GOD'S GLORY, STRONG BUT CHANGING THE HARD TO GENTLE

Sermon delivered on the Sunday After Ascension Day, the 16^th May 2010 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands in the service of the Holy Eucharist.

 Scriptures:            Acts 16: 16-34                     Revelation 22:12-21                 S. John 17: 20-26

 S. John 17: 22   “The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.”

  

GOING UP

It is Ascensiontide, that short span of time in the Church's calendar when our thoughts are particularly directed to the final withdrawal of the Risen Lord to be enthroned in heaven beyond the normal reach of mortal eyes and mortal minds except in vision.

 

A priest friend of mine Fr Roy Bowler has written this of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There are only two verses in the NT -- both by S. Luke -- in which this extraordinary event is briefly described: "And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven" (Luke 24.51), "And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight" (Acts 1.9). There are a number of verses where it is alluded to (e.g. John 6.62; 20.17) but they are not many. The Ascension does not seem to have figured very largely in the minds of the earliest Christians. It took some time for its significance to sink in. It is sad that the Ascension does not seem to figure very largely in the minds of many Christians today. We neglect its huge significance.

 

It was on the first Ascension Day that our Lord, his work on earth finished, returned to heaven from whence he had come. Our Lord had done what he came into this world to do -- basically, to destroy the power of the Devil and evil and sin over human souls, and make it possible for imperfect humans to live with perfect God throughout eternity. Our Lord said that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents; so how much greater that joy in heaven must have been when the Son of God who had made that possible returned to his heavenly home. Eventually the significance of the Ascension sank into the minds of the early Christians and they incorporated into the Liturgy the foresight of the psalmist: "Lift up your heads O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the king of glory shall come in" (Ps 24.7). (And yes, the same psalm that gives the Cayman motto is seen to look forward to the Ascension.)

 

When our Lord returned to heaven he was different from when he left heaven to be born on earth. When he left heaven, he was the Son of God. When he returned to heaven, he was still the Son of God but he had also become the son of Mary, a child of the human race. In other words, when our Lord returned to heaven he was not alone. He took mankind with him, because he had become one of us, and we were now one with him. When Jesus left heaven, he alone was the Son of God, but now God has other sons. As St John says, "To as many as believed in him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name". St Paul puts it in a different way and says that Jesus is "the first-born among many brethren". Mankind now belongs to Jesus by right. Sometimes we say that Jesus Christ has `saved' us: sometimes we say that he has `redeemed' us. `Redeem' means `to buy back'. The human race had been captured and stolen by the Devil, but what our Lord has done for us is to buy us back, and take us to be with him for ever. It was not only our Lord who went back to heaven: believers too are spiritually with him.  ...

 

We are humans, and as such we have human limitations. One of the most limiting of these limitations is that we concentrate almost all of our attention on ourselves and our present world. We are largely anthropocentric. That is natural and understandable, but it needs to be balanced. From time to time we need to concentrate deliberately not on ourselves but on God. We need to be theocentric. The epistle to the Hebrews says, "We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Heb 11.13) "for here we have no continuing city" (Heb 13.14). We have to accept the fact that this stressful but wonderful world of ours is not the only place where we belong. It is not even the most important of the two places where we belong. The Christian belongs to two worlds at the same time -- this world of flesh and blood, of happiness and tragedy; and also we belong in God's world, with the angels and the saints, the dimension that we call "eternity", the "new heaven and the new earth".

 

The late Dr. Peter Toon also in our local newspaper some years ago developed the subject of the Ascension in a similar manner:

In his ascent and exaltation (Peter said), the Lord Jesus did not lose or shed his human nature and body. He entered heaven—the sphere where the angels and archangels worshipped the Holy Trinity—with his full humanity, now in an immortalised and glorified form, yet real humanity still.  And heaven was transformed by his arrival and session at the Father’s right hand. For now, as belonging fully and uniquely to the Second Person of the Trinity, human nature was in heaven. ...  Within the Triune Life of the Holy Trinity there was and there remains glorified human nature! 

 

BEHOLD THE DIVINE GLORY

These great mysteries of the Gospel are also glorious mysteries. As we saw two Sundays ago, Jesus spoke, as Judas went out from supper to betray Him, of His impending glorification. It was clear that the glorification He spoke of was to show forth through his Sacrifice the divine love in unmistakable power. In today's Gospel also, taken from the High Priestly prayer, as it is called, the Lord prays that those who will become His disciples may be present with Him so as to behold His glory. Again, that glory, He says, is related to and expresses the divine love. It is right that the Father confers glory upon the Son, because the Father has loved the Son from before the foundation of the world. And now, says Jesus in the High Priestly prayer, that glory is to be revealed. “The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.” Jesus prays that the disciples to come, you and I included, may behold His glory, demonstrated by the Resurrection and the Ascension, a glory that transforms human relationships.. We are charged, then, to behold these glorious mysteries, to take note of them, to take them into account in our view of the world. We are charged to allow their glory to affect us, and not pass over us unnoticed. Beholding His glory, we are charged to drink at the font of the divine love, which is expressed in this glory, and to have the disposition of our hearts changed by the workings of this glory. How hard our hearts can be, when we are shown the glories of Christ but do not receive them!

 

 I recall an occasion nearly a decade ago ago at a St. George’s Day celebration when something unusual happened to me, and I found myself weeping great tears and crying throughout the devotion. I had a great sense of the terrible hard-heartedness of my own countrymen of England, considering all the grace that has been bestowed upon us in our history. My heart was softened in intercession for the belief of my countrymen, and God heard those prayers and those of others who have interceded for England. Perhaps the unusual recent circumstances there, may give some hope  that there may be light on the horizon.

 

Let us see the softening of our hearts as evidence of the abundant strength of God that raised Jesus from the dead and transfigured Him to His own right hand in the heavens, reconciling mankind to a righteous God. Let us His children become perfectly one together, according to the prayer of Jesus, because of the glory of God that Christ was given, and Himself gave to the disciples.