Category: Major Festivals (page 1 of 3)

Christ is risen!

St Peter’s Wellington, 27 April 2025

Bishop Richard Randerson richardrandersonnz [at] gmail.com
Website: www.awordforallseasons.co.nz

Today, three Resurrection themes:

1. What the Resurrection means
2. Redemptive suffering – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
3. Life after death

1. Resurrection: An article in The Post last week on Lloyd Geering highlighted his heresy trial by the Presbyterians for an article he wrote in 1966 entitled What does the Resurrection mean, a trial in which he was acquitted. What disturbed many was his quoting of a statement by English theologian R. Grigor Smith that Jesus’ bones might lie somewhere in Palestine. I agree with them both the reality of the Resurrection does not depend on any theory about Jesus’ bones. (Luke 24.5: why do you look for the living among the dead?) Lloyd Geering today is 107 and has done much to unpack the meaning and depth of the scriptures, although I differ from him in some aspects of his theology.

The reality of the Resurrection is seen in the changed lives of the disciples when they encountered the risen Christ. In today’s Gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples and later to Thomas (John 20.19-31). They were overjoyed and Thomas said, “My Lord and my God”.

And then in Luke 24.13-35 there is the moving story of how Clopas and a friend encountered a stranger on the road to Emmaus who became known to them in the breaking of the bread. They reported that their “hearts had burned within them”. In John 21.1-14 there is the account of the disciples fishing and noticing a figure on the beach lighting a BBQ fire. It was John who said: “it is the Lord” and they all went ashore and broke bread together.

In all these (and other) encounters we note two things: there is a mystery about the nature of Jesus’ risen body: it appears and disappears; it is not immediately recognised; it can eat bread. But the key thing is the transformation of the disciples. From grief and desolation they become followers filled with confidence and joy who go out to proclaim
the risen Christ.

John 20.31: “   But these (accounts) are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”. Now all of that was 2000 years ago, but the Church was formed arising out of the experience of the disciples. And we know it is true today also because of our experience of the risen Christ in our own lives. Jesus is our constant companion in joy and sorrow offering new life and hope.

2. Redemptive suffering is also part of the resurrection story. You may have seen the recent film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who studied in New York in 1930. Returning to Germany he was outspoken against the Nazi regime while the Church was silent. He said that “silence in the face of evil is evil. Not to speak is to speak; not to act is to act.” He was executed in 1945, aged 39, for a plot to assassinate Hitler, just days before end of WW2.

Fellow pastor Martin Niemoller said: “When they came for the socialists I said nothing because I was not a socialist. When they came for the trade unionists I said nothing because I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews I said nothing because I was not a Jew. And when they came for me there was no one to speak up for me.”

Suffering at the hand of evil is redemptive. The centurion at the foot of the Cross, a hardened Roman soldier, when he saw Jesus die said: “Truly this man was the son of God (Matthew 27.54). And Tertullian, around 200 CE said “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.

3. Life after death: as we think about life after death we remember today family members and friends who have gone before us in life and faith. We remember also at this Anzactide those who have laid down their lives in war and we pray for peace in our time. We also remember His Holiness Pope Francis whose faith led him into a leadership that changed the world. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.

There are many images (eg in the book of Revelation and parts of the gospels) about the day of judgment, heaven and hell. It is known as apocalyptic imagery and requires its own interpretation . But I have always been helped by the words of American theologian Henry Nelson Wieman who wrote of life after death as “hope without prediction.” We cannot predict the details of what lies beyond death, but we have hope in the full Christian sense of confidence that in life and in death we are with God.

As Jesus died on the Cross he said: Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my Spirit. I use them every night before sleeping. They are words of trust and confidence that God is with us in life and in death and beyond death, words we can use daily and finally.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!

Did Jesus Die For Us?
Bishop Richard Randerson

A rather gloomy looking person once said to a stranger : “No, I’m not a Christian : it’s my ulcer that makes me look like this”. The story conveys what many often think of the Church and its teachings – a heavy emphasis on sin, evil, punishment, the hopelessness of the human condition, and a helpless dependence on God for salvation and the avoidance of hell.

Indeed two of our readings this morning make reference to the blotting out or taking away of sins. All in all it adds up to a pretty bleak and depressing view of the Christian faith, and one which I believe is the total opposite of the joyous, generous and celebratory life of Christians and the Church.

