The first line of the song “Unwell” by Matchbox 20 says, “All day, starin’ at the ceilin’, makin’ friends with shadows on my wall.” Can anyone relate to that experience? Enough people have similar experiences that we’ve created a couple of idioms to describe them. You’ve probably heard them. “A watched pot never boils.” Sound familiar? Or how about “it’s like watching paint dry.” So, what do these idioms mean? What happens when we watch a pot of water that we want to start boiling? What happens when we stand and watch paint dry? Nothing…for a long time anyway. If we spend all day staring at the ceiling, we begin to lose all sense of reality and, like Rob Thomas sings, we begin to make friends with shadows on the wall.

I know there are a number of people here that like to golf. I really enjoy it as well, though I’ve only been golfing a half-dozen times in my life. I’m not very good, of course, but I did very quickly learn a very important lesson about golf. It’s a lesson that I think applies to most sports where you hit a small object with some sort of stick (baseball, softball, hockey, cricket, etc.). What I learned is that you have to keep your eye on the ball if you want to hit it well. When it comes to golf, I always want to see where the ball goes, so I stop looking at it a second before the club makes contact. The problem with that is that, when I move my head to look up, I undoubtedly pull my shoulders up with it. When my shoulders come up, my arms come up and my hands come up, and thus the club comes up…ever so slightly, but enough to cause me to mess up the shot…sometimes even miss the ball completely. I let myself get distracted by where the ball was going rather than focusing on what I was supposed to be focusing on.

This past Thursday was Ascension Day, when we remember the day that Jesus ascended into heaven. Our passage from Acts chapter one tells us that story. And the disciples are immediately focused in the wrong place. They had gathered all together with Jesus, and they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They are looking ahead to where they think things are going rather than paying attention to Jesus, who is right in front of them. And Jesus essentially tells them that. He says, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” The disciples are getting caught up in things that are outside of their control. I suspect that we all know how easy that can be to do. But Jesus redirects them. He tells them not to worry about things that God is in control of. Then he adds, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” That is what they need to be focused on…preparing for the work they have been chosen to do.

I don’t think the disciples really got the message though, because immediately following that, Jesus ascended to heaven before their very eyes. And they watched until he disappeared into the clouds. As they stood there with their gazes toward heaven, two men in white robes appeared beside them. The men said to Jesus’ disciples, “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.” This scene reminds me a bit of the transfiguration. In that story, Jesus’ body became radiant as Peter, James, and John beheld his glory. And immediately, the three disciples wanted to build tents to try to prolong the moment. “Let’s not go back down the mountain. Let’s stay up here with Moses and Elijah and this more powerful and radiant Jesus.” But Jesus knew they had other work that needed doing, so he redirected them. I don’t know about you, but I definitely need some redirecting from time to time.

Have you ever had a car that was out of alignment? You straighten up the wheel and it just wants to veer one way or the other? When a car is out of alignment, if we want to go straight, we have to keep making adjustments. The story of Jesus’ ascension reminds me that faith often requires us to make adjustments as well. God is constant and true, but our faith is not because we are a people who make mistakes and have to correct our course. As we learn more about God and Jesus and what it means to follow, we discover new things and realize places we were wrong before. The author of Hebrews tells us that “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” The word of God is living…and living things change and grow. Our understanding of God’s Word changes and grows. The Word of God will often look different in different circumstances. And we, as followers, have to realign ourselves to God’s mission for the world and to our calling within that.

Ultimately, our calling is to follow the last words of the living Jesus before his ascension: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Too often though, we are too distracted by he things of the world: smart phones, TV and movies, sports, politics. We stop looking to where we are supposed to be looking and get caught gazing into the void. Jesus is trying to call us back. Jesus has given us the charge to witness to what he has done in this community, in the Panhandle, in the state of Nebraska, and then to the whole world. That’s a big task that takes all of Christ’s followers working together. But it starts here with each of us, and it requires us to be focusing in the right direction and not pulling our head up or getting lost in the world of politics and social media. Jesus wants us to come together.

So, how do we get back in alignment? If we dig into verses 12-14 of our reading for this morning, I see three practices that will be helpful to us in keeping our focus in the right place. The first is fellowship. When the disciples returned to Jerusalem, verse 13 says that they “went to the room upstairs where they were staying.” Then the author lists the names of all of the disciples and then says that they were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” In the original Greek, this phrase translates as “steadfastly continuing in one accord in prayer.” They are continuing “in one accord,” with the same purpose, united. The Cambridge Dictionary defines fellowship as “a group of people or an organization with the same purpose” Getting ourselves back in alignment with God’s call to us involves being in fellowship with one another, finding purpose in communion with our sisters and brothers in Christ.

Getting back into alignment also involves prayer. When Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples were a bit dumbfounded. This person who they were convinced was the Messiah, come to restore the kingdom of Israel, was not leaving for the second time. The first time he had died, which they were certain was the end, but now he had chosen to leave. On Wednesday of this week, I watched the movie “The Princess Bride” with a group of tween and teens at the Gering Library. I’ve seen that movie many, many times in the past, but there is one scene that stood out to me this week even more than it has before. In the scene, Buttercup and Wesley are reunited after she has thought he had died years earlier. He asks her, “Why did you not wait for me?” She replies, “Well, you were dead.” And Wesley says, “Death cannot stop true love.” That scene spoke to me of the feelings the disciples must have gone through between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The Messiah was dead. All was lost. But death could not stop the true love of God. Yet now when Jesus ascends to heaven, the disciples again feel that sense of hopelessness. But the two men appear and say, “Why do you stand looking up to heaven? Jesus will come back…just as he did before.” Death cannot stop true love. Jesus told them that before his death when he said that soon he would be leaving, but he would not leave them orphaned. He told them he would send the Spirit to be with them. We connect with the Spirit most closely when we come to God in prayer.

The third way we get back in alignment is through diversity. What I mean by that is that when we surround ourselves with people who view life differently from us, our faith is tested and challenged. And it is through those challenges that our faith is strengthened. When we only surround ourselves with people who share our beliefs, our faith tends to be stagnant. When the disciples gathered back in the room where they were staying in Jerusalem, the text tells us, “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” They gathered with others, with those who hadn’t experienced Jesus’ ascension into heaven. They had to explain what happened and probably face doubts from the others with them. They may have even begun to question their memory of what happened. But it was important for them to face those doubts in order that their faith might be strengthened.

It’s easy for our faith to get out of alignment, for us to lose sight of the purpose to which we have been called, to become focused on things that get us nowhere and drain our energy. But Jesus gave us a task, a purpose for our lives. And he told us that the Holy Spirit would come to help us. In order to get back in alignment with this purpose we’ve been given, we must devote ourselves to being connecting with our brothers and sisters in Christ, connecting with God through prayer, and connecting with those who see life differently from us. As we do these things, we will find ourselves turning our focus back toward the mission of God and growing in our faith in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. May we find our alignment in the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.