Sermon from All Saints from Sunday 17 May

 

Reading(s): Acts 1.6–14. This sermon was given by Peter Haughton at All Saints.

“Why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” Acts1: 11

I’m a bit of an impatient person, so this Sunday, the last of the Easter season, is, for me, a sort of “Limbo Sunday”, placed between the Feast of the Ascension that we had on Thursday and the Celebration of Pentecost next Sunday – it is a sort of nothing-Sunday, a hanging around Sunday – but in spite of me seemingly devaluing it, maybe there are some things, some insights, that we all might find helpful. I call it a “Limbo Sunday”; those of you with a more nautical turn of phrase might wish to call it a “doldrums'” Sunday – from mariners, we have the phrase, and perhaps, their dread of, being stuck in the doldrums, that belt of ocean around the mid-Atlantic, the equator where it is often windless and, when wind was your sole means of propulsion, when you needed wind in your sails to get going, then being stuck in the doldrums might indeed be something you do dread and fear. Anyway, let’s leave the wind to next Sunday, Pentecost.

Some years back, I was in the congregation for this Sunday and the Sunday School was focusing on the Ascension story. At the share and display slot at the end of the service/ worship, they had made, what looked like a fairground roundabout out of paper and cotton wool, but on closer inspection it was a cardboard cut-out of the disciples on the base and a paper strip to take Jesus up into the fluffy cotton-wool clouds at the top. And amidst the polite applause of appreciation, I found myself thinking whether this was helpful portrayal of the story of the Ascension.

Now there may be some of us who are signed-up members of the flat earth society, but even at the time of Jesus, there would have been those for whom heaven up there and hell down there was metaphorical rather than literal.

Yet these events that St Luke describes posed a problem for the first disciples. (St Mark succinctly writes, “So then, the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the God.") The problem was this: first they claimed that Jesus, crucified, had risen and had appeared among them. So where is he? Ah, he has now ascended into heaven. For these first Christians, these disciples seemed to be saying, “Yes, we saw him; yes, we ate with him, yes we touched him, but actually, now he is no longer here, he has ascended into heaven, and some of us saw that too”. No wonder some of Paul’s audience at Athens scoffed on hearing his testimony.

So this was a problem for the early church – and it is still a problem for the present church. For we need both a theology and a language which describes truth (divine truth) in a way that is authentic. A literal understanding of those events, is, I suggest, unhelpful – it has the sort of image of being beamed up or beamed down as in the Star-ship Enterprise. Whilst some of us may think of heaven as a physical place, and indeed, heaven with a small “h” might be just that, Heaven with a capital “H” is, I suggest, a state of being, so the claim we, as Christians, make is not that heaven is up there, that heaven is not a literal physical place, but, maybe at best, a metaphorical place, because of the inadequacy of our language to describe the indescribable. Some of you might describe a meal you have had as “divine” or “heavenly” – a taste of heaven perhaps!

So we use language metaphorically – we talk of uppers and downers to describe our state of mind, as well as the medication we might use to affect our mood changes; we talk of things are looking up; I might notice that you seem to be a bit downcast today etc. Up and away/down in the dumps – this is how we use language metaphorically, and on the whole it is adequate in day to day living. (onwards and upwards)

But however we see the Ascension of Christ, it was necessary, both from a divine point of view as well as an earthly/human point of view. Next week we shall be celebrating/commemorating the Feast of Pentecost, the birth of the Church, the receiving, in a new way, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit on those first disciples. Today we can explore why the Ascension was necessary.

In Jesus' earthly ministry, he gathered around him those first disciples. They were the ones who learnt from him, who witnessed the work and wonders of Jesus' ministry; they were the ones whom Jesus sent out on the mission of proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand – a sort of work experience whilst he was around before his departure. But for them, and indeed for us, to realise their potential, their God-given potential, it was necessary for Jesus to move on. They too needed to move from being disciples, dependent on Jesus, learning from Jesus, to being apostles – sent out and working on their own account.

It is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You start with a trike, for stability and to gain the confidence to graduate to the next stage. You move on to a bicycle with stabilisers – again for the stability offered. But there comes a point when you need to be set free from these constraints. The stabilisers are removed, but the parent’s hand is there supporting the rider, until that moment when independence is gained and you no longer need a parent, you are no longer dependent on a parent, around to support you in acquiring this skill because now you can do it on your own account.

Similarly with those first disciples; they could now get on with the continuation of God’s purpose to proclaim a fresh gospel, a fresh understanding of God’s relationship with humankind and our relationship with God. Again I am using an analogy, a figure of speech to try and describe the transformation brought about in those disciples – simple men and women, equipped by God, to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. They were given, they found the language to talk about God.

What about us? Do we have the language and the theology to continue in their footsteps? We might need places, like this, to come together, to come together for an event, not so much to do, but to be. Rather like those first disciples following on from the Ascension – a time in limbo, a time to suppress our impatience. Perhaps we, as Anglicans, are, at times, too wordy in our worship of the one true God and could learn something from simplicity and silence of other traditions, such as the Society of Friends.

I’ll leave you with a question, and it is this: is our faith still a Sunday school faith – a literal understanding of the biblical stories? Perhaps it is just a faith that is for Sundays only, or is it a faith that equips us to engage in the world with all its complexities? Is it a faith that can glorify God, for it recognises, that God is with us in the misfortunes, muddle and mess of our lives? We may be in limbo or in the doldrums this Sunday, but it will pass as we are asked to become attentive to God equipping us through God’s Holy Spirit – but that’s for next week.

As our Collect today requests, “We beseech you, leave us not comfortless, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where Christ has gone before. Amen