There are several problems with the “Jesus dies to save me from my sins” approach :

1. It conveys a very negative view of life and people. Human beings are seen as hopeless and chronic sinners, always operating on the negative side of the ledger, and never on the positive. The most we can expect is for God to bring us back to a neutral position week by week, from whence we sink again into the dark swamp of sin. Many people have felt
   this to be a destructive recipe for living, psychologically crippling, and one to be avoided for the sake of their mental health.
2. It conveys a totally wrong view of the nature of a loving God. Does a God of love require that someone be punished for our sins? Parents want the best for their children but don’t see punishment and retribution as the way to achieve it. They take wrongdoing seriously, but want to find positive ways to attract children into those ways. A concept of positive
   attraction is far preferable to punishment, and in line with the deepest concepts of love, both divine and human.
3. Even within the context of punishment is it just for one person to suffer for the sins of all? The concept of Jesus being punished for the sins of the whole world fails to meet the criteria of both justice and love.
4. The concept is also contrary to the whole nature of Jesus’ life – a life of generous love, breaking the strait-jackets of religious and social conventions, offering freedom and hope to the down-trodden, and new life and opportunities to rich and poor alike.

In Jesus’ time the concept of animal sacrifice was well-established, and images of scapegoats, or Jesus as the “paschal Lamb who was sacrificed for us”, were obvious ones whereby to talk of Jesus being sacrificed so we might be saved. But the concept of animal sacrifice died away and, while we may recognise the historical context of that concept, it is one we must abandon
if we are to convey the fullness of God’s love to 21st century people for whom animal sacrifice conveys the very opposite of a Gospel of justice and love.

I believe we need a new understanding of Jesus’ death, and I see it in the response of the centurion in Matthew 27.54. Here was a totally disinterested bystander, a senior Roman soldier on duty at the cross, someone who probably resented being posted to a backwater of the Roman Empire and charged with overseeing the affairs of people he despised.

Somehow the dynamics leading to Jesus’ crucifixion broke through his shell so that, watching Jesus die, he was led to make the astonishing affirmation : “Truly this man was a son ofGod”. What would have led him to this? Did he feel burdened with sin and recognise that Jesus’ death now took that burden away? Unlikely, I would think.

More likely that from all he observed he saw the possibly of new life, a life lived as Jesus lived, with three key features :

1. The centurion would have noted Jesus’ complete self-giving love in the service of others, his care for the outcast and the poor, the rejected and the needy, and his eschewing of power and privilege. Here on the cross the full extent of that love was to be seen. Jesus’ love led him to challenge the social and religious norms of his day, upsetting the
   established leaders, who for their own security chose to put this nuisance to death.
2. The centurion would also have noted Jesus’ integrity and his commitment to do and speak the truth, whatever the cost might be. Even in the face of death, Jesus did not draw back from his mission.
3. The centurion would also have noted Jesus’ central relationship with God. It could hardly be said that Jesus used God as a crutch in times of weakness. His whole life was sourced in the living power of God on which he drew regularly through prayer and periods of solitude. With God as the source of Jesus’ life and love, he was enabled to be the
   powerful force that transformed the lives of so many he came in touch with.

It seems to me, then, that the centurion was saved not because he felt delivered from punishment for sin through Jesus’ death, but because Jesus’ life was the door to a new existence, new possibilities, new hope and meaning that offered a fulfilment way beyond the hum-drum experience of living out his life in the daily service of the Roman Empire.

And just as that centurion was able to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God in his day, so the same dynamics of self-giving love, integrity in our calling, and a daily walk with God attract us today. We too are called to acknowledge Jesus as Son of God and so find salvation, which is another word for wholeness.

The theological ground-shift is seen also in the New Zealand Prayer Book which differs from the Book of Common Prayer not merely by its use of contemporary language, but also by reflecting a theology of life, growth and celebration rather than salvation from sin.

The theologian Hans Kung has said that the event of Jesus Christ is a historical fact with universal significance. All are affected and called by it, in every generation. Hans Kung sums up the meaning of the Cross in these words :

“Nowhere did it become more evident than in the cross that this God is in fact a God on the side of the weak, sick, poor, underprivileged, oppressed, even of the irreligious, immoral and ungodly. …He is a God who lavishes his grace on those who do not deserve it. Who gives without envy and never disappoints. Who does not demand love, but gives it : who himself is
holy love. It follows from all of this that the cross is not to be understood as a sacrifice demanded by a cruel God. In the light of Easter it was understood as quite the reverse, as the deepest expression of his love. Love, by which God …can be defined : love not as feeling, but as “existing for”, “doing good to others”. (On Being a Christian, p 485).

