St John’s Church, Harpenden - an Ash Wednesday sermon - 'Dust and Ashes'

Ascension Day

"God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion."  ( Ephesians 1 : 20,21 )

+      In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit     Amen

I remember from my days as a student, that the last London train to leave Cambridge Railway Station on a Sunday evening always had on board a goodly number of girl friends and boy friends heading back to the Metropolis having spent the week-end with their amours.  I have little doubt that the scene is still substantially the same most Sunday evenings in term time.  Back then, that train had a colloquial name…which I couldn’t possibly repeat in church.  The activity on the platform was wondrous to behold.  Last minute kisses and hugs, the whispered words of affection and promises of undying love.  Then as the train slowly pulled out, that last gasp sprint along the platform endeavouring to keep adjacent to the window by which the loved one sat; trying to hold on to a few precious seconds of sight before the beloved face was whisked off into the night.  Then, oh what a weary trudge it was back along the platform to the bus stop or bicycle racks.  Faces downcast and sad, the odd eye moist with tears as the idea of even a few days without that special person seemed such an unhappy and unappealing prospect.

Railway platforms along with quayside docks and airport terminals are places evocative of arrivals and departures.  Who could forget the climactic moment in the film Casablanca when we wonder whether it will be Rick or her husband Victor to whom Ilse bids farewell. Parting from someone you love, if only temporarily, is rarely anything but sad and miserable and that is why I am never really convinced when listening to the account of Jesus’ Ascension given by St Luke, I hear these words, "And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy".  With great joy, hmmm do we not detect just a little Pentecostal fervour, retrospectively colouring the mood of the actual event.  This was, of course, the second parting, the first had been brought about through death at Calvary.  During the great forty days, the disciples were gladdened by the company of the Risen Lord and had begun to establish a new relationship with him.  The Ascension is to change all this; no more appearances, no more comfort of sight and sound and touch.  Full of joy? I wonder.

If each of us this evening were asked the question "Why are you a Christian?", our answers would vary considerably in tone and expression but central to the content of each would be some explanation of an encounter with Jesus Christ.  I would hazard the guess that for many of us that encounter began when we were children and heard the stories of Jesus distilled from the Gospels.  As a very young child, attending Methodist Sunday School, I remember singing "Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear, things I would ask him to tell me if he were here".  And let me assure you sisters and brothers, this was no synthetic piety on my part.  I really did love hearing about Jesus, the kindly looking man with the long blond hair and piercing blue eyes whose picture hung on the Sunday School room wall.  At the age of about five, I think I probably fell in love with the man in that picture so that even to this day I am slightly disappointed with the voice of accursed knowledge which insists that Jesus was probably olive skinned and of Meriterranean appearance.  "Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear, things I would ask him to tell me if he were here".  But there’s rub, isn’t it.  Because of the Ascension, he isn’t here.  Full of joy? In contradistinction I want to say… blast the Ascension !! and not all the talk in the world about Jesus being liberated from location and time so that he can be everywhere and always can quite assuage my disappointment that he’s not here telling me the stories himself.  Why do we have to celebrate the end of Jesus’ appearances on earth and instead wait for the Holy Spirit.  Tongues of flame and doves don’t provide a focus for love like the picture of a kind man in a flaking gilt frame.

The hard lesson of Ascensiontide is learning to differentiate between being childlike, a disposition commended by Jesus and childish, which hinders the deepening and maturing of faith.  Or, to put it another way, being childlike means believing and trusting in the authority of someone who knows best; being childish means having a selfish disposition which insists on its own way.  Ascensiontide is, of course, about heaven, and as the Victorian poet Frederick Faber reminds us, heaven is "the heart’s true home". The celebration of the Ascension of Jesus Christ begins in heaven because Jesus has come home.  The community of God the Holy Trinity is once more united and complete.  The task which the Father has entrusted to the Son is faithfully accomplished.  The power of sin is canceled on the Cross; the Resurrection is the assurance of that victory.  Now the Son comes home and begins his eternal ministry of intercession for us. Ascensiontide is sometimes called The Feast of Christ in Majesty.  You will notice how many of the Ascensiontide hymns speak of Kingship, Majesty, Power and Dominion.  It all seems a far cry from that picture in the Sunday School room; but in fact it isn’t.

I guess that for many people the concept of Monarchy is pleasing but remote.  Some of us may have been in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and even exchanged a few words with her but unless I am mistaken, and you lot have much better connections than I think, we are not intimates in the royal circle.  The monarchy of Jesus Christ is very different.  Our Ascended Lord has promised to us unlimited and immediate access into his royal presence.  That is why John Newton, in one of his Olney hymns, could put these tremendously disparate dominical titles together quite naturally "Jesus my Shepherd, Brother, Friend; My Prophet, Priest and King" In fact, what Newton originally wrote was “Jesus my Shepherd, Husband, Friend” but subsequently, editors of hymn books substituted Brother for Husband because I suppose it made grown men rather diffident or embarrassed about calling Jesus “My Husband”…shame really because as the church we are the Bride of Christ.  Husband or Brother, there is nothing incongruous about coupling that title with that of King.  Ascensiontide is about Jesus coming home and the church coming of age and taking responsibility for being Christ’s Body here on earth; proclaiming the Good News of love and discerning and promoting the Kingdom of truth and justice.  That responsibility belongs to each and every one of us until God, at his pleasure, calls us to our true home in heaven where the good work he began in us will be made perfect at the day of Christ Jesus.  Our earth bound and finite minds cannot begin to imagine the glory of the heavenly homecoming.  The beauty, the goodness, the tenderness and the love are too great to be wrapped by our thoughts.  So, because it so far transcends our reasoning, I think it is permissible for us to indulge and hold on to our heavenly fantasies and I allow myself this one.  I shall be certain that I have come to the heavenly home when I meet a kind man with long blond hair and piercing blue eyes whose face looks upon me with such perfect love that at once  I recognise that my earthly loves have been a prevenient shadow of what is now before me. Oh dear, what on earth would Archbishop Akinola make of that ?

"God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion."

+      In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit     Amen