This Week’s Reading: Matthew 28:16–20 and Acts 1:4-8
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:16–20
On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you;and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
—Acts 1:4-8
Introduction and Ice Breaker
We often ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” What were your answers when you were a child or teenager? How have your answers changed? Even as an adult do you consider career and vocation changes?
How has the current crisis affected how your job/vocation? Are you content or enthusiastic about your job/career/vocation? Are you concerned or distressed?
Themes to Consider
PEACE: God calls us to be a non-anxious presence in tumultuous times.
STORY: Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the culmination of one overarching plan God has for creation.
PARTNERSHIP: God intended for us to be the ones who implement his new creation plan after Jesus already achieved it. He commissions us to rule in the ‘act’ of new creation of which we are now a part.
POWER: We are not to do it in our own strength so as to be proud; nor need we feel incapable to perform such a task and be despondent.
Discussion Questions
Do you consider the purpose of life, specifically your life, to share in implementing the new creation?
What does this mean for you in your family, workplace, apartment building, neighborhood?
Do you find it easy to live with an awareness that you are empowered for the task by the Spirit of God? What challenges do you have with this conviction?
Which way do you lean in your efforts of life: towards self effort / pride; or towards despondency and shrinking back from the call?
Where do you notice yourself living in the dominant narrative as opposed to the creation narrative?
What practices are you embracing that will root you in a new creation narrative?
Where do you notice self-invention (identity) and self-reliance in your life?
Guided Prayer
Silence:
Jesus says to his disciples: “surely I am with you always.”
Take two minutes of silence and hear Jesus speak that to you today.
What does this mean for you where you find yourself now?
Confess to God and others the moments you live as if you are on your own or the moments you cannot perceive his presence, and your desire to notice him.
Psalm 42:1-2
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
Psalm 51:10-12
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Quotes
It is out of the whirlwind that Job first hears God say, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 42:3). It is out of the absence of God that God makes himself present, and it is not just the whirlwind that stands for his absence, not just the storm and chaos of the world that knocks into a cocked hat all man's attempts to find God in the world, but God is absent also from all Job's words about God, and from the words of his comforters, because they are words without knowledge that obscure the issue of God by trying to define him as present in ways and places where he is not present, to define him as moral order, as the best answer man can give to the problem of his life. God is not an answer man can give, God says. God himself does not give answers. He gives himself, and into the midst of the whirlwind of his absence gives himself.” —Frederick Buechner
“If we don’t have God, we have nothing. If we have God, we have all we will ever need.” —Pete Greig
“The story you live in is the story you live out.” —Pete Hughes
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
There is all the difference in the world between something being achieved and something being implemented. The composer achieves the writing of the music; the performers implement it. The clockmaker designs and builds the wonderful clock. The owner now has to set it to the right time and keep it wound up. Jesus has accomplished the defeat of death, and has begun the work of new creation…His followers don’t have to do that all over again. (This, by the way, is why the early church didn’t say exactly the same things that he said. That confuses people who think that Jesus was just a great moral or spiritual teacher. They then wonder why his followers kept talking about him instead of simply repeating what he had said. The answer is that they were implementing his achievement, not trying to duplicate it. That would have been the real disloyalty.) —N.T. Wright