A sermon for All Saints’ Day.

As we look around us today, whom would we name as contemporary saints? Would it be the Black ferns with their stunning success in international rugby? Or might it be Saint Jacinda or Saint Christopher? And many would name Great Thunberg with her courageous global leadership on climate change.

But for the rest of us, whom would we regard as saints today? Maybe a group of women I saw recently, patiently caring for handicapped young adults on a day out?

Or is it the army of overseas aid workers risking their lives to bring food, medicine and shelter to the hungry, sick and dying? Or the hungry, sick and dying themselves, hundreds of thousands of them in seemingly hopeless situations, but continuing to give everything for their children and neighbours?

Or are the saints the ‘Occupy Wall St’ protesters around the world – saying ‘enough is enough’ in the face of unparalleled greed and inequality? All these are people who are not just performing a duty, but are captured by a spirit that drives them to reach out with compassion and for justice for the needy.

It is that spirit which flows through the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), the eight  ‘blesseds’ that Jesus outlined in his Sermon on the Mount. I have visited the Mount. Today there is a modern, open church, on a slope looking down over the Sea of Galilee. It has eight sides – one for each of the Beatitudes.

Commentators see a parallel with Moses and Mount Sinai, but whereas the 10 Commandments are Law, the eight Beatitudes are Grace. The 10 commandments are moral instructions: ‘Love God, respect your parents, do not steal, do not murder’ etc. But the beatitudes show the difference between Law and Love. Jesus ushers in a new age where God’s freely-given love over-rides the rule of Law.

This spirit is evident in each of the eight Beatitudes. The poor in spirit are those who know the core of their life lies not in power and possessions but in their walk with God. As the modern interpretation you have today puts it: ‘Blessed are those who are convinced of their basic dependency on God, whose lives are emptied of all that does not matter, those for whom the riches of this world just aren’t that important’.

Those who mourn lament not only for lost loved ones, but for the loss of God and God’s justice from the heart of society. The humble are not those who choose to be a doormat or stand behind the door, but those who have no need to seek status or preferment because the only status they need is that of being a disciple. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness focus not just on personal morality but on a wide-ranging social righteousness that delivers justice for all.

The merciful are those for whom mercy is a mindset that issues in compassionate and costly action for others, while the pure in heart are those who are single-minded in their love for God, that love untrammeled by worldly distractions.

The peacemakers set out to heal wounds, build bridges, restore broken relationships, and to join movements that transcend racial and national divisions, and the gaps between rich and poor. They bring about shalom – the peaceable kingdom of God where all live in harmony with one another and with the earth itself.

And finally the persecuted are those who in their love for others, or in striving for justice, have made sacrifices, known rejection or carry the scars of battle with all that is broken or evil.

For all of these, the promise is a whole new state of being, a way of life where people see God, walk with God, feel God’s love and are empowered and sustained by God’s presence and spirit. It is a present taste of God’s final purpose for all creation. To such a life each one of us is called. It is a life and a promise lived and experienced by ordinary people like you and me.

As an example, let me conclude with the story of Emma Woods, that young mother in Christchurch whose 4-year old son Nayan was tragically killed some years back by a teenage driver whose car spun out of control. Which of us was unmoved by her words: “We had had a perfect day at Playcentre, played lots of games together, and had a good time at the mall. I have no regrets about that day – we had fun together”.

And of the young driver of the car: “We are pretty clear we don’t want this to be the defining moment of his life. He is young, only 17. He has got his whole life ahead of him and we hope he will use it to do good things, to be good with people, and maybe eventually to be a good father”.

I do not know what faith she follows, but Emma’s words are an astonishing statement of wisdom and generosity in the midst of unimaginable grief. She has drawn on the deepest resources of the spirit, while acknowledging the extent of her loss and the pain she will feel through long years ahead. It is of this that sainthood is made: the commitment to walk with our God whose love sustains us and brings forth extraordinary love in ordinary and extraordinary situations.

(Minor overlap with MF01)

All of us here tonight carry in our hearts the soul and spirit of someone close to us, and probably of several people close to us whom we have lost over the years. I remember each year my brother Michael who died of an illness aged 33: that was 36 years ago, and yet there is still a gap in our family circle. We grieve not only for the one who has died, but also for that part of our own life that has died as well.

