Waiting Sucks OR Forcing It will be our theme this week as we continue our worship series, This Christian Life. Our worship series is inspired by the story telling curated by Ira Glass on National Public Radio’s This American Life. Each week we’ll look at a theme related to the Christian life through the lens of several stories. The stories will vary each week. Some will be rooted in our own community’s story and some will come from people far away. Some will be humorous and some will be challenging. Many of our stories will come from the Book of Acts. Here is a list of our themes for the series:
▪April 12: Weighing What Matters (Acts 4.32-35)
▪April 19: Inside Job (Book of Esther)
▪April 26: Crossover Tactics (Acts 4.5-12)
▪May 3: Unexpected Guides (Acts 8.26-40)
▪May 10: All Means All (Acts 10.44-48)
▪May 17: Waiting Sucks OR Forcing It (Acts 1.15-17,21-26)
▪May 24: Birth Stories (Acts 2.1-21)
This week in worship we will consider Waiting Sucks OR Forcing It. Think of a time in your own life, perhaps in relationship to your family or to school or to work, when it was challenging for you to wait. What was it like to wait? How, if at all, did you invite the Holy Spirit into your waiting and discernment?
Read Acts 1.15-17,21-26. In this story we find the early followers of Jesus holding the need for structure in tension with its mission of relating the Good News to an ever-changing world. Ultimately, the followers of Jesus choose one from among themselves to take the place of Judas. Noel Leo Erskine writes, “Their failure to wait on the gift of the Holy Spirit made the disciples preempt the authority of the Spirit by focusing on matters of church structure rather than the new mission to the Gentiles as is made clear in the later chapters of Acts. The problem…is that the apostles sought to choose one like themselves, and this is often not the way the Spirit works” (Feasting on the Word (Year B Volume 2), 530).
The tension between church structure and focusing on sharing Good News with “Gentiles” has been part of our own journey at The Table over the last few years. We need structure. We also need to focus on connecting with people beyond our walls. We need both. And, sometimes the two aren’t easily aligned. Which of these two (providing structure or reaching out to new people) is more challenging for you in relationship to your life at The Table? How might you grow in either area over the coming months?