It's hard to blame the disciples for standing around looking up at the sky. They're being given their third completely different paradigm to guide them as followers of Jesus -- their second major worldview shift in under two months. I'd be standing around staring a little bit myself.
The first paradigm they knew -- they weren't the first group of people to follow a charismatic teacher to learn from him and listen to him speak. While this teacher, Jesus, was clearly different from many others in terms of what and how he taught, the general idea was the same. If we read histories of that place and time we learn that such leaders were common. The great teacher Gamaliel himself will point this out when he counsels the Sanhedrin in Acts 5.
But then came his arrest, crucifixion and resurrection and a whole new way of following their teacher, because that teacher was now known to them as savior and Lord. This, quite clearly, had not happened before and they did not exactly know how they should do it. Fortunately, Jesus' plan for his time following his resurrection seems primarily to be teaching them about what they are to do as his disciples. It's generally held that he remained with them about 40 days post-resurrection -- we don't know the exact figure because we don't know if the 40 days mentioned in the gospels starts on Easter Sunday or sometime later. But we know the main activity was him teaching and them learning.
And here we see the second major "paradigm shift" and the third completely different worldview the disciples needed to accept as a part of following Jesus of Nazareth -- how to follow him without him actually being around!
Although we don't have any actual accounts of what Jesus taught the disciples during his post-resurrection time with them, I imagine that whenever he touched on this part of the plan he got a lot of blank looks. Can you imagine Thomas being told about the Holy Spirit without asking a metric ton of questions? And can you imagine him being satisfied with being told, "Well, you'll know it when it happens" when he asked? This is not doubt as a lack of faith, it's a lack of understanding.
When we're living under one paradigm or worldview, it's really hard to understand the things that go on inside a different worldview. One of my favorite kinds of videos to watch on YouTube are called "reaction videos." People record themselves watching some show or another and we can see their reactions to major plot developments. Some of the best are kids watching The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars movie with their parents when they learn something very surprising about the relationship between Darth Vader, the main villain, and Luke Skywalker, the main hero. Empire is the second Star Wars movie, so the kids know who Luke is and who Darth Vader is, and you can see as they watch they know how things are between the good guy and the bad guy. Then comes the reveal, and the huge eyes, and the questions of their parents. The parents already know the new, paradigm-shifting information and as the kids learn it their whole understanding of the movie changes
For the disciples, the new paradigm doesn't mean they don't follow Jesus anymore. Now they follow him whether he is there with them or not and they have an omnipresent guide, comforter and encourager, the Holy Spirit. This new paradigm is the one which will spread the gospel to parts of the world the earliest church didn't even know existed, so even as uncomfortable and uncertain as it might prove to be it's the one they needed to get to.
We're about to enter our third paradigm of worship. There's the way we've worshiped for years, which ended on March 15. After that date we were asked not to meet in person but to try to "meet" with our community via streaming and watching the service. We were together in spirit but separate in body -- which is OK for awhile, but a faith that says God called his creation -- us -- "good" can't accept forever a path that feeds the spirit while neglecting the body.
In a couple of weeks we will return to in-person worship, but it will look different. Especially at first, as our new paradigm has to include steps to reduce as much as we can the risk of people getting sick. We've not usually had to consider that factor when we plan worship or set up for being together, but now we do. As we move forward and see how the disease progresses, we will decide how much closer we can get to our older way of worshiping.
But it would be a mistake to look at this third paradigm of worship as just a time to wait for things to get back to the way we want them. That would be like the disciples -- then or today -- treating the time in between the Ascension and the Second Coming as just a period of waiting around for Jesus to come back and not an opportunity to share their great good news with people who needed to hear it. And if they'd done that, where would we be today?
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