Yet while grief is a reality we all know, it nonetheless points us to those things in life that are of supreme importance, things that give us comfort in the present, and hope and strength for the future. Let me mention four of them :

First, the traditional formal eulogy today if often eclipsed today by personal and anecdotal words from children and grand-children, usually with tears and laughter and in informal style. And the thing that stands out in the midst of them all is the central importance of family ties, and family love, and the times that were spent not in public office but at the beach together, or over a meal or at a birthday party – the things that are common to us all, often taken for granted, things that don’t cost money but are a priceless part of being human.

Second, a death often evokes within us a sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves. One of the old hymns of the Church has the line “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away” (and daughters too). In one sense that sounds very pessimistic but I find a stronger meaning to it. Around us are plaques and memorials of our ancestors which speak of timelessness, of eternity, of a great over-arching drama in which each of us plays a part. Each of us receives life and has gifts and opportunities specific to our day and age. Each of us has a vocation to play our part in the service of others. Each of us gives life to others and in turn we give our own life up having played our part. Our life although mortal, has a purpose. We have a place in God’s abiding purpose of love.

Third, mortality speaks to us of the support we find in loss that comes from the love of family and friends. Human love is the expression of a divine love that never leaves us comfortless. In the night-time of grief, when loneliness and loss seem too hard to bear, we reach out to one another, and find comfort from each other, just as God reaches out to us and surrounds us with a love that will not let us go.

And finally, mortality speaks to us of the presence of God, one in whom we can trust as we look to a future that seems empty and uncertain. Faith does not provide answers to all our questions and anxieties about the future. Rather our faith lies in knowing that we travel with God, so that whatever the future will bring it will be all right. Faith is knowing that God’s spirit lifts us and sustains us, however empty life at times may feel.

On a plane the other day my fellow passenger told me of his experience at two funerals, one for his office secretary, much younger than he, the other for his father. He said he came away from each funeral with an incredible sense of lightness, which he defined as feeling that in spite of the loss everything would be all right. It wasn’t that he didn’t grieve; it wasn’t that he didn’t feel the loss; it wasn’t that he felt life would just be business as usual. He knew he would feel the pain of those deaths, yet at a much deeper level he had this feeling that in the overall scheme of things, all would be well. Those latter words were also used by the 14^th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, who affirmed that “all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well”. Not words of superficial comfort, but words of a deep conviction about the abiding presence of the love of God, a love that is with us in life and in death, mediated to us by family and friends, yet finding its source in a spring of compassion that encompasses all people in all times.

A sermon preached by Canon Paul Oestreicher
at St. Peter’s Church, Wellington on 6 August 2023

May what I say and what you hear reflect the heart and mind of Jesus who chooses us as his friends. Amen.

We are going this morning on a long, long journey. We will still be the people of St. Peter’s. But not only that. We will use our imagination to its limits. We will journey to heaven and back to this place — and then we will travel to hell and still come back to ourselves.

Every religion wants to celebrate. And so do we. This is a celebration of the feast of Transfiguration. I would not be surprised if some of you—maybe all of you—haven’t a clue what this is all about. Because the church has actually kept it at arm’s length. We celebrate births at Christmas, death and life beyond this at Easter. At Pentecost, we celebrate the presence of the Spirit of God in our midst. And then Transfiguration, where does it fit? It doesn’t. It could be anywhere in the New Testament, because it’s not part of the history. It is about spiritual poetry. The artists can make a lot of it. They have painted marvelous icons of Transfiguration. It requires huge imagination to get our minds and our hearts around it. So let us go with Jesus into the real celebration of nothing less than heaven.

Jesus chooses just three of his close friends, Peter, John, and James and says to them, “Come with me, climb this high mountain.” And they haven’t a clue what’s going to happen. So they climb the Mount of Transfiguration. And when Jesus gets there, he meets old friends. He meets Moses and Elijah the prophet of ancient Israel. Know this isn’t history. This is spiritual poetry. And Jesus himself is transformed. Surrounded by luminous light and light so bright that it shines like a 1000s Suns. And the three friends of Jesus are totally confused. They are in a cloud of unknowing. They fall down with fear at what’s happening. It’s totally extra ordinary. It’s another world to which Jesus has just chosen three to go with him to experience what we don’t really have words for. But it’s marvelous. It’s creative. It’s something that the artists can deal with. Can paint wonderful icons of it, and there are many of them. And we are left wondering. They have to come down from the mountain to reality. And they do. And as they come down a voice from Heavens says, “This is my beloved Son, my chosen. Listen to him.”

Listening to him is really the only reason why we should be in this place at St. Peter’s. What does he say to us? He says to us, “Don’t be afraid, little flock. It is my Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.” That’s what it’s all about. Journey into a heaven we cannot really imagine. But we are challenged to do just that. And to hear this Jesus guiding us on our paths.

