I used to work at a large library. It was Michigan’s state government and history library. It was four stories tall with hundreds of thousands of items in its collections, books, periodicals, government documents, maps, microfiche. I supervised our student workers and one of their jobs was shelving books. This also meant they looked for missing materials. When they just could not find the missing piece they came to report this to me. My common, if cheesy response to them was “If you don’t find it where it belongs, you look for it where it doesn’t belong.” I had a bit of a knack for intuiting where these wrong places might be.
It's easier to find something if you know what it is you are looking for. Imagine playing Where’s Waldo if you have no idea what Waldo looks like. Where would you begin to look?
In our Acts text we find the disciples staring up into the sky. Looking for something that wasn’t there. This is the same direction which Jesus just departed from them. Jesus was taken up into the sky. I recently saw an ancient painting of the disciples looking up and all that was visible at the top of the painting were Jesus’ pierced feet.
I can imagine the levels of confusion these disciples were dealing with at this moment. “Just a little while ago he died, and when we looked at the tomb, he wasn’t there, and then he just showed up. And now up he goes into the sky. Poof. And he’s gone again. So is this just another short term thing? Really, what on earth is going on anymore. I’m soo confused.”
And while they were staring up into the sky two white robed men appeared and asked “Men of Galilee, 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.”
White robed guys asking questions about an absent Jesus was starting to be a pattern. Remember back in Luke when the women went to the tomb to look for the body of Jesus, and again our white robed guys appear and ask “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
Every time they look for a missing Jesus these guys show up and say “Nope, not here. Not in the grave, not in the sky.”
So then, where do we look for Jesus? Where do we expect to find Jesus? How do you even know if we’ve spotted him? These disciples who had spent 3 years with Jesus were still looking for him and were quite puzzled about his absence.
Much earlier in his life, Mary and Joseph went looking for the young Jesus, who was not where they expected him to be. They returned to Jerusalem and found him in the temple talking with the religious leaders. This is not where you expect to find a 12-yr old boy. The women coming to the tomb looking for the body of Jesus did not find him where or how they expected. The Pharisees often found Jesus in places they didn’t expect him to be, with tax collectors and sinners.
The messiah even appeared as a baby in a stable born to a young virgin. This is not where or how we expect to find the messiah.
The opening verses of our Acts text begins with the disciples asking Jesus “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were still thinking that the Jesus they were looking for was a political leader. Jesus was right in front of them, but they couldn’t quite find him.
Once again, where do we look for Jesus? Where do we expect to find Jesus? How will we even know when we’ve spotted him?
Finding the divine in unexpected places is not unique to the New Testament. God’s presence in the Old Testament, the First Testament often comes in unexpected forms.
From 1 Kings 19
God said to Elija, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’
God was not in the powerful acts of great winds, of splitting mountains, of earthquakes, fires. Not in these “acts of God” but in the sound of sheer silence did Elijah hear God’s voice. In silence Elijah found God.
From Exodus 3
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ 4When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 5Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 6He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Moses found God in a fiery bush. Moses wasn’t looking for God, and when he saw the burning bush he didn’t think “Oh look, there’s God.” I’m intrigued that Moses, turned aside to see the bush. This turning aside reminds me of Jesus’s call to metanoia, to repent, to turn around, to change one’s mind.
One key difference between these two stories of Elijah and Moses, and our New Testament stories of disciples is that while the disciples were looking for Jesus, Elijah and Moses were not out looking for God. Elijah was fleeing and asking that his life be ended and Moses was just out tending his flocks. These people weren’t looking for God, but God revealed God’s self to them.
Maybe our efforts at looking for Jesus, looking for God are misdirected. Maybe we are looking for Jesus in the wrong places. We’ve learned from the white-robed men that we won’t find him looking down among the dead, and we won’t find him looking up into some way beyond. Maybe we are even fooling ourselves thinking we can find Jesus.
Is Jesus, Is God there to be found like a lost coin? Will shining a light and sweeping all our corners lead us to find Jesus? Or is Jesus more inclined to just show up and be found, in a locked upper room, in a Garden by an empty tomb, at a table breaking bread in Emmaus? Does God, out of God’s own generous will simply reveal God’s self to us? Is it perhaps not on account of our looking that we “find” God. Christopher Columbus did not “find” the new world. Perhaps we do not “find” God. Perhaps we are found by God. Perhaps God reveals God’s self to open hearts ready to receive.
Or maybe it is both. Maybe our seeking is necessary. Maybe’s God revealing God’s self is necessary. Maybe finding and being found, maybe seeking and being sought, maybe these together are an essential to our relationship with God.
Just before my meditation we sang one of my favored hymns. The first verse reads “I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew he moved my soul to seek him seeking me. It was not I that found, O Saviour true, no, I was found of thee.” That verse pretty much summarizes what I have to say.
Both God and us seek and are sought. We both find and are found. We are completely separate from, and intimately one with God. There is a mutuality of desire and action between us and God. The kingdom is now and not yet.
If part of our call is to be found by God, how do we do that? How do we open ourselves to be found by the one we are seeking? How can we be good soil ready to receive the seed of God’s word? If we had problems with the question of where do we find Jesus, I think the question of how do we be found by Jesus is even more challenging. How do we prepare our hearts to receive the one we seek? How do we allow, and assent to God’s presence within us.
The final sentence in our Acts passage offers an important clue to answering this challenge of seeking God, and preparing our hearts to be found by God. After the ascension when the disciples had reconvened in Jerusalem, the verse reads “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”
As fun as it is to make fun of the disciples for sometimes seeming clueless about what was going on, they show some deep wisdom here. They have learned that Jesus is not to be found among the dead and Jesus is not to be found in some far off home in the sky. They might not have completely figured out how to find Jesus, but in gathering together to spend time in prayer and reflection the disciples were opening their hearts in the direction of God and becoming attuned to God’s presence already among them.
As Jesus seemed absent, the disciples reconvened as a community of prayer. Perhaps they did this to try to regain the intimacy and immediacy of Jesus’ physical presence that had been with them. Perhaps they learned by Jesus’ example of repeatedly going off to pray. Perhaps they couldn’t imagine connection with God, without connections with each other.
In this gathered community of prayer the disciples, and ultimately us, continue the practice of seeking and being sought, of finding and being found. In this community of prayer we prepare our hearts to receive God in ways we might never have imagined possible. Together in prayer we till and nourish the soil to be ready for the divine seed of God’s word.
The call to be a community of prayer is not a call to withdraw from the world, but in this community of prayer we develop an awareness to be attuned to God’s presence in the world. While the outpouring of the holy spirit in Pentecost has not yet arrived, the disciples gathering in prayer are preparing themselves to receive God in these tongues of flame, and be empowered to bring the presence and power of God to all the world.
Where do we look to find Jesus? Gathered in the prayerful community, in a mutual relationship of seeking and being sought, Christ opens our eyes so that we may find Jesus wherever we look.