If you've ever traveled with children, you will inevitably hear these four words. When my children ask, “Are we there yet?” I usually try to give a response vague enough to distract them so that won't repeat the question. Of course, when we travel the long distance to Alabama to see my husband's family, there are only so many distractions.
If I spoke the truth, I'd have to say something like: “No we're not there yet. We have about nine more hours to go, and it's going to be long and very boring.” The truth is, as my husband and I well know, Smalltown, Ala., isn't even on the radar. And if it were, it would remind us that we're nowhere near our destination. The road sign would point to something absent: “Smalltown, Ala., 450 miles.”
Not all signs work like this, though. A sign may point not to something toward which we travel, but to something that is moving toward us. Those beautiful pastels in the morning sky – the pinks and oranges – are the signs of the coming of a light so overwhelming that we can only stare in awe.
It is in this second sense that we ought to understand scriptural signs such as those recorded in the book of Acts. Peter reads from the prophet Joel: “God declares … I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (2:17). Later, “awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common….” (Acts 2:43-44) Visions, dreams, wonders — all signs, not of a far-off place but of something close at hand. The light is on the horizon. This Jesus, whom you crucified, God has raised up.
And those gathered, when they see these signs, do not ask, “Are we there yet?” Instead, they are cut to the heart. The signs point to a reality that is coming to them. Their question is not, “Are we there yet?” but “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37) The world has been turned upside down. Should we build buildings? Look for solutions to the world's problems? Start programs? Set up committees? Raise money? Make money?
The answer they receive doesn't seem particularly earth-shattering. Devote yourselves to the apostles' teachings. Fellowship with one another. Baptize. Break bread. Pray.
The Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh, and this is all you do? Dunk people in water, eat together, close your eyes and mouth words to someone you can't see? Such acts seem trivial against the backdrop of the world's suffering: war, poverty, hunger, loneliness, financial anxieties, illness, etc.
“What shall we do?” When we ask this question today, it's more out of anxiety than anticipation. “What shall we do?” Our church is not growing. We need more money. We're having problems in our families, with our co-workers, with people in the church.
Perhaps we're tempted to romanticize the early Christians and therefore more easily write them off. They lived in simpler times, after all. They didn't have the problems we have today. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was more available to them than it is to us.
And yet, as the Christian calendar reminds us, we are now living in the time of the birth of the church. It is often observed that when Jews celebrate Passover, they are not simply remembering an event from the distant past. Rather they are participating in the redemptive work of God, as much a reality in their lives now as it was when God led the Hebrews from slavery to the Promised Land. So also with us. We live these 50 days of Easter in the confidence that God is still creating the church through the power of the Holy Spirit.
If this is true, we too should be cut to the heart. We too should be so overwhelmed that we do as those early Christians did: baptize, pray, share the Lord's Supper, devote ourselves to the apostles' teachings. All signs not of a distant reality but of God's presence among us.
There is yet a third way to understand a sign: as something that brings about or causes certain realities. “I pronounce you husband and wife.” Six simple words. And yet a whole reality comes into being when a minister utters them. “I condemn you to 20 years in prison.” A simple statement, and yet imagine being a family member of one so condemned.
The words and deeds of the church seem small and insignificant when measured against the seemingly insurmountable problems in our lives and in the world. And yet, baptism is participation in the life and death of Christ. Breaking of bread is communion with Christ and the body of Christ. Devotion to the apostles' teaching sustains the oneness of the body of Christ across space and time. And prayer is the practice through which we allow Christ to pray in us and through us on behalf of the world. Such actions are ways that God in Christ creates the church so that the church itself becomes a sign for the world.
The church is ever being born anew through the Holy Spirit. If we're looking for signs about a distant future, we may well miss how God is now creating the church “through water and the Word.”
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— Beth Newman is professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [email protected]