The Easter Season is now drawing to its close and with it, a sense of age-old tension mounts! Before naming the tension let me give you a little deep background.
This last Thursday, exactly 40 days after Easter, we celebrated the Ascension of our Lord. This is a major celebration of Jesus that does not transfer to the following Sunday and so unless you are in Church on the day, the Ascension passes most of us by without notice. The Ascension emerges from the way Luke the Evangelist organizes the story of salvation into separate events - Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost. Rather like in a play one actor leaves the stage to make way for the next to enter, the Ascension is Luke's way of removing the earthly Jesus from the stage to make way for the entry of the Holy Spirit. Note the symmetry, Jesus (the second member of the Trinity) ascends so that the Holy Spirit (the third member of the Trinity) can descend. Pentecost, meaning 50 days after Easter, sometimes known as Whitsun - the Anglo-Saxon wytte meaning Holy Ghost, commemorates the experience for the first Christians of an earth shattering change. On the Sunday following Pentecost we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity. Trinity Sunday affirms that the three persons of God are not separate identities but are a relationship that constitutes a Divine Community. Trinity Sunday is also the signal at St Martin's for a rapid flow towards the exodus of summer.
Now, back to the mounting tension. The Gospel for this coming Sunday is taken from Jesus's conversation with his disciples at the Last Supper. These words, which in their entirety expand into several chapters in John are known as the Farewell Discourses or the Jesus' High Priestly Prayer. In Sunday's gospel the main thing that grabs my attention is Jesus' perplexing words about his followers being in the world, yet not of the world.
There are two collects for the Ascension. In the first the emphasis is on the presence of Christ who abides in his Church on earth. In the second the emphasis reminds us that Jesus has ascended into heaven and so we may also in heart and mind there ascend and with him continually dwell. Wow, can you see what a difference in emphasis? The difference is between Christians being fully engaged in the world and Christians absenting themselves from the world. We see this tension playing out not only in history, but very much today.
Which side of this tension do you tend towards? Two areas for fruitful reflection on this question might be:
- how do you feel when politics and money are talked about in church?
- does your Christian faith critique issues of human dignity, just economics, and the protection of the environment?
The tension for me is not how do I keep my faith free from being contaminated by the values of the world or from business as usual? It's how does my faith protect me from having to confront the values of business as usual?
Hope to see you in Church this Sunday and at the plan now- to give later, brunch!
Mark+
|