SERMON 41 - SUNDAY 1 JUNE 2014

Sermon at All Saints Church, Whiteparish - Sunday 1 June 2014

Ezekiel 36:24-28; Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable to you, O God.  Amen

The passage I’ve just read from John’s gospel is often termed “Jesus’s Priestly Prayer” and as you will have discerned, the first part of it is a prayer up to God the Father asking to be glorified. The glorification of Jesus is a constant theme of John’s throughout his gospel, and is a way of John explaining to his reader Jesus’s divinity – wholly man yet also wholly God and has been the subject of much debate by theologians and indeed has caused the martyrdom of many in previous centuries or executions for heresy. John is seeking to show that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ were tangible signs of his divinity and Jesus’s prayer is that both Jesus will be seen to be God and that God will be seen in Jesus.  John uses the term “the Word” and we can all recall the very first verses in John when he writes that the Word existed before creation – in other words the divinity of Jesus as God is beyond all doubt – echoing the first lines of Genesis itself – “In the beginning God…” no question about it  – perhaps the most unequivocal statement in the whole of the bible – “In the beginning God…” there was nothing before the creation other than God.  God has always existed and by his repeated style in his gospel, John re-affirms “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”.  John is absolutely sure about this.  Jesus has always existed with his Father.

It was recently explained to me and other Christians rather like this – I think it was Nicky Gumbel as part of the Alpha Course – if we (humans) were God and we had created ants, then it is no good us trying to bring the good news to the ants about their creator from where we are – we simply cannot communicate this to them – being the enormous incomprehensible creatures that we are to them (the ants) – the way to do it would be for us to take the form of an ant and go down to their level and size and be like them and communicate with them – ant to ant – however ants communicate!  This is exactly what God did when he sent Jesus down to Earth to be with us. To be among us, to be fully human just as our “saviour ant” would have to be fully ant-like but still retaining the divinity which sent him.

John is writing his gospel many years after the events he records.  This particular passage this morning is taken from the time between the ending of the last supper and Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus knows what he has to do – suffer, die, be resurrected and then ascend back up to his Father.  Only then will his divinity, his glorification, as John puts it, be complete.  There can be no doubt, that by these actions, Jesus came from God and is returning to God.  The first two parts of the Trinity are clearly set out.

In Roman times, the times of Christ, the Roman Emperors were often declared to be Gods – usually after death but in the notable cases of Augustus and Caligula the declarations were made before.  In order to do this, just as the beatification of Saints by the Roman Catholic Church, there has to have been a miracle associated with them – so it was often the case that reports were made that the Emperor had been seen to ascend to be with the other gods. Jesus’s ascension, then, which we read about in our second reading from Acts, was another tangible sign given that Jesus had been glorified – made or declared divine.

In the second part of the passage/prayer, Jesus is specifically referring to his disciples whom he describes in his prayer as – “those which God had given him” – those who knew and know that Jesus is from God; that Jesus is God. Here we find the most exciting message of all – “All mine are yours and all yours are mine”.  In other words, those disciples – including future ones like ourselves – have been blessed with this wonderful knowledge that Jesus, is the true Messiah, the one sent from God for our salvation – the Mega Ant in our analogy!

The theologian Tom Wright puts it like this – and I cannot think of a clearer way of making this statement of our Faith – “To be a Christian is to be privy to this secret – to indeed have it engraved upon one’s life; because the other side of the secret is the Christian call to suffer.  The transformation of suffering is a further key part to an understanding of the ascension”.

In other words, we as Christians do not have a free pass to avoid suffering. Indeed, as we have seen in history and in our own lives, being a Christian will never prevent suffering from happening to us or the world about us – and Jesus suffered the most terrible trials and death before he ascended and was re-united with God the Father. In reality Christians in the world often suffer the most – not perhaps in our comfortable western world compared to the terrible suffering we see in the Sudan and Nigeria but nevertheless being true to our faith, spreading the gospel and being overt in our beliefs can often be difficult.  At this very moment a woman is facing the death penalty for her Christian Faith – marrying a Christian man.  Such trials, we have been told by Jesus himself, will face us as Christians.

 – but, as Jesus told those original disciples before he left them – “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you, always, to the very end of the age”. This is what is known as “The Great Commission”.  These words once more affirm what Jesus was saying to his disciples after the Last Supper.  But here we see Jesus refer to the third part of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit – and we now find ourselves, in the Church Calendar, in that strange period – and it must have been extremely strange for those first disciples -  between the Ascension – when Jesus physically left this Earth - and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  We are, in effect, in another shorter Advent period. 

Our New Testament reading from Acts is one which is very familiar to us all – the description of Jesus’s ascension and those immortal words from the angels “He will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven”.

These words have been the subject of much debate amongst theologians – does this refer to the second coming or something else? – Perhaps the arrival of the third part of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit.  What we do know is that the disciples must have felt totally alone clinging on to the hope that he would return soon.  Certainly the apostle John fully expected him to return during his lifetime.

In fact the disciples didn’t have to wait too long before Pentecost when they were filled with the Holy Spirit as promised – the third part of the Trinity which makes up the one true and living God.  It is the Holy Spirit which is with us now and which each and every one of us must accept and welcome into our lives to be true followers of Christ. To have Christ with us and in us at all times.

I particularly love that hymn, “There is a Redeemer “with its wonderful refrain:

Thank you now our Father

For giving us your Son

And leaving your Spirit with us

‘Til the work on Earth be done

And so we find ourselves in a mini Advent.  Waiting for the Holy Spirit to come amongst us at Pentecost – to refresh us, to top us up with that glorification which John spoke of.

When the veil of the Temple was torn at the time of Christ’s death on the Cross, direct access to God was granted to all believers.

Recently I preached at the Winterslow Methodist Church where I was introduced as a local lay minister.  I explained that my actual title was Licensed Lay Minister – a real mouthful I know. But I pointed out to the congregation, as I now point out you now, that the title local lay minister is an appropriate one for every one of us.  Being filled with the Holy Spirit we are tasked with spreading the good news to everyone we meet in our daily local lives.  We are all local lay ministers – each and every one of us who has, in Jesus’s words as recorded by John “been given by God”.  Let us go out in the Spirit to preach and teach the word.

Let us pray:

Come Holy Spirit

Fill the hearts of your people

Kindle in us a fire of your love

Renew the face of your creation, Lord

Pouring on us the gifts of your Spirit

Kindle in us a fire of your love

 

Amen