But now I challenge you to leave St. Peter’s. I challenge you to go to your local cinema. And to watch a film simply, yes, simply called Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, one of the great nuclear physicists of the 20th century, a great scientist. And he set out with a team of other scientists in the quest of creating a weapon that would win and end the Second World War. They were fighting against time. But they just made it. They went into the desert, the desert of New Mexico having worked and experimented and finished up with this weapon, which had never been used. They exploded it in the desert. It was a terrifying experience. And then they had done their work. Or at any rate part of it. The politicians then picked up their work and said, “You have done what we asked you. We will now act on it.” And they did. They sent one crew on an American bomber to take this fearsome weapon to the Japanese city of Hiroshima. And on this day, in the year 1945, on this sixth of August, in the middle of the morning, they dropped the first atomic bomb in history in a split second, a terrifying blast, brighter than 1000 suns like at the top of the mountain, and yet so terribly different. And in that split second, something like 100,000 children, women, and men, and the city in which they lived, was turned to ashes.

But science has no boundaries. So they went on experimenting and testing more. Testing them in the Australian desert, in the South Pacific, to create not just another atom bomb, but this time a hydrogen bomb, infinitely more terrible in his destructive power that is Hell. On. Earth. A human creation using the science of creation, to destroy creation. All on the feast on the feast of Transfiguration. Jesus seen in all his glory, and Jesus going with us to hell—we say it actually, when we recite the Creed, that’s the reality of our life.

In the twilight zone, between heaven and hell, this life is a bit of both a bit of heaven in each of us and a bit of hell in each of us and we live in between in a timezone before the ultimate coming of the kingdom. No we do not understand. But if we listen to the chosen of God, to this simple Jesus—this carpenter from Nazareth, this man among his fellow humans—and he can teach us about what he called the kingdom. That Kingdom is in fragments already present here now, but yet to be fulfilled. The journey to Heaven is offered on this feast of which the church sadly makes very little of. And on that very day, the hell that destroyed and may go on destroying, if we do not take peace, the peace of Christ seriously and say no to the inventions that we can make. But having made them, we can unmake them and we can prepare. Prepare for the kingdom and be part of it.

The Privilege is endless. The joy is endless. The grief is endless. No, it isn’t endless, but it will end in the triumph of love. For a moment, a final moment of silence. Imagine the brightness, the luminous glory of God and that very glory used to wipe out our fellow human beings.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Amen.

And now I’m going to ask you to get up from your seats and join Jean and all the rest of us in blessing the icons that are symbols of what we are here for, to celebrate Eucharist, to celebrate Thanksgiving, to celebrate Jesus presiding at this Eucharist and at every Eucharist. But before he does that, Jesus, our servant, washes his disciples feet, washes our feet, as he challenges us to serve each other. So get up from your seats and come and crowd into the sanctuary here, right up to the end of the church, where the icons that are going to be blessed now have found a place for the future. Come and join us.

In contemporary theology the Trinity has become a symbol of an interacting diversity in unity: God is expressed in three activities (“Persons”) of creating, redeeming, giving life. While each “Person” is different, yet they live in dynamic interaction with each other. A Greek word  perichoresis expresses it : peri (around) choresis (a dance). The three Persons dance together, hence the modern hymn “I am the Lord of the Dance”.

This divine and trinitarian community becomes the symbol of all of human existence :

• each of us is called to be part of the dance, with God and with each other
• the Body of Christ, the Church, an interactive community, diverse gifts in shared mission with other faiths, not blurring our Christian heritage, but working together to cross the divides of cultural, racial and credal difference in the interests of peace and well-being for all
• we see our links with all members of God’s family, reaching out to others in a relationship of mutual compassion
• we share in God’s special work of compassion for the poor
• example in today’s reading from 1 Kings 17. 8-16 : Elijah the prophet comes to the widow of Zarephath seeking food. A poor woman, she has very little but gives of what she has, her act of generosity reflecting God’s grace which ensures her food supply is never depleted.
• Jesus’ life-giving compassion is seen in this morning’s Gospel (Luke 7. 11-17) where he restores life to the son of the widow of Nain
• tragic example with the death of Folole Muliaga (woman on a life-support machine at home whose power was cut off for late payment of a bill). The Chair and CEO of powerful corporations and the Prime Minister all descend on a lowly dwelling in Mangere where a family is devastated and grieving. Remote decisions by the powerful are seen as having human consequences in a world where we are all bound to one another.
• the Earth itself and all Creation are part of the Dance also (Genesis 1)

Thus the Trinity is far more than a philosophical attempt to explain what is after all inexplicable mystery. It becomes a symbol of all of existence in the way we relate to God, each other, all of God’s people and creatures on Earth, and indeed the Earth itself. It is the basis for our trust in God which leads to our mission of compassion, justice, peace and stewardship of the Earth.

