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Two parting messages
Sermon preached by Revd David Parsons on Ascension Day 2004 at the beginning of TrinityFest.
So here we are on one of the great festivals of the Christian Year, the festival of Christ's Coronation. And we are at the beginning of TrinityFest, a time of joy and celebration for everyone to share. So what's the message for today?
We could think about what it means that our Lord is seated at God's right hand, that he's the King, that there's a human being there sharing God's throne, that he is seated because his work of saving the human race is finished, completed, accomplished, that he is so close to the Father that he ever lives to make intercession for us. All true, all wonderful. But I've chosen to concentrate on something else, on Jesus' parting words, on what the Lord Jesus said as he was about to ascend to his Father's right hand in heaven. We find slightly different versions in the different accounts in the Gospels and the Acts, but they are all clearly reports of the same message from the risen Lord Jesus. The two big ideas that come through loud and clear are these:
1. You are going to receive power
2. You have a message to pass on to the whole world.
In the Acts St Luke tells us a little more of the conversation that led up to those parting words. The disciples wanted to know the future. They wanted to know what was going to happen. Was this the time when God would step in and reorganise the politics of the world - restoring the kingdom to Israel was what they had in mind. And that was the lead into Jesus' parting words to them: "It is not for you to know ... but .... " Acts 1.
Here's a deeply unfashionable idea: It's not for you to know. We all have a right to know everything, don't we? Governments get votes by promising a Freedom of Information Act - once they're in power, of course, they make sure that the Act has no teeth. One of the great achievements of the Internet is that the rich and powerful can't bury bad news, can't keep secrets the way they once did. The Church can't keep secrets either. Does anyone remember that very funny spoof history book, 1066 and All That? When it came to recording the Peasants' Revolt it quoted John Ball's rhyme:
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
and the authors commented: "The answer was of course Adam, but the church withheld this dangerous information from the people." But things are different now. We demand to know every single fact. The rich and famous are fair game. We may tell pollsters that people have a right to privacy, but we, as a country, are quite happy for newspapers to spy into and ruin people's lives for the sake of a few moments' entertainment for us.
So when our Lord said to his friends "It is not for you to know ... " our hackles might rise. We might feel Jesus is being obscurantist, trying to push us back to a time before the Enlightenment, before the modern age of science, back to an age of ignorance.
But what our Lord was saying was that he wasn't in the business of foretelling the future. The friends had asked "Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?" and Jesus replied "The future is in God's hands. It's not for you to know the times and seasons that God has in his plan." Those of us who love and trust our heavenly Father won't resent that. We'll be glad that we don't need to worry. We can leave it to our Father in heaven. There's an old hymn that goes:
God holds the key to all unknown and I am glad.
If other folk should hold the key,
Or if he trusted it to me
I might be sad.
Now this certainly doesn't mean that we just sit back and say our prayers and leave the world to go its own way. Because Jesus was only beginning his message when he said "It's not for you to know." "It's not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
Jesus tells them, "There are some things you're not to worry about, because they are in other hands. And you're going to be very busy. You are going to be empowered for a great work. You are going to receive the Holy Spirit, and you are going to tell my story to the ends of the earth."
The two parts of the message go together. If we take either one of them on its own, we'll get an unbalanced programme for our lives. If we concentrate on the gift of the Holy Spirit, and forget about the mission to the world, we shall be in danger of becoming so heavenly minded that we're no earthly use. C. T. Studd (1860-1931), who played cricket for England and then went as a missionary to China, India, and Africa, and was a great man of faith and of prayer, wrote:
Some want to live within the sound
Of Church or Chapel bell;
I want to run a rescue shop
Within a yard of hell.
If we concentrate on bringing the love of Jesus to the world, running a rescue shop within a yard of hell, and forget the life of prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, then we shall become weary and brittle and ineffective. Our Christian service will be a duty and not a joy, and you will be able to recognise the people we try to love by the hunted look in their eyes!
I hope that TrinityFest, and the use we make of it, will reflect both parts of Jesus' parting message.
There are some very special services included in the festival. There's Songs of Praise this Sunday evening. There are two special times of worship the following Sunday, Pentecost: The Bishop of Taunton coming here at 10.30 for an all-age Holy Communion, and an evening time of meditation using the music and patterns of worship from the French Christian community in Taize. I hope that in the worship we shall be able to come close to God and be filled with his Holy Spirit; I hope that there will be space for us to bring our real lives and open them up before God, let him see us as we are, let him be like a skilled surgeon who opens a body in order to take out what is diseased and deadly, and restore us to cleanness and health. Perhaps Pentecost, the day when we remember how the Holy Spirit came in power on the disciples, may be a day when we experience his power for ourselves, for the first time or for the hundredth time, and when our lives are put right.
I also hope that we may all use the opportunity of TrinityFest as part of our obedience to that second part of Christ's parting message: You will be my witnesses ... to the ends of the earth. Someone told me just the other day that her neighbour, who has rejected every suggestion about coming to events in church, is now going to bring her child or children (I don't know which) to Roly the Clown on Whit Monday. Who knows where that may lead? It may be some time before we have another such opportunity that makes it easy to invite friends and neighbours into the church building. As Sarah told us last Sunday morning, it is not the building that is important, but the quality of Christian love and welcome and fellowship that people find when they come in. And making sure that the unconditional welcome is there, that the love is genuine, that the fellowship is warm and attractive, these are all part of the mission.
Who knows what will happen in the future? The Christian Church in this country may have only ten years or so of life left, as some pessimists tell us. We may be on the verge of a new, vital, different kind of Christian community that will change our nation. I think our Lord is telling us: "It's not for you to know that, but you'll receive power when you spend time in prayer and worship, when you receive the Holy Spirit; and you have work to do." It's a vast, world-wide work. You can't do it all, but you can do the part that's in front of you, invite just one person, perhaps:
There's a work for Jesus ready at your hand.
It's a task the Master just for you has planned.
And you and I can leave the outcome in the mighty, loving hands of God.
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Thursday 28th of August 2008
