We live in a world in which people are simultaneously hungry for a sense of meaning and purpose—and increasingly detached from traditional religion. This disconnect is so clear that you can actually measure it in survey data. Pew Research, for example, releases a regular Religious Landscape Survey. And in 2024, their data for Massachusetts show the following: 72% of Massachusetts residents believe in a God or universal spirit, but only 20% attend a religious service more than once or twice a year, and 63% attend seldom or never. 82% believe that human beings have an immaterial soul or spirit, but only 46% feel a sense of spiritual peace and well-being once a month or more. 71% believe that there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it; but only 48% report ever feeling the presence of something from beyond this natural world. And of course my favorite: 45% believe the Bible is extremely, very, or somewhat important; but only 26% report that they ever read it.

Those of us who are deeply dedicated to the life of the church tend to fixate on the statistical decline of church attendance over the last fifty years or so. We often forget about the enduring spiritual curiosity and hunger all around us, and the reality that as traditional religion has waned, people have experienced the same level of spiritual hunger with fewer ways to experience and make sense of spiritual life. As Jesus puts it: the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Jesus’ words this morning come at an urgent turning-point in the story of his life. The time has come for him to be “taken up” (Luke 9:51), and this phrase contains a multitude of meanings. He will be raised up on the Cross to die, and he will be raised up to new life from the grave, and he will be taken up from earth to return to heaven. And he knows where he has to go for all these things to take places. They’re going to happen in the Holy City, the place where God’s Temple is found, and so he sets his face to go to Jerusalem. (9:51)

Jesus grew up in the Jewish province of Galilee, to the north. And he’s spent the last year, traveling around Galilee and the neighboring Gentile lands, preaching and teaching and performing miracles, gathering a group of students and disciples who follow him around, trying to learn about the coming kingdom of God. He’s spent the year trying to explain to them what exactly it means that he is the Messiah, and how that will be different from what they thought. And now, together, they’re going to go south to the Holy City, where Jesus will be taken up and the disciples will be sent out to spread the good news of his Resurrection and to live the rest of their lives in accordance with his teachings.

There’s just one problem with the plan: the disciples keep completely missing the point.

This Sunday, we had a guest preacher: our new Regional Canon, the Rev. Marissa Rohrbach. As Regional Canon, Marissa is our primary contact with the Bishop’s Office and the wider life of the Church. In her sermon, she spends a little while introducing herself and her role, before turning to the Gospel reading for the day.

Our world is not at all a perfect place. Our lives are full of broken habits and mistakes. But God’s love has been poured into our hearts, again and again and again. And so we have peace in our hearts, when we know that we are loved by God. We have the strength to carry on, because God has not left us comfortless. We have the power to love, because it is God’s love that works in us and through us in the world.

I’ve always found the titles of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting series to be so funny. Sometimes it feels like the only useful advice I’ve ever gotten in life, let alone as a parent, is to expect the unexpected. It certainly would have been good advice for the disciples, as they gathered on Pentecost Day.