Pentecost… to be read together with the notice sheet for today. We think we know yet, as with all assumptions, to assume sometimes just makes an ‘ass’ out of u and me (assume). The pictures on the notice sheet are of sailing ships yet one of them is very wrong. The one of the galleon sailing merrily with all sails billowing has a huge flaw – the flag is flying the wrong way. When the wind is filling the sails the flag blows out in front of the ship, not behind. Why do artists and most of us make the assumption that the flags can miraculously fly out in a different direction from the one the sails are going and that are filled with a following (i.e., coming from behind) wind? Perhaps because we live in an age where we have become familiar with the image of a ship or a train with the smoke blowing away behind as the vessel races along. The image is so familiar that we don’t question seeing other pictures ships with the flags doing the same as the smoke does. So much so that the sight of a ship with flags flying properly, with the wind, seems to be the odd thing. Search on Google for a picture of a steam train with the wind behind it and the smoke going in front of the train… We assume that the church is always heading in one direction, that there should be growth and there should be young people and there should be a whole host of things done in accordance with what has become the assumed correct way that we forget to check the facts. We assume God wants what God has always wanted and that we know what that is. Assume – makes an ass… Worse still we presume to know what God wants and tell God what it is when we pray – Lord we know that it is Your will… Maybe we would do well to check our presumptions (to presume means to arrogantly assume, so a double dose of dippiness) alongside what might be in the Almighty’s mind. Maybe God wants a particular enterprise to stop or to go in a completely different direction, to fail even and in failing to be reborn in a new and resurrected format. We tell ourselves that the words ‘dwindling’ and ‘diminishing’ are ‘bad’ things – but this is to make the words evaluative not descriptive, or, as Shakespeare puts it, ’there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so’. We assume that God wants what we want and that what we want is what God wants based on past experience or expectation or plan or dream or what the Church tells us. The smoke/flag always flies behind the direction of travel. But ‘my ways are not your ways’ says God so rethinking our assumptions is a sensible and honest thing to do. The past is not a clue to the future, it is the past, perfect in that it cannot be changed, it is done with and now immutable – except in our memories of course. But when we are being driven by the wind our assumptions are blown away and we go where the Spirit takes us. There are some things we may assume God does want, notably for us to know forgiveness and grace received by us and given on by us – to love as we are loved. If God has a dream for us, this might be a close description. But would God do it our way? It is an old but pertinent comment that Peter would not have passed a CofE selection board, but history and tradition become ingrained and we easily mistake them for accurate indicators of direction and correctness. We may be as wrong about this wrong as we are about the direction the flags should fly. Lord, keep our hearts and minds trimmed like sails to the wind of the matter that we may indeed be driven by you for gentle days of rest or stormy days of hazard and swiftness. Be the navigator and captain, the anchor and the star to guide us by.
Getting the body off-stage, or, becoming an omnipresent presence When you go to the theatre to see a tragedy the chances are that at some point there will be a death as part of the story. In modern productions this usually happens at convenient breaks in the production so that the actor playing the corpse can be removed from the stage. The curtain will come down, the house lights go up and the interval between the acts will happen. In Elizabethan times when Will Shakespeare was writing, there were no breaks in the action until theatre went indoors as opposed to being open to the elements as at the Globe theatre. Then breaks in the action were brought in to allow the candles that lit the stage to be changed. So, if a play had a death in the story the actor playing the dead person had to be got off stage by the playwright writing this into the action. Thus, in Hamlet, when Polonius is killed, Hamlet is given a speech wherein he talks about taking Polonius away (off stage) and the action continues to roll on to the last scene when at least 4 corpses are on stage – but because this all happens at the end, this is not so important! Any of us who have experienced bereavement will know that feeling that the person we loved is somehow with us all the time. Their death has done away with a body bound to time and place and has released them to being with us all the time in our hearts and minds. Whereas before we went at a time to see them at a place, after death they are omnipresent. The Ascension is one of the dilemmas of our faith and it presents a peculiar theological problem. Accepting the virgin birth may be a bit tricky for some but the crucifixion is unquestionable: it happened. A man was killed and became a corpse. At the resurrection this corpse was made man again and the Gospels tell of Jesus appearing to the early Christians in a physical form – ‘touch my sides’ says Jesus to Thomas, ‘give me something to eat’ He asks the lakeside fishermen. How then do we get from a Risen Christ bound by flesh to a time and place, to an omnipresent presence not tied to 1st Century (time) Palestine (place)? This is where the Ascension comes in to play, facilitating the accessibility of Christ to generation upon generation of Christians who claim to personally know who Jesus is. Without the Ascension, Christ has to be a time-and-place-bound being. The Ascension though is perhaps the hardest of the miracles to believe in. Going up a mountain and getting lost is one thing, seeing a mist come down is quite plausible, but going up into heaven…? Yet is this so difficult when we have already accepted the descension to earth from heaven in human form at the nativity? If we accept the premise that God was made man by coming to earth, why do we find it so difficult if not downright mythical to accept that God leaves as mysteriously as He was came? It just seems odd to some of us, yet without this change the universality of Christ through time and space to bring salvation, forgiveness and grace to literally centuries of faith-full believers is a non-starter. Our intelligence finds it hard to grasp and we think it a quaint story – is the resurrection then also quaint? Is our faith quaint? There is a point when we most of us come to terms with the finite nature of our intelligence or, as someone on the selection committee when I was being interviewed to become an ordinand put it, not as bright as she likes to think she is. We may be clever but we are not God and God is way beyond our imaginative skills when it comes to cleverness. This is not to say we should simply have faith and buy the whole package unquestioningly. God is a God who encourages us to reason the concept through (Isaiah 55) who is patient with our quizzing and cavilling (Jeremiah 12) but who at the end of the day has the last word –‘ my ways are not your ways’. Knowledge of salvation comes through the forgiveness of sins and thus the integrity and necessity of the Ascension is to be seen as part of the whole not part of a part. If we do have faith and if we know Christ, it is because Christ became unbound to time and place. Our own faith therefore is proof as it were of the Ascension for without it, we too are lost on a mountain in the mists. Angels at the beginning explaining to shepherds, angels at the empty grave, explaining to disciples and angels at the ascension telling them to stop gawping and doubting and get on with the job now in their hands – helping others to faith that all may rise with Christ.
