Reflection for 12th May 2024The Seventh Sunday of Easter and Sunday After AscensionEzekiel 36.24–28. Acts 1.15–17,21–26. John 17.6–19.Last Thursday was Ascension Day, which celebrated Christ’s return to the Father forty days after his resurrection. Jesus’ ascension is a key point in the revelation of God’s plan.Paul, in Acts, describes the Father taking Jesus back up into heaven. Have you ever pondered why Jesus didn't perform this action prior to his resurrection? After all, Jesus is divine, so you'd think he could have popped back into heaven whenever he wanted a break. Yet something stopped him from doing that. His body is earthly. A body from this world could not enter God's presence. Jesus required a new body that transcended our imagination. A body that could still eat, drink, talk, and laugh but also move through walls, disappearing and appearing at will. This new embodied life, with a body that effortlessly coexists in both the dimensions of God's world, heaven, and our own, earth, is truly remarkable. Jesus transforms into the firstborn of creation through His death and resurrection. He is the first fruit of God’s coming kingdom. He represents a glimpse of the ultimate unification of heaven and earth at the end of revelations. We often overlook this, believing that resurrection simply refers to life after death or ascending to heaven. However, heaven is not the ultimate end for Christ’s followers. So, what is the significance of the resurrection? When we look at the Jewish world of the first century, resurrection meant a new embodied life in God's new world—a life after death. This is the eternal life that God offers to all who follow Jesus, as well as the good news we are to proclaim. Indeed, this is what we pray for when we say the Lord’s prayer together.The passage from John repeatedly echoes the words "word" and "world." The repetition underscores the embodiment of God's word in Christ, who lived in the world without becoming a part of it. The Holy Spirit calls us to be present in the world yet separate from it. Our ability to do this is due to the work of the Holy Spirit within us, which allows us to embody Christ in the world. Through following Christ, believing, and obeying the Word of God, we become sanctified, set apart from the world for sacred use, cleansed, and made holy. This requires us to continually apply God’s word to our thinking and actions. The Holy Spirit's searching movement convicts us of our sins and motivates us to confess and repent, thereby redirecting our paths back to God's. Doing this renews our relationship with Christ and guides us daily back to the right path. Judas serves as a sobering reminder of a lost individual who betrayed Jesus and never sought forgiveness or repentance for his sin.Through praying for God to search our hearts and minds, we allow God to sanctify us, as Jesus prayed for us to be in verse 17: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth." Jesus quite clearly says we are not to be part of the world, just as He is not. The world, contrary to God's original design, has fallen and broken. The evil one is the ruler of this world—of its political structures and systems. At our core, we know things are not right, as we see violence, abuse of even our little children, gambling, and unsurmountable hatred against anything deemed 'other'. Although we live under God’s rule, we are still susceptible to temptations that pull us away from serving God. The evil one is very skilled at taking our tiniest, seemingly harmless weaknesses and turning them into huge distractions away from God’s word. This is why, in Jesus' prayer for the disciples, he asks for God's protection from evil through the power of His name. Jesus does this because He understands all too well, after His temptations in the desert, how dangerous the world is. He sent his disciples and us into this dangerous world.While Jesus promised before his ascension that the disciples would receive power from God to engage in their new tasks, his missional call is not for us to do alone or in our own strength. We know that Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whose gift we celebrate on Pentecost next Sunday. As I said before, we too have the gift of the Holy Spirit working within us, convicting us of our sins and pointing us to repentance and a greater relationship with God. Without God’s Holy Spirit guiding us, we can do nothing good, and our plans, however fanciful, will not produce good fruit.As the body of Christ on earth living by the truth, we model and proclaim God’s kingdom in the world through mutual encouragement, in the breaking of bread, prayer, and studying the Bible, whilst calling others to repentance of sins and receiving God’s forgiveness. This is our responsibility while waiting for Christ's return from the clouds and our transformation into eternal life. During this time before Pentecost, will you pray for the Holy Spirit to sanctify you in the truth, to refresh you and the church? Will you pray for personal and corporate growth by asking God to search your heart and reveal to you the things that are wrong? Let us reaffirm God's holiness, goodness, and greatness as we pray with the disciples over the next week. God is great; let’s give Him the glory He deserves in our lives and communities! Blessings and prayers, Emma