be where.Then came the digital revolution, and many of us traded in our leather-bound planners for PDAs, personal digital assistants. We learned a new way of writing the alphabet so that we could quickly add new appointments to our Palm Pilots using the stylus.Then Steve Jobs and the people at Apple combined our PDAs, phones and MP3 players into smartphones. While we might have left our planners or PDAs at home on a Sunday morning, today most of us have our calendars with us even in worship.Digital calendars can do things our paper calendars never could. They remind us of things we need to do based on our time and/or location. “Siri/Cortana/Alexa/Google, remind me when it is time to leave for my doctor’s appointment.” Then, based on your location and the traffic, your phone can tell you when it is time to leave.Once we put an appointment into our phones, we never have to look at it again. We can simply wait for that little buzz to interrupt us, sometimes during worship, to remind us of what we need to attend to later in the day.Digital, paper, or in our heads, our calendars tend to drive large portions of our lives.In our Monday-through-Friday lives, many are required to be connected to their company’s calendars through Outlook or some other calendar/planning app. Supervisors and colleagues can put things on our calendars and expect us to be in the appropriate place at the appointed time.Truth is, we rely on our calendars to organize our lives. From the boardroom to the classroom, it’s hard to get by without some idea of what will be happening — and when.So imagine how the very first followers of Jesus must have felt about his answer when they asked about what was next. This is the nature of the conversation in Acts 1 – today’s lesson. Basically, Jesus is having a final debriefing before leaving on a trip – a vertical and heavenly one. And, of course, they have questions.“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” the disciples asked (v. 6).The question makes sense. They had been on an emotional roller coaster with Jesus in recent days. For three years, they followed him. They heard him talk frequently about a special time to come. He started his ministry telling them that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, was at hand.They listened as he told stories about banquets, mustard seeds and treasure buried in a field that he said were ways of describing this new reality to come.They were with him when he entered Jerusalem several weeks earlier. They saw the crowd waving palm branches and shouting their praises. By riding a donkey into the city, Jesus was fulfilling a prophecy that announced God’s rule and reign. It was a huge statement. Surely, they thought, this must be the time. At the Last Supper, he seemed to confirm it. “I will not drink the fruit of the vine again until I drink it with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Next stop, the kingdom of God, they must have thought.Instead of a coronation, however, there was a crucifixion. It appeared to be over. Their hopes were dashed. The dream of the restoration of the kingdom seemed to vanish. What now?Then, as quickly as it was over, it was back on. Jesus is alive. Hope is not lost. Certainly, the kingdom must be coming.After 40 days of being with a post-resurrection Jesus during which he continued to teach them about God’s kingdom, he calls a special meeting. Expectations must have been high. What was he going to do? What was he going to say?It had to be time for him to announce how the kingdom of God will come on earth as it is in heaven, just as he taught them to pray.The question must have hung in the air that day, like questions that pop up in some of our own interactions.+ When the company calls an all-staff meeting during a down economy, everyone wants to know, “Are there going to be layoffs?”+ When the person you are dating says, “We need to talk,” you want to know, “Are we breaking up?”+ When a teenage child enters a room, head down, and says, “Mom? Dad?” our heart rate accelerates. We want to know, “Is something wrong?”For the crowd that day, the tension is palpable. “Is it now? Is it soon? We want to get this on our calendars.”They want to pencil in the kingdom day. They want to know which week they need to clear for this world-altering event. They want to know the deadline so they can be sure to be ready.To these questions, Jesus gives a bewildering answer. “That’s none of your concern.”He actually says it more politely, but that’s the gist of it. “Let me worry about the timing,” he seems to say. “You just get to work on what you’re supposed to do.”Then he’s gone.The disciples and the rest of the followers are left bewildered, staring into the sky.The disciples have a scheduling problem, and for them, and for those of us who live by our calendars, Jesus’ attitude is frustrating.+ It’s hard to leave things in the hands of God.+ Hard to let go and let God take care of the details.+ Hard to trust in divine providence to be faithful to promises made.How are we to respond to this? It’s not for me to know the “times and seasons”? Really? How am I supposed to function with so little information?The problem is that the kingdom of God doesn’t fit into our calendars. Jesus doesn’t give us a list of tasks we can put in our phones. Instead, he calls his followers to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The timing concerning any ultimate physical expression of the reign of God on earth, he says, is for him to worry about and, in any event, he himself doesn’t know! He had already told his disciples (maybe they forgot) that “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:26).Our concern is to live into the mission of the church and the call of God today. It’s not about getting ready for some later date. Our role is to be the people of God every day, and do what God wants us to do right now.We aren’t cramming for a final exam. We aren’t trying to meet a deadline before the Supervisor in the Sky calls us in for our performance review. This is a here-and-now, everyday issue.Jesus calls his followers, both those on the hill that day and those in the pews today, to live for him at home, work and school, in our traveling, while running errands and wherever else life takes us.This includes our calendars and our schedules. It’s time to take our calendars and bless them, sprinkle them with holy water, say a prayer over them, but do something to sanctify our time and put it wholly in the service of God and for God’s work. The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.This means, of course, penciling in time for worship, prayer, Bible study, performing random acts of charity, being faithful to your relationship responsibilities and being flexible enough to respond when God interrupts you, messes with your calendar, and lifts you to minister in some wholly unexpected way.We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. When you sign up to follow Jesus, you’re going to have a ton of scheduling problems. Get used to it. Get over it. It’s all part of the thrill and challenge that’s called discipleship.