Sermon: 7th Sunday of Easter
16 May 2021 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
Acts 1:15-26;
Psalm 1; and John 17:6-19; NRSV
Today we walk that liminal space between the Ascension that we celebrated this last Thursday and the gift of Pentecost that we will celebrate next Sunday. Ascension reminding us not of Jesus absence, but rather of Jesus filling all creation, permeating the Cosmos and contemporary to every moment of existence, of all that is – in the words of the Nicean Creed – seen and unseen; and the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost a reminder of this Cosmic presence finding reality in the human experience. Today’s Gospel reading accompanies us in this transitional time between these two important celebrations of our Eastertide journey. What does this Gospel offer us?
Today’s Gospel[1] offers us the crucial reminder that faith is primarily about relationship, and we find Jesus in deep relational conversation with the Father, praying not for himself but for us that God would care for us and protect us in the complex intersection of faith and life. Jesus phrases this in terms of relationship and belonging and unity between himself and God, and our invitation into that unity; a unity in which we are drawn into and blessed by divine holiness, and ourselves carry the name God bestowed on Jesus. This name speaks of healing and wholeness, and is a mark of our belonging to all that is good, godly, creative and life-giving.
This name brings us into conflict with all that has disassociated itself from healing and wholeness, from all that embraces destruction and seeks to deface the image of God in our world. Jesus’ use of the word world here does not refer to the earth as we know it, but to a world of relationships that reject the wholeness of life that Faith calls us to, and that sees life purely in terms of power and control, a game to be played with little or no respect for the Other. It is a world Cláudio Carvalhaes, associate Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York, describes as “… that part of our planet that lives in patriarchal structures, necropolitics, police violence, prisons, militarization, attacks on the poor, closing of borders, some rich people getting richer while everybody else becomes poorer, and the whole destruction of the earth.”[2] Just as this world rejected the light Jesus sought to shine into its darkness, so it rejects us, too. More subtly, it seeks to undermine our commitment by infiltrating our belief systems and disfiguring the love we seek to share; and thus our need as people of Faith to be committed to a penitential life-style that keeps us aware of our own fragility and need for God’s forgiveness and healing if we are to be effective agents of hope in our world.
Despite the challenges we experience at the intersection of faith and life, there is a wonderful affirmation of our obedience and belief in the opening verses of today’s Gospel reading, “… they have kept your word [,] … and they have believed that you sent me.”[3] Jesus’ reference here to our belief is again a relational statement and it is not one of institutionalised belief. Poet and philosopher, David Whyte,[4] reflects on what happens when belief loses its relational nature, and quite baldly states that, “The most tedious thing you can find out about another person is what they believe.” This specifically in the context of beliefs held in what David refers to as the strategic-competitive mind, which focuses on preservation and survival. The institutionalised Church all too often these days finds itself in this mindset, seeking to maintain itself in a world that all to often has the Church on the back foot; a Church seeking to survive and forgetful of its mission and purpose, offering a system of belief void of relationship and all to often caught up in abstract conversation. David Whyte speaks further of the need to move from this space into one he describes as the poetic mind, which focuses instead on a communal life of mutual celebration, a space where we can rest into the central tonality of the divine pattern, a constellation of belonging, a place of real conversation.
You’re quite possibly feeling a little overwhelmed by all of that. In essence, the more abstract we allow our belief systems to become, the more survivalist our actions, the more room we allow in our world for hurt and destruction; the more space we give for real conversation where our belief systems are moulded by our relational experience, the more room we allow in our world for healing and restoration. This requires us to be awake: awake to the world of destruction and awake to the call of God; awake to the nature of our conversations and awake to whether these conversations are destructive or creative; awake and willing to end all conversations that are not committed to healing and wholeness; and open to starting new and creative conversations that enable forgiveness, restoration and hope, and that are in every aspect life-giving.
Many of our conversations at the moment revolve around the ongoing pandemic, our frustration with our curtailed lives, and the resultant irritations; this is certainly true of many of mine. The third wave of COVID-19 infections has started in Southern Africa, and we’re heading into winter. On a more primal level winter has always been and remains a time for hibernation, for slowing down, for stopping. It’s a time in which Creation itself embraces stillness, silence, and solitude. Let us, as our act of worship, as our act of obedience to God, join Creation on this journey. Let us stop our conversations, our busyness, our noise, our continuous desire for entertainment.
Let us embrace stillness, silence and solitude, and reflect through the course of this winter; and awaken to Spring ready for new and creative and hope-filled conversation.
I close today with a brief poem by David Whyte,
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