James K Baxter : (1) Song to the Lord God (2) Song to the Holy Spirit (NZPB pp 160,157)

Lord God, you are above and beyond all things;

Your nature is to love. You put us in the furnace of the world

to learn to love you and love one another (1)

Lord Christ, you are the house in whom we live

The house in which we share the cup of peace

The house of your body that was broken on the cross

The house you have built for us beyond the stars (1)

Lord, Holy Spirit, in the love of friends you are building a new house.

Heaven is with us when you are with us.

You are singing your song in the hearts of the poor.

Guide us, wound us, heal us. Bring us to the Father. (2)

The divine interaction of the Holy Trinity enables the same life-giving and loving interaction of all people and parts of God’s creation. (With a note on the Athanasian creed).

How many of you have ever said the Athanasian Creed? It is prescribed to be said on Trinity Sunday butI have never used it in 50 years of priesthood. It was probably not written by St Athanasius, more likely St Ambrose around 400AD. It incorporates some traditional affirmations, but includes material designed to exclude some heresies of the day.

Here are some of the words of it:

The Catholic Faith is this that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity

Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance

For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one.

The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible

As also there are not three incomprehensibles, and one incomprehensible.

Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled he shall perish everlastingly.

Note the sting in the tail if we get it wrong!

Such a creed seems a long way from the experience of Pentecost when the disciples were filled with joy and sent out to change the lives of others. Yet how much of that core experience remains when it is poured into the lifeless formula of the trinitarian doctrine, a concept which owes more to Greek philosophy than to the living God?

Let us explore three layers of meaning in the Trinity:

First, the three persons of the Trinity – Father/Creator; Son/redeemer; spirit/life-giver.

Father/Creator reminds us of God’s creative presence in all of life and Creation

• Genesis 1: God’s word hovers over the formless void and brings Creation into being
• There is an awesomeness about God’s over-arching presence. In Isaiah 6 we hear of the young prophet being totally overcome with awe as he came face to face with God in the temple and was sent out to call God’s people to turn again to God.   
• That same sense of the awesome presence of God was described by Pelagius in 4^th century Britain. The early Church condemned Pelagius as a heretic, but many see him today as being one of the early exponents of Celtic spirituality. “Everywhere”, wrote Pelagius, “narrow shafts of divine light pierce the veil that separates heaven from earth” (Philip Newell, Listening for the Heartbeat of God).

Son/Redeemer, Jesus: But the God of mystery and awe is also intimately and personally close to us in the life and presence of Jesus. As the disciples walked with Jesus they perceived the special person he was. They noted his singular devotion to God, and his total self-giving love for all. They saw the way he overthrow convention and creed to let God’s love run free. They noted how he satisfied the deepest hunger and thirst of ordinary people.

From this long exposure Peter proclaimed (John 6.68): “Lord to whom else can we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God”.

Spirit/lifegiver: Pentecost brings alive the reality of God as Spirit, as we recall (Acts 2) the tongues of fire that descended upon the disciples, and how they were filled with the Holy Spirit and sent out to proclaim the risen Christ to people of every nation and tongue.

Second layer: So far, so familiar, but Wait! There’s more. In contemporary theology the Trinity has become a symbol of diversity in unity: God is expressed in three activities, or Persons, of creating, redeeming, and giving life. While each “Person” is different, yet they live in dynamic interaction with each other. A Greek word perichoresis expresses it: peri (around) choresis (a dance). The three Persons dance together, hence the modern hymn “I am the Lord of the Dance”.

Third layer: This divine dance becomes the symbol of all of human existence. Each of us is called to be part of the dance.  The Body of Christ, the Church, is an interactive community, with diverse gifts in shared mission. We interact with other faiths, not blurring our Christian heritage, but crossing the divides of cultural, racial and credal difference to bring peace and well-being for all.

Richard Hooker, 16^th century Anglican theologian, wrote : “God hath created nothing simply for itself: but each thing in all things, and of everything each part in each other have such interest, that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto anything created can say, ‘I need thee not’.

