Sermon: Sermon for Easter 7

Preacher:

Chris Hollingshurst

Date:

Sunday 1st June 2025

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

Cathedral Eucharist

Easter 7, Year C

[Ezekiel 36.24-28]  Acts 16.16-34; John 17.20-26

May I speak…

As I was preparing to preach today, I came across these words: No land in sight. Kept on sailing. 

It seems that these words formed a brief entry the ship’s log of Christopher Columbus as he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the fifteenth century in search of new lands.

I can’t imagine how his fellow sailors on the three ships in the fleet were feeling as they headed into the unknown, to places no one had sailed before – without any contact with home and surrounded by nothing but sea. Lonely? Uncertain? Doubting? Something else?

On Thursday, just three days ago, the Church celebrated Ascension Day. Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus has been taken from his disciples’ sight and entered into heaven, lifting human nature to God’s with Him to the throne of God. His presence with his disciples is no longer confined to a single place, and to one moment in time, but through the promised Holy Spirit, the presence of Jesus will soon be everywhere, with every person, for all time.

As the Bible tells us, it is to be another ten days until the dramatic outpouring of the Spirit of Jesus upon his disciples in Jerusalem, and, through them, across the world. But on this Sunday after Ascension Day – this in-between Sunday - Jesus has left his friends, yet now there is a kind of pause before Pentecost, which in terms of the Church year, we don’t celebrate until next week.  

This might be a little melodramatic, but it is as if, on fifty-one Sundays of the year, we celebrate God being with us, but on this particular Sunday, it might feel just a little as though God is absent. No land in sight. Kept on sailing?

With Ascension Day as our context, what might the readings we have been given for today suggest for our reflection today?

In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, and as a direct consequence of their extraordinary ministry, Paul and Silas find themselves bearing the pain of a flogging and being incarcerated in, probably, a very dark prison cell.

They could be forgiven for feeling lonely, uncertain, or doubting, or almost anything else. However, they have no complaints. At the moment they can’t know what the future will hold for them, but they know the One who does know.

No land in sight. Kept on sailing? Absolutely! So they begin praying and singing loudly. As one writer comments: ‘whatever happened to their bodies, their hearts were in heaven.’

The rest of this extraordinary episode springs from the praises of the apostles. A violent earthquake destroys the jail. Through this astonishing event, and all that follows, the love of God for Paul and Silas is demonstrated dramatically. The jailer’s life is turned around and he, too, comes to faith in Jesus.

It is as if, as Ezekiel prophesises for God’s people, the jailer is given a new heart and a new spirit – enabling him to be responsive to God’s call and open to God’s way of life. He can set out on a new journey now, not with no land in sight but with new shores and new discoveries coming into view.

Let’s go back to the Ascension for a moment. A conventional view sees the Ascension of Jesus as the completion of the work he came to do. Jesus departs, having finished everything. When we look around at the world, though, and witness ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine; and witness the selfish desperate damage to the environment; and witness the wilful persecution of God’s children on grounds of race, religion, or sexuality, we might wonder: if Jesus came to set everything right, has it worked?

Well – yes – it has ‘worked’, for Christ has been raised to heaven and has raised humanity to the heights of his throne. As is often said, we live in a time in which God’s rule, God’s kingdom on earth, might be considered as ‘now and not yet’. The Ascension has happened, Christ’s work on earth is completed and his sovereignty is confirmed. This is not academic theology; it’s a spiritual reality.

This particular Sunday encourages us to trust that, nevertheless, God remains in the world as it is and in the lives of God’s people as they are through the promised Holy Spirit.  It is through the promised Holy Spirit that the so-called High Priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17 is answered: as God the Father is in God the Son, and the Son is in the Father, so all who believe in the Son – Jesus – will be, are, one in God.

Through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit through all who are one in Christ, God’s sovereignty continues to be proclaimed and manifested until the last great gathering, the great culmination, at the end of time when all flesh shall see the Glory of God.

And the modus operandus? One commentator puts it this way:

‘Love; is Jesus’ repeated way of speaking of divine relationships. We are called to live into and out of the richness of God’s love within the Trinity, which cannot help but overflow and embrace all of God’s creation.

Today’s Collect contains a striking petition – that the Holy Spirit will strengthen us and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before. It’s neither a simple request nor, certainly, a presumption. Rather it is a response based upon what God in Christ has done for us, it reflects his prayer that those whom God has given Him (among others that’s you and me) will be with Him wherever He is and to see His glory.

No land in sight. Kept on sailing?

If you are feeling that way today, then it’s still good advice. But be encouraged! Even if we can’t see it, the course is set. The destination is known. We travel together, and we travel with confidence in the victory of the One who has gone before us all: the incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Lord Jesus who leaves His Spirit with us to guide and fill our lives, the Church and the world.

To Him be glory and praise forever. Amen.