Collect
O God the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: we beseech you, leave us not comfortless, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Risen, ascended Lord, as we rejoice at your triumph, fill your Church on earth with power and compassion, that all who are estranged by sin may find forgiveness and know your peace, to the glory of God the Father.
Post Communion
Eternal God, giver of love and power, your Son Jesus Christ has sent us into all the world to preach the gospel of his kingdom: confirm us in this mission, and help us to live the good news we proclaim; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Acts – 16.16–34
One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’ The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
Gospel – John 17.20–26
‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
Sermon on Sunday after Ascension
Here we are in the Easter period celebrating the Sunday after the Ascension, and yet the text from John comes the darkest time of Jesus’ life on earth, the text comes from the Passion Narrative. In particular, it is found in the Farewell Discourse which is a part of the Last Supper, when Jesus was preparing his disciples. – Jesus was telling them that he was about to go away to his death, a death he anticipated. This speech is full of difficult theological and philosophical concepts – the most tricky is that indwelling of Jesus and God in one another. Let’s begin with a seemingly simple question, How are people “one”? – How can Jesus pray that everyone who believes will participate in the unity which Jesus declares to exist between him and God the Father? Then there is another question, how can Jesus who is about to depart and God the Father in heaven be part of any believer’s being in the world? This is a paradox, isn’t it? This is the life of faith.
For one person to be a part of another is very strange. It is not part of one’s life ordinarily. That one person melts into another is a unique experience. It may be something we have experienced once in our lives, but we may not have, and so many may live a life of profound isolation.
This notion of indwelling, I think, is very much part of our concept of love. We should start our reflections this morning at that point. How does the beloved become a part of our lives? Half a century ago, that hippie generation, those love children, were most prominent in society – they were argued with, and they were argued about, by everyone. However, there was a very definite movement in many circles to explore the theme of love and how our behaviour shows our love. Psychologists such as Eric Fromm wrote about this complex subject, and philosophers were not slow to investigate what they would call “intersubjectivity”. All of them were trying to understand how one person’s life intersects profoundly with another’s so that we might express that relationship as a unity. However we go about exploring this indwelling, Jesus started us all thinking about it in this passage, didn’t he?
When I say that I love my wife, how do I make her mine? “How do I love thee? / Let me count the ways,” the poet exclaims. I suppose there are infinite ways to show how one loves another, both positive and negative. The negative ways of behaviour have been in the media and it has played itself out with our interest in “safe-guarding” within so many organisations, the church being most prominent among them. We all know there are many sorts of coercive behaviour which constrain the other in a relationship. I force that person into what I consider “my life”. For instance, I might not allow my wife her own spending money, or I keep her at home without contact with anyone else. In each case, I isolate her and so her life and mine are “one” in a very negative way. Erich Fromm wrote about this ‘escape from freedom’, which is what the coercive relationship does for both parties – each of them is dependent on the other to define their place in the world. They have forsaken freedom for that strictly defined relationship of interdependence and reduction of self to that coercion alone. There is no freedom to do something unexpected, is there? We are not free as birds to fly where we will when we are in a coercive relationship. We are caged somehow.
Everyone is afraid of freedom in many ways. In that fear we do not take responsibility for our own actions. We are not confident in our choices, in deciding whether this or that is the best course of action. Rather we would listen to the chattering crowd – in the person of the coercive partner – as it presses in around us, letting our personal resolve dissolve before the onslaught of the noise of that crowd. We all know the mumbling of “Rhubarb, rhubarb” of the extras on the stage set of our lives, a sound which merely distracts, if we try to listen to it. Our attention is diverted to something which has no moral authority over us. We run away from the freedom such an ethical self-control actually gives us. We run away from ourselves, and our own decisions for truth and justice. This escape from that freedom to choose, weakens our resolve and isolates us. Consequently, I would suggest, we do not love our neighbours in the way the golden rule bids us. We do not treat others as we would wish to be treated. And so we treat ourselves in so many negative ways – from merely eating too much to actively harming ourselves. There are so many examples and they are recognised as such, so much so, that there are warnings before many television programs which say, “There are scenes which may be distressing” because of some wretched example of humanity’s inhumanity.
Enough of this negativity! What about the positive path on which we are free to love? Surely there is something we can talk about which sets us on that way!
Yes, there is, but it is not as exciting as all those stories about which we are warned on television. The excitement of the crime drama makes a love story something insignificant. Real men, they say, don’t read “rom-coms” – why not? I ask. They say Chic-lit is frothy and insignificant – but so is a book like ‘Pride and Prejudice’. There is no action, no daring-do for the hero to engage in. Mr Darcy would be a different man, were he to be in uniform and about to be ordered into battle. Horatio Hornblower would have been a completely different character were there no warfare in which his character was displayed. – Whether manly heroic behaviour or the feminine excess of emotions, human character is revealed (and I think in both we can find love expressed) in the indwelling of the other in the space of the heart. In that place the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is to be discovered, where we learn about a friendship founded on love profound, that love which is undemanding but gives utterly. The Church is the community where truth is spoken with love. But, more importantly, what is said is listened to, and heard with, love – without ego interfering with the other’s life choices.
Here we are in the positive way of freedom. We no longer worry about ourselves in any petty way. We are anxious to live profoundly with one another, in a way that our lives become intertwined because of that indwelling of another within our conscience, a sharing of life so deep the crowd in its interference cannot comprehend just what two people can give to each other. We know that when we dwell within one another there can be no deception or intrigue, nothing deflects. There can only be openness and true character – I would say that the truly heroic, ultimately caring life which Jesus Christ bequeathed us through the Easter event reveals that paradox of true life, a life forsaken yet resurrected in Jesus Christ.