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
