Sermon: Ascension Day 2011

The Very Revd Victor Stock is Dean of Guildford

Preacher:: Victor Stock
Date:: Thursday 2nd June 2011
Service:: Eucharist

The conversion of Holland was mainly the work of St Willibrord, Bishop of Utrecht from 695-739, who at one stage worked with our own St Boniface, that native of Crediton who became the Apostle of Germany. But since the 8^th century the history of the Church in Holland has been as fascinating as human experience makes possible. In 1723 a group of Dutch Roman Catholics, following the rigorous devotional and moral life of the Jansenists, made their own Bishop of Utrecht, of which Willibrord was the Bishop, and from that 18^th century argument grew the Church we call the Old Catholics, with which the Church of England is in full Communion. In the 20^th century Old Catholic Bishops who were validly ordained, but ‘irregular in the exercise of their Orders’, according to Rome, have taken part in Church of England episcopal consecrations. The present Dean of Guildford was ordained by Graham Leonard, Bishop of London, who had himself been episcopally consecrated by, among others, an Old Catholic Bishop from Utrecht.

If you think this is all a bit of a by-way for Ascension Day, it’s not as obscure as it may at first seem, this introduction and welcome to the Roman Catholic Choir from the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Utrecht, who are singing for us tonight. Utrecht, famous for its great Dom, the great medieval Cathedral Church, which is, of course, Calvinist, because of the Reformation, in the way that the great medieval cathedrals of England are Anglican because of the Reformation. We not only share our St Boniface with your St Willibrord, but the story of Christianity in England and the story of Christianity in the Netherlands share many a fascinating by-way, including one or two cul-de-sacs of history. There’s another similarity between Utrecht and Guildford – they both have horrible shopping centres. When you arrive on the train from Amsterdam to visit the wonderfully beautiful and interesting city of Utrecht, you have to make your way through the Catarijne Shopping Centre, which is almost as bad as the Guildford Friary Centre, which also greets you as you step out of our station, masking what is otherwise a pretty Tudor town.

So, welcome visitors from Utrecht singing this Mass for us tonight. I had a particularly happy experience of your own Roman Catholic Cathedral because I’ve often been a visitor to the great Museum of the History of Christianity in the old St Catherine’s Convent, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral is part of that building complex, but for many years, each time I’ve been, closed. But the other day, last year, I discovered it was open, and inside I found myself in the middle of the consecration of Bishops. Having spent the morning in the Museum, it was seeing history come alive.

The Feast of the Lord’s Ascension is history coming alive in ways that are as complex as Christian history itself. The New Testament writer, John, gives us the Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit all at Easter, but other Evangelists spin the story out into a sequence, so that you get a replication of the Lenten preparation for Easter, with the Eastertide preparation for Ascension and Pentecost. The New Testament is so overwhelmed by the complexity and strangeness of Christ’s post-Resurrection presence with the Church that it sorts the story out into events, and each event comes through history to receive its own feast, hence tonight’s Feast of the Ascension.

Those of you who’ve heard the Dean preach sermons before will know how often he returns to the complexity and strangeness of religion. On Ascension Day it’s good for us to be exactly here, in the mystery of God’s triumph; a mystery because so much of our human experience suggests the opposite. In a world where Libya suffers and the Arab Spring seems more like an Arab winter, and the Taliban still kill their enemies, and China still denies human rights, and huge tracts of Africa groan under despotism, Ascension can seem little more than fairy story, hope rather than experience.

If you visit Utrecht today you will be conscious of a city laid out between churches: Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, churches that tell the varied story of Christian experience, but churches which live together, one of whom, the Old Catholic Church, in full Communion with us in the Church of England, and another, the Roman Catholic Church, being our most welcomed and honoured guests tonight. Welcoming and honouring was the experience of those first Christians, who used this language of ascension. They found that death had not been the end for Jesus, his Spirit was with them in new ways that could hardly be described. Somehow they were caught up in his glory, as if being taken up into heaven, as if heaven was above them, above the exhausting, wearisome, suffering, disfigured, mundane world of every day. It seemed to the New Testament writers that their world was shot through with the glory of God and there was triumph, a door opened in heaven.

A visitor to Utrecht will discover a complex history and much beauty. Those new Christians who were baptised and confirmed here in this Cathedral on Easter Day will find that Christian life is fascinatingly complex and demanding. All of us, in Guildford or Utrecht, whatever our history or experience, know we cannot rely on ourselves alone, which was one of the many insights of the Reformation. Without special grace from God, the performance of his commandments is impossible. In Christian history it may be that we’ve worried too much about defining things, giving definitive answers to questions that don’t have an answer. We’ve measured ourselves against each other – Roman Catholic or Calvinist, Old Catholic or Anglican – when what we should be doing is recognising in each other those touched by glory, by the grace that lifts us out of the mundane into the heavenly, that raises us up with Christ, transfiguring human life and making the experience of heaven possible for us even now in Guildford and Utrecht.