Sermon: 7th Sunday of Easter
24 May 2020 – Archdeacon Mark Long
Acts 1:6-14 and John 17:1-11; NRSV
A virtual good morning, once again! Today we mark the 7th Sunday after Easter alongside the 59th Day of formal National lockdown in South Africa. Our celebration of Ascension Day this last Thursday is a reminder that the season of Eastertide – a season of encounter with the risen Christ – is drawing to an end as Pentecost approaches. I find myself longing for the end of lockdown, too, and wish I could be as sure of that as I am of our Pentecost celebration next Sunday! In the disciples’ question to Jesus in our Acts Reading this morning, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" (1:6) I hear echoes of our National question to the President as we expect the introduction of Alert Level 3, “May we replenish our drinks cupboard, please?” Both the disciples’ question and ours are asked (different as they are), I suspect, with a similar level of intensity and frustration. For the Jewish Nation, after centuries of occupation, their desire for independence is echoed in our desire for personal freedom as the world continues to seek ways to resist the pandemic that has disrupted life so devastatingly and so completely.
Like me, you may be discovering that waiting is a difficult game, especially when there is no certainty as to how long we must do so. As you and I journey with this pandemic lockdown, we know how frustrating it is to have no clear answers or a clear plan, and to have leaders who are clearly working it out as they go along. While on one level we understand, on other levels our frustrations, fears, loss of income and loss of opportunity leave us listless, angry, anxious and uncertain. The disciples, after the ascension, as they wait for the promised Spirit must have experienced a similar roller-coaster of emotion. You and I hear today’s passage from Acts with a certain amount of familiarity, and with the gift of hindsight knowing how it all worked out. However, for those early disciples living through the experience was very different. Their opening question to Jesus about the restoration of Israel shows their ongoing confusion, or at least their struggle to comprehend, what Jesus was meaning and what God was doing in their lives and in their world. We find them staring up into the sky, a bit like we did for the first three weeks of lockdown – and I relate to my own naivety – expecting life to return immediately to normal, or at least to what we all previously thought of as normal. It took an angelic presence to awaken the disciples to the reality that life may have changed, but still needed to be lived. And yet the waiting continued, as it does for us. For people of faith over the millennia there has always been one activity that fills the endless space of waiting: we hear that the disciples, both men and women, devoted themselves to prayer (1:14).
What does prayer look like for you in this time?
In our reading from John’s Gospel today we find Jesus in prayer; and we are privileged to be made privy to his prayer. Mostly in the Gospels we hear of Jesus taking time out to pray; rarely do we hear the content of these times of intimacy with the Father. This particular prayer is called Jesus’ High Priestly prayer, and draws to mind the image of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem, a place so holy that it was curtained off and the High Priest entered only annually (I have an image a very dusty place, though doubtless those who often remain invisible in most societies throughout the centuries, the servants, would have had access to clean). So while we have access to this particular prayer, and it’s implied intimacy, it also reflects a liturgical encounter of a more formal public nature: we are meant to participate in this prayer, to be included, to participate, to hear.
What do we hear?
We hear Jesus praying for himself; and there is no petulance in it, no self-absorption (as sadly so often creeps into my own prayers). It’s a prayer of acknowledgement, and a summarising by Jesus of his life, ministry and purpose. There is an acknowledgment that the hour has come for both Jesus, and the Father (the Source of all Being) to be glorified, a journey which you and I know will embrace the worst of human experience: arrest, an illegal trial, torture, and crucifixion. But we also know – as we prepare for Pentecost – that it also embraced resurrection, and with resurrection, renewed hope. This is not a vague hope, but one based in purpose, which in John’s Gospel is clearly identified in Jesus’ words as, “… you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:2-3).
My prayer today is that we find comfort in this gift of eternal life. It is an experience of life that is limitless on every level, filled with creative potential; and amazingly God’s gift to us within the limits of our experience of life on a daily basis. As paradoxical as this is, it is the space we enter into in prayer, and makes possible the experience of hope even in the midst of the most desperate of human conditions. It is what draws us inwards into relationship with God, and is also what propels us outward into the service of our world and humanity as a whole. It is a gift opened to us by the Ascension: Joan Chittister in her book In Search of Belief says, “… I learned that to say “I believe in Jesus Christ…who ascended into heaven” is to say “I believe in the mystical dimension of life….”” (2006). It is this mystical dimension of life that gives definition to eternity, and definition to the limitless nature of eternal life. It is experienced in prayer, and in the practical outworking of our prayers in daily life.
What else do we hear?
We hear Jesus praying for us. At the core of this prayer are Jesus’ words, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (17:11b). This period between the Ascension and Pentecost is globally a time of prayer for Christian unity, but I’m not sure we really understand the nature of the unity Jesus is praying for here, and I’m unsure that our prayer in this regard is of much use. Too often in Christian history unity has become a demand for orthodoxy, a demand that you believe what I believe, a demand for conformity and an exclusion of diversity. I don’t believe that any of that is envisaged in Jesus’ prayer for us.
The heart of unity is defined in the relationship Jesus shares with the Father (the Source of all Being), and relationship is key to understanding Jesus’ prayer for us. I suspect Jesus is referring primarily to the unity of purpose that has been forged in his relationship with the Father, and in this passage from John’s Gospel that purpose is embedded in the concept of eternity, but at the same time it is expressed within the context of the world, of our human experience of life, and in the business of daily living. Eternal life is not about life after death (although it does incorporate it); it is about life after resurrection. The purpose of Eastertide has been to give us the opportunity to encounter the resurrected Christ, to explore and embrace this gift of life in which sin and the fear of death have been overcome; to take note of the nature of resurrected life and to begin to live it ourselves. In the words of Pádraig Ó Tuama, we resolve to live life in its fullness.
Lockdown has created an unusual setting for Easter and Eastertide this year, one which has hopefully jolted us out of our usual and largely unconscious journey through our Church seasons, and enabled us to encounter Christ and the purposes of God afresh in this extraordinary time of devastation. My prayer is that our faith journey over these last 59 days has given us tools to cope, and even thrive, under present limitations, and will continue to do so as we enter the season of Pentecost.
I again close my sermon with a prayer by Pádraig Ó Tuama from his book, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community:
Jesus,
our dead and living friend,
We walk the ways of death and life
holding fear in one hand
and courage in the other.
Come find us when we are locked away.
Come enliven us.
Come bless us with your peace.
Because you are the first day of creation
And all days of creation.
Amen.
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