Another Brick in the Wall
Reflections on the Lectionary for May 21st
If the Sundays of the church year are like bricks, the seasons of the church year are like walls—the edifices built up one by one by the pieces that are put in place each week. The seasons, in turn, are added one by one to form a structure that begins construction with each Advent and concludes with the Reign of Christ (or Christ the King) Sunday. For the past six weeks we have been in the season of Easter, adding brick by brick to that wall, and the lectionary this week is the seventh Sunday of Easter, and the last. As the season of Easter ends, the lectionary begins to build toward Pentecost, which is coming up next Sunday on May 28th, and that will mark a turn toward the longest wall of them all, Ordinary Time, which stretches through the summer and into the fall.
In any edifice or building, though, there are rough spots, where two angles don’t quite meet like they should, or a gap shows between a wall and a door frame, or something isn’t quite square. I think, to continue my strained analogy of the liturgical year as a building, this transition from Easter to Pentecost is where things line up the least well—where light shows through the gap between the walls, or where there weren’t quite enough bricks to make things join up properly. And, I think that’s true of the liturgical year partly because the same gap exists in the Christian tradition—from the pages of the New Testament to the theologies that have been built from it. That gap, or misalignment, is the subject of this week’s passage from the first chapter of Acts—the moment when the hopes of Easter (resurrection, restoration of Israel, political triumph) give way to a different kind of eschatology that doesn’t quite reach as far as it should. It’s like a piece of drywall patching over a rough spot in the framing, or a bookshelf shoved into a corner to hide an imperfect angle.
The problem is this: the Jesus movement was a messianic movement, predicated on the idea that Jesus was the messiah, the anointed one in the tradition of David and his heirs, who would restore the kingdom and the kingship to Israel. That’s the premise and plot summary of the gospels—that Jesus was the one who everyone had been waiting for. (This seems to have been true of the early followers of Jesus, even though the sense in which Jesus might have fit the profile of the messiah didn’t align with what a lot of other Jews understood the messiah to be). From Advent onward, the church calendar reiterates what the New Testament puts at the center of Jesus’ identity: he’s the heir to the throne who will restore sovereignty and power to Israel. That’s why we read Isaiah each December, that’s why Pontius Pilate had to execute Jesus, that’s why Jesus gets the title Christ (which is the Greek for messiah). From the beginning, Jesus’ story was a messianic story.
Until it wasn’t. Here in Acts 1:6-8, the story shifts. A new wall starts, but there’s a gap between it and the old one. Messianism suddenly stops being the main focus, and something new begins.
Christian theology in all of its trinitarianism has made it hard to see this gap. After centuries of trinitarian thought, Christians kind of expect to encounter the Spirit as an expression of God’s presence. It appears to us as a natural outgrowth of the story—of course the Spirit would follow Jesus. But pay attention to what’s happening in Acts 1:6-8, and notice how full of disappointment this passage is. Notice what it’s smoothing over, and what it’s hiding. It’s a sleight of hand, almost, but certainly it’s a place where a few more bricks might have made the joint better.
Remember where the disciples were in the first chapter of Acts. They had been following Jesus, perhaps for years, convinced that he was “the one to redeem Israel,” as the disciples put it in Luke 24:21, the story of Emmaus, from the lectionary a couple of weeks ago. They had seen him do wondrous things, give amazing teachings, and challenge all kinds of structures of power. They had bought into the vision completely, and then they had seen Jesus crucified. It must have been a crushing blow to them, to see everything they had believed in hanging on a cross. But then, with the resurrection of Jesus, their hopes must have soared again. Surely the disciples were exhilarated, giddy, and buzzing with the unexpected triumph of their leader, who had somehow come back from the dead.
That’s the background of their question in 1:6: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?” It’s a good question. It’s the kind of question that makes sense, given everything they had just experienced. They had found a messiah, followed him to the end, seen him triumph over his enemies and over death itself, and here they were in Jerusalem, the seat of David and all his heirs, and surely, surely, the moment had come. Their question in 1:6 is dripping with anticipation; I imagine that they had wide smiles on their faces and their hands were ready to grasp a sword. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?” They meant it as a serious question, and I think they expected that the answer would be yes.
Anyone following the Christian calendar in the year 2023 might be reaching the same conclusion. In Advent, we heard about how the prophets foretold this baby’s birth. We heard about his baptism, his teachings, his miracles, his suffering and death, and on Easter, we heard about his resurrection. The construction project of the Christian year so far has led us to believe that the walls we’ve been building belong to a throne room. The disciples’ question in Acts 1:6 should make a lot of sense to us by now.
But Jesus’ response must have taken the wind out of their sails. The answer to their question was, essentially, no, or at best, not yet. This is not the time when the kingdom will be restored. Instead, Jesus says, I’m sending you the Spirit.
Centuries of Christian theology have conditioned us to think that this is a good thing—that the Spirit is a suitable surrogate for, or even superior to, the restoration of Israel. And maybe it is (though the Spirit in Acts is a little problematic, something I’ve been writing about a lot lately). But those disciples had signed up for a messiah, and they had been expecting a restoration of a kingdom. They were getting a Spirit. It’s a bit of a bait-and-switch. As powerful as the Spirit might have been (and the remainder of Acts shows the Spirit to be quite powerful indeed), it’s not the same thing as the restoration of Israel, with Jesus on the throne. It’s a story of disappointment and the recalibration of expectations.
Here’s where the walls don’t quite meet, where the angle is wrong, where some extra drywall or a strategically placed bookcase are needed to paper over the mismatch. The shift from Easter, with its messianic themes and triumphant stories, to Pentecost with its focus on the ongoing action of the Spirit, is abrupt. Easter brings things to a decisive moment, but Pentecost points to a long future ahead in which waiting, not action, is the main thing. Easter is a hinge to history, suggesting that the destination is right here, right now; Pentecost is an invitation to settle in for a long, long wait for an undetermined destination. The fancy word for this is eschatology; in this passage in Acts 1:6-8 we trade a very immediate and clear eschatology for a fuzzier and longer timeline.
Maybe that’s why the season after Pentecost is the longest season of the church year—because it mirrors the length of time we are supposed to live in the “times or periods” when the promises of Easter remain unfulfilled. Every eschatological movement in Christian history has ended in disappointment, starting with the one in Acts 1:6-8, though that doesn’t stop Christian from coming up with new ones from time to time. The question of the disciples in Acts is still a live and important question for a lot of folks today, and it’s still immediate and tinged with disappointment: is it time yet?
As we turn the corner from Easter to Pentecost, we start building a new section of wall. This new section meets the old section at an angle, departing from it starkly, though with time we’ve made it look less abrupt than it might have once looked. Pentecost is an exciting time, to be sure, full of energy and symbolism. But I think it’s worth stopping to look at this transitional spot, to see how we moved from messianic fervor to the long wait for promises to be fulfilled. We might ask, with the disciples,is this the time?And we might get the same answer back:it is not for you to know.