Ascension Day - There's work to be done

William Temple, a former Archbishop of Canterbury wrote that when Jesus was involved in his earthly ministry only people who were in his actual presence could hear him speak or see what he was doing – if you were in Galilee you couldn’t see Jesus in Jerusalem and vice versa !

But he went on to write that by his Ascension Jesus was now available wherever we are – God is everywhere, and we can never be separated from him and his love for us. 

Ascension Day, which we celebrate, marks another turning point in our Church calendar – and it is a hugely important day for the Church just as it was when Jesus left his followers 2000 years ago. It marked a huge turning point because no longer would the followers of Jesus focus inwardly – meeting together, praying, sharing times of fellowship and learning directly from Jesus himself -  now they were to have an outward focus as well – they were to look outwards to the needs of the world.

And for us, Ascension Day offers a challenge because Jesus has left us to be his body in the world. With his help and guidancewe are to be part of building the kingdom of God here today…

Our readings from Acts (1:1-11) and Luke (24:44-53) contain some similarities. There is of course the ascension of Jesus itself in both accounts as Jesus physically left the disciples but there is also the promise of the strength and support of the Holy Spirit… The disciples of Jesus were to be given the power to go out and seek to be Christ in the world – and that is our challenge today… 

2000 years on I wonder what sort of report we would get on our efforts and on our level of trust. For many of us throughout the history of the Church we have been concerned primarily with Church building, either literally in putting up new buildings, or in trying to fill those buildings with people. Often this has led to us forgetting that it is not Church building but kingdom building that we should be involved in. 

The Church is a tool of God, a fellowship of people gathering for worship, for support, for strength – it is a family united, but the kingdom of God is a much wider place, a place with no walls and no territorial limits, where Jesus wants to build a better world for absolutely everyone, not sometime in the future, but here and now. 

The Feast of Ascension day is an often neglected festival in the Church, perhaps because it always occurs on a Thursday but Ascension Day is important because it is the start of a new era in history – the era where God says to his people, ‘Build my Kingdom, and I will give you the strength to do it.’  

And yet many in the church lack confidence to share good news, many believe it is the job of others, but Jesus entrusted every one of us with his message, and he gave every one of us strength. 

From today up until Pentecost people are being asked to set aside time each day for prayer under the initiative launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury entitled ‘Thy kingdom come’. Those are words we’re all familiar with, perhaps over familiar with,but if we pray those words contained in the Lord’s Prayer with any feeling we are praying for something radical and life transforming.

We are praying that God will reign over every aspect of the universe and his kingdom will be complete. To get any sort of picture of what that might look like we look to Jesus – we think of his love for people – whoever they were, even those who tortured him, insulted him, mocked him and nailed him to the cross – it is an incredibly powerful and unbreakable bond of love. We also think of his desire for justice, defence of those who are struggling or marginalised, his willingness to forgive and his teaching to forgive, his desire for peace and for reconciliation between different people and between people and God… 

When we think of the Kingdom of God I’m pretty sure we think of a world where atrocities like that in Manchester don’t happen, where tragedies such as things going on in Syria don’t happen, where there is love and peace and harmony and people live in close community getting on with one another… 

And so back to that report card I mentioned… Perhaps our challenge is to reflect on ways in which we are being Christ in the world today, where we are sharing and really being good news…. 

And when we think like that we won’t think about just maintaining things – keeping the doors of our buildings open because they’re nice buildings with lots of history or interest; and we won’t think about satisfying ourselves in what we do in church, whether that be in worship or in other activities – again I’ll quote William Temple who said, ‘The church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non-members.’

Rowan Williams famously said that ‘Mission is finding out what God is doing and joining in’. To do that we need to listen to God and talk to God in prayer – we have the Archbishop of Canterbury’s ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ initiative which I hope people will do, we have a 24-hour prayer time here from Saturday at 11am through to Sunday, and I hope you will be involved in those things, but prayer can’t be limited to special initiatives and campaigns, prayer has to be part of us day by day… I think it was one of the Wesley brothers who originally came up with the phrase that they were ‘too busy not to pray.’ 

Prayer changes us and when Jesus ascended to heaven he left us with a huge privilege – to trust us to be his body in the world, to be part of building his Kingdom here and now, but with that privilege comes responsibility… Responsibility to stop putting maintenance at the top of our agenda, to stop trying to just ‘keep going’ but to seek the strength and the power that Jesus talked about and wants us to have… 

It means accepting the responsibility to really work to love one another because I suspect Jesus really meant it when he said that… 

And it means recognising and trusting that with God’s strength and with his power, nothing is going to be impossible…. We can dream, we can have visions, we can see lives transformed, including ours and we can see churches that are vibrant and at the centre of our communities and the message of Jesus prominent in a world so desperately needing hope and peace and an abundance of love…. 

May we accept the Ascension challenge of Jesus to go out and be his disciples in the world. May we pray and study his word and may we be ready to show by our words and our actions the transforming power of Jesus. May we know the privilege we have been given in serving the king of kings, the creator of all, and respond to that privilege by seeking to share the gifts we know with others… 

Our passage from Acts ends with these two men in white robes looking at the disciples after the ascension and saying, ‘Men of Galilee why do you stand looking up to heaven ?’ It was a call to get on with the work Jesus was calling them to do. Sometimes I’m not sure where we as churches or individuals are looking – but we need to focus on Jesus and on his world because there is work for us to do… Lord, may your kingdom come… AMEN