The Ascension of Jesus Luke 24. 50 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Acts 1. 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Matthew 28 16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ Do you think Jesus wore socks? It’s far from unusual for Israel to have snow on the mountains and the Ascension Day events are recorded as having taken place near Bethany, just east of Jerusalem, or Galilee, depending on whether you’re reading from Luke-Acts or Matthew. Snow is not unknown so I wonder, in my absent-minded, cold-footed way, if, when they went up the mountain it was cold enough to want to wear socks. Ascension Day is celebrated on a Thursday which is a great relief to most clergy as it means only the very faithful will turn up for the services. This further means that the awkwardness of explaining the events of suddenly being taken up into the clouds is more likely to go unchallenged. Crucifixion is a matter of record as is the Resurrection (apparently we have more first hand documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus than for Shakespeare) but the Ascension is, speaking personally, the most mind-stretching, faith testing moment of the whole life of Christ. For me, the credibility is restored by the events taking place on a mountain. Luke tells us he compiled recollections from eye-witnesses Luke was probably written later than Matthew so I’m taking Galilee as the place where these things happened and Matthew definitely mentions a mountain. Once, up on a mountain Having spent most of my life until my early 50s living in valleys or southern England, the nature of mountain weather was something that didn’t really impinge on me. Since then I have lived in Scotland and now Norway. Where I live can properly be described as mountainous so the weather here informs and censures all activities. A dry sunny day can turn to snow in seconds – and frequently does. You need to go out prepared or at very least alert to the weather and you do not go high up without checking weather reports even if the walk is only the 3 mile regular dog walk. Mists and low cloud can scupper the best of days with invisibility. It’s much easier to imagine a day out with Jesus turning into a ‘where d’e go?’ moment. I’m not suggesting that Jesus spent the last years of His life wandering around the hills of Judea looking for the footpath back but I do wonder if He deliberately used the mountain weather to take His leave of the disciples and then make His way Home up the mountain. I can imagine the disciples getting lost and shouting for Jesus and Him telling them, through the mists, not to worry, to go back and continue what He had started. The two men in white that Luke speaks of tell in Acts them to go back, just as they told Mary not to be afraid. You have to be honest and say the events here are a nightmare of inconsistency and certainly do not smack of a conspiracy or collusion to get the story straight and singular. It may add to the authenticity that there are ‘variations on a theme’ but it does bend the mind a bit. Of all the miracles this is, for me, the most eye-screwing one of all and any of them. Resurrection, no problem, Ascension - give me a moment. So up on the mountain side together and the mist comes down disturbing and disrupting the group, lost on the mountain they hear but do not see as Jesus the Son of God goes back to the Father. ‘Go back, get on with it. Wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit and it will all begin to fall into place. I’ll be with You, trust me.’ And that’s the knub of it, knowing and trusting. I know Christ is a reality as have many thousands of thousands before me. He is not a figment of an over-heated, delusional brain but a filament of light in my heart that engages my brain with challenge and integrity of purpose. I know Christ so what I do not understand I can take on trust, but, I can also use my intelligence to try and understand how it might have come about. For me the misty mountain works because I like to visualise events by pulling together the information available. When I ask ‘how does this scene work?’ the answer I get makes me look at mountains and what I know them to be like. Norway is not Judea but they both have ‘weather’ that challenges, as they are fond of saying here, ‘no such thing as bad weather, only bad kit’. So I wonder, did Jesus wear socks under his sandals? Did His mum knit them for Him? Did the disciples pull their cloaks round them and pull up their hoods and then wonder ‘where’s He gone this time?’ You can imagine what Peter might have said had Jesus come straight out and said ‘I’m off now then’, another row, another rebuke and another mega-sulk (‘you know I love you…’). Too much wrangling now at the end of it all, best just get off and let the Holy Spirit take it from here. ‘Go into all the world and make disciples of all peoples, and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