The relationship with Earth itself, with every creature and element, is expressed movingly in the words of Anglican priest, the late Maori Marsden, who writes of Papatuanuku, the primordial Mother: “Papatuanuku is our mother and deserves our love and respect. She is a living organism with her own biological systems and functions creating and supplying a web of support systems for all her children whether man, animal, bird, tree, grass, microbes or insects”.

So I’m frankly glad we don’t say the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday, as its doctrinal exactitudes exclude the richness of a Trinitarian God. That richness is experienced:

• In the awesome presence of a God whose word hovers over all creation
• In the person of Jesus whose love brings us healing, reconciliation and compassion
• In the Spirit who fills us and enables us to go out with joy and bring healing to others
• In the perichoresis – the dance of life that links us to all people
• In our love and care for Creation – God’s gift to us, our children and grand-children

Seen that way the Trinity is far from a lifeless doctrine. It is a symbolic perception based on an experience of the living God that shapes our whole life, our vocation and the Church’s mission. Incomprehensible? I don’t think so!

At the 1988 Lambeth Conference, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, told the story of a young British couple who had gone out on colonial service to Africa. In their first letter home they wrote: from our house on the hill we look down on a valley filled with dozens of African families, all living in grass thatched-roof huts. Our nearest neighbours are 200 miles away at the next British post.

This is a Pentecost story, one that asks who are our neighbours, and pushes us to look beyond the established and comfortable parameters of our identity (in this story ‘being British’) to seeing ourselves as part of a much greater community, one that encompasses all of humankind. Those multiple languages the disciples spoke in following the outpouring of God’s Spirit at Pentecost symbolise the Universalising of the Gospel – the Word of God is to go out to all people, all races, all nations.

Let me mention three aspects of Pentecost:

First, the personal: the disciples were fired with the spirit (Acts 2. 2,3) – the pentecostal experience of wind (= pneuma = spirit) and the tongues of fire that came upon them.Knowing the presence and power of the living God is for us all. For some the encounter with God comes in dramatic ways (eg Pentecost, Paul on the Damascus road). (The story is told of a man who came to an Anglican church service and was waving his arms around and speaking in tongues and generally disrupting the worship. At length an usher came and asked him to desist. And the man said: ‘but I’ve got the spirit’. And the usher replied: ‘that may be so, Sir, but you didn’t get it here’).

I have not had a Pentecostal experience as described in Acts 2. My experience of God has been a gentle one, like that of Elijah on Mt Horeb (1 Kings 19. 9-15): God was not in the wind, the fire or earthquake, but God was the still small voice that strengthened him and gave him courage to continue. Or think also of the disciples on the Emmaus road (Luke 24. 13-35): it was the slowly dawning realisation that the stranger they were talking to was Jesus, and that renewed life and hope and faith for them. We must be wary of prescribing any normative manner in which the Spirit comes, but be open to God’s spirit in the multiple experiences of life

Second, MOVING OUT beyond our comfort zone. There were major problems as the disciples encountered those many races and languages. They were astonished to find that God’s Spirt was poured out even on the Gentiles! The Jerusalem Church was not impressed and said ‘they must be circumcised like us and obey the Law of Moses’. Peter, Paul and Barnabas argued robustly against this, and the rules of the church were modified to become more inclusive and less prescriptive.

James Alison, an English Roman Catholic priest and theologian, commented: In a very short space of time in Luke’s story-telling we have gone from something rather like ‘You are no part of our narrative’ through ‘You can be part of our narrative, but only on our terms’ to ‘Heavens, we are part of the same narrative, which isn’t the one either of us thought it was and isn’t on the terms set by either of us’.

Pentecostal faith means being open to difference – different  generations, races, faiths, nationalities, churches, or socio-economic deciles.  In his 2003 book The Dignity of Difference, the then Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes: The test of faith is whether I can make room for difference. Can I recognise God in someone who is not my image? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.

Third, what about all those DEAD BONES in the reading from Ezekiel 37. 1-14? The bones were those of the whole House of Israel, and the two sins that had deadened them were idolatry and injustice. We don’t worship foreign gods in the 21^st century, but we do worship the gods of complacency, self-centredness, corporate greed, neo-liberalism and many others. And injustice and inequality are rampant in the western world, and worse when we think of Third World nations. Can the Church and our self-satisfied society live again by being spirit-filled and returning to the paths of the true God?

