Wait for the promise

The final words of Jesus’s last speech in Luke’s Gospel are not a rallying cry or a declaration of power. Instead, Jesus tells those gathered with him to wait. They will not fulfill the scriptures by taking matters into their own hands. Their part in this new future depends on God. They must wait for the promise of God, the power of God. Without this, they may be in danger of fulfilling their own fantastic ideas, but they will not be living into the vision that Christ has unfolded before them. So, Jesus tells them, “I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

The disciples do not grumble at this command to wait, but for contemporary Christians, waiting for God’s direction and empowerment can sometimes seem too passive in a world with so much need. Luke here invites us to interrogate whether our ministries and missions rely on God’s promise and God’s power. Where are we tempted to get ahead of God’s timeline, to force God’s hand, to remake God’s future tense in our own images? What might it mean to wait faithfully for God to empower the church?