What interest does the shepherd have in the sheep? Notes on readings for 4th Sunday after Easter - John 10 and Acts 2 -please read in conjunction with the pew sheet. The bibles we have, we take so readily for granted, forgetting or even unaware of the human cost of translation in centuries gone by when it was illegal to translate the Bible into a native tongue. People died horrible and cruel deaths to make the Bible available to everyone in a language that was not only for the clergy. Here in Acts is an example of why state authorities were so against this. The Gospels and Letters and especially Acts, depict a level Christian community where everyone shared and held things in common. Jesus spoke of friendship and being no longer slaves or servants. This was threatening to the social status of those in authority so the publication – the making public – of the Bible was literally a hanging offence. Even know, some denominations and nation states allow only authorized translations and interpretations: read your bible with gratitude for those who have made it possible. John’s gospel however presents us with different matters. The idea of Jesus as the good shepherd is possibly the most common of all the imageries other than the crucifixion. It is worth a moment’s contemplation that the death of Christ is the ‘tag image’ of our faith – but then again, how do you make a symbol of an empty tomb?! Good shepherd; pastor and pastoral, green fields and still waters, nice man with beard carrying baby sheep on shoulders, you know the pictures. On the pew sheet are some such. The icon picture is a very caricatured and stylised image of a cleanly groomed and bearded man with a background of a stylised cross depicting the names and roles of Christ. The lamb on the shoulders looks as if it is sleeping peacefully rather than about to be slaughtered. The one of the half naked man is slightly more troubling. An Aryan man, golden hair and blue eyes with a halo around his head. He is partially clothed and the picture could be described as semi-erotic. The land is very alive, carried home from lost lands back into the fold. The Breughel show the shepherd on his back fighting off an aggressive predator – a symbol of the battle for our souls between good and evil. The old photograph of a real shepherd may teach us more than any of these about the nature of Christ, Down to earth, ready to care and tend but watchful of both ewe and lamb. Out on a cold moor with a shepherds crook ready to oik out any animal caught in a cleft. Sheep and lambs are both mucky creatures, often with fleas or weevils that can infect the shepherd as well as the sheep. Picking up one of these and putting it round your neck with out something between your flesh and the animal is an act of ignorance or unprepared for necessity. But why all the effort to rescue? Sheep are valuable for their wool and their meat. At the end of the day sheep are commodities and therefore valuable for what they give. Is this what Jesus about? Looking after us for something that he will gain from us? The image of the Good Shepherd can only be pushed for its beneficence so far. Eventually the question ‘why’ has to be answered. So taking this at face value, i.e., that we are of use to God, what ‘use’ is it? We know that Christ is not only the Good Shepherd but also the Lamb of God, sacrificed in atonement for our behaviour? Is this also our role? Not as payback for the gift of eternal life for this is a free gift as is forgiveness and as is grace but there is nevertheless a response to be made. We are asked to dedicate and make sacrifices, to take up our cross and give our lives in response to God’s gifts, not as payment but as reciprocal acts of gratitude – not of guilt. We should never be doing good things driven by guilt for guilt is one of the matters that Christ relieves us of. So, our wool and our lives. Our wool: the stuff which comforts and clothes us – translate this into the commodities we benefit from, our wealth if we have any, our warmth and protection, these we can offer literally and metaphorically, to those who are challenging to us as well as to those we are comfortable with. Just as the shepherd picks up a grubby sheep and then washes it, tends it, we are sometimes asked to care by holding close those we would naturally keep at arms length. This is a renewable resource! Fleeces regrow and every year good things come from the shearing of sheep. It’s not all about death and sacrifice but natural, organic giving of ourself. We give, we continue, our gift returns to be given again. Few of us that live in Western Europe are nowadays called upon to literally give our lives. The society and state we live in ensure our religious freedoms but for sure there are things we can risk the doing of. Speaking up about climate change, political and social injustices, the plight of refugees and the material wastefulness of our society. Some do give their lives as we see too often in the mass shootings in the USA where even recently adults shielded children from gunmen. There are many other examples of dedication and sacrifice that deservedly merit our praise and recognition. But for those of us who are just the regular sheep, giving of what we have been given, our talents and innate things we perhaps take for granted – our ‘wool’ if you will – Jesus comes to carry us too when we are lost so that we might stay in the fold and cry out to others to join us. On the last page of the pew sheet is a picture of the crucifixion where the Father holds the arms of the cross on which the Son is dying. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove is the comforter here. It is the picture form of John 3.16. The sheep below the picture is trussed and ready for slaughter. It is a deeply sad picture – but I still enjoy roast lamb. I know I sin and I know Christ died for my sins – but still I do those things that cost Christ. What can I give Him, poor as I am, if I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb,. If I were a wise man, I would do my part, yet what I can I give him, give my heart. Peter was told to feed the sheep, he asked 3 times to balance the love he was being shown with a simple act of feeding, not wandering the hillsides or climbing mountains and while he did get taken where he didn’t want to go (see John 21) the command he was given was to feed. What nourishes us, what makes us thrive? Food and water, warmth and safety, metaphorical and literal. Go to.
