Where Do We Go From Here

4 Introduction The season of Lent has a very clear direction. It leads us to the cross, and in the great Festival of Easter, takes us through death into the joy of the Resurrection. Good so far, but, once we have arrived on the other side of death, where do we go? This has always been the question faced by the church. At the Ascension, we are told Jesus commanded us to ‘go out into the world to make disciples’. But how? Which direction first? With whom? For how long? Are we there yet? There are easy, pat answers to these questions, answers grounded in the mission, tradition and theology we have breathed in since we first started to attend church, answers that may have more to do with ‘then’ than they have to do with ‘now’. As with most ‘easy’ answers, a closer look reveals that each answer contains within it many more questions. So, let’s look at the early church and once again celebrate the passion, enthusiasm, miracles, unity and determination that are so evident in Acts. Surely the answers are there? Perhaps. Or, more likely, in re-reading Acts, we will discover questions and clues about how we might enter into the great adventure of ‘mission’ in our own time and place. In Australia. Today. The Acts of the Apostles is most certainly full of wonders. The whirlwind of Pentecost. The growth of the church. The generosity. The healings. The conversions. The beatings. The prison sentences. The deaths. The... Hang on... the what!?! It’s true, Acts tells the story of a brand new church stumbling into being and it’s not all pretty. We might prefer Acts preached as triumph and victory, but that’s not the half of it. Evangelists argue, communities are confused, racism rears its head, economics aggrieve, politics pollute. It almost sounds like the real world. Because it was. The real, messy, glorious world of human beings facing massive changes to what they believed and how they were to live. They may have been saints, but they were saints like us.