Pentecostal Christians, then, are those who feel God’s Spirit at work in their own lives, within the Church and all Creation. Michael Mitton has written: “The Spirit is not a tame bird”. We cannot put chicken-wire around the ecclesiastical coop. The coop may contain the chickens, but not the Holy Spirit of God which blows wild and free, and calls us to join courageously in God’s Mission in all its aspects.

Let us think deeply on Ezekiel’s words:  God said to the wind: Come and breathe on these dead, and let them live. So I prophesied as he had ordered, and the breath entered into them; they came to life again and stood up on their feet, a great and immense army.

In a visionary essay (Humankind: a hopeful history) this week Dutch historian Rutger Bregman observes that during the COVID 19 crisis hedge fund managers and multinational tax specialists have not been in great demand as being vital for human survival. Instead the key players have been doctors and nurses, social workers, teachers, supermarket staff, transport operators, cleaners and, one might add, the many volunteers at foodbanks and in family support.

Bregman further comments: “The general rule seems to be: the more vital your work, the less you are paid, the more insecure your employment and the more at risk you are in the fight against the coronavirus.” Dr Ashley Bloomfield has more than earned his salary, of course, and security of employment is probably not as issue for over-burdened doctors and nurses. But for many of the lowly paid – the ones that deliver our groceries and pizza, or clear away our trash – vulnerability is an ongoing dynamic.

Add in those who have no job at all, or those living in crowded slums, refugee camps and prisons, and one sees just how many billions are affected by COVID 19 worldwide. COVID can strike any of us, rich or poor, but what Bregman is saying to us – and we know he’s right – that it strikes the poor and vulnerable disproportionately compared with many of us. Which leads us nicely into Jesus’ Ascension, which the Church observed on Thursday.

In Acts 1.9 today we read that Jesus ‘was taken up into heaven as the disciples watched, and a cloud hid him from their sight’. (You may recall pictures from Sunday School days of the awestruck disciples gazing upward at two feet hanging out the bottom of a cloud).

It is a symbolic image that begs the question: what does the Ascension mean in our global society today?  Jesus’ life and mission were lived out among a particular people (the Jews) in a particular place (Palestine) in a particular time (1^st C). His incarnation was local, but God’s mission was always universal, for all people in every age and place. The Ascension symbolises the lifting of Jesus from that local context into a global one for all time. Just as COVID 19 is binding together the whole human race, so Jesus’ ascension symbolises the love of God in Christ encompassing every person and place, binding us as one family. Whoever “they” may be, “they” are part of “us”.

In Acts 1. 8, 9 Jesus tells his disciples that they will be filled with power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and that they will be ‘witnesses for Him in Jerusalem, Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’.  Thus the feast of Pentecost, which we observe next Sunday, is foreshadowed – the day when the Holy Spirit fell with tongues of fire on the heads of the disciples, and God’s word was heard by people of every race, each in their own language. These verses also remind us of Jesus’ call to us to be “witnesses unto me” in all we do – life, work and conversation.

In today’s Gospel (John 17. 1-11) there are two key themes, one about eternal life, and one about the nature of God’s glory. John speaks of eternal life as the special relationship between God and Jesus, a relationship extended to Jesus’ disciples. V3: this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 

Eternal life is not about life for eternity after we die (Life after death is a topic for another sermon!). John uses the Greek word aionios, (eon in English) not in a chronological sense, like going on for ever and ever, but rather life of a different nature, or quality, perhaps tikanga Christian, not bound by time, but life lived in relationship with God in Christ. It is a present reality lived by all those who know God, and Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Each one of us can live this eternal life now.

Secondly, the Gospel talks about God’s glory. Jesus prays (v1) : “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you”. God’s glory has been revealed in Jesus throughout his life, seen (for example) in Jesus’ miracles, or signs, most recently in the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11.1-45). But now Jesus will glorify God through his death on the Cross. Thus the glory of God is revealed not just in strength and authority, but also in weakness, the weakness of love and self-giving. As he died on the Cross Jesus said “It is finished” (tetelestai,  from telos, meaning purpose). His work/purpose on earth was complete.

St Paul puts this well in Philippians 2.6-11 when he writes of Jesus who, being in the nature of God, took on the very nature of a servant,… and   humbled himself by becoming obedient to death…Therefore God exalted him to the highest place…so that every tongue might confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God.

Asension Day speaks to us of God’ love which extends over all the earth, binding us together as one family, and one Creation. It is with this perspective that we should approach the Covid pandemic. Rutger Bregman writes that “the age of excessive individualism and competition could come to an end, and we could inaugurate a new age of solidarity and connection…I am not optimistic, but hopeful, for hope propels us to action.”