I thought I’d begin with that quote on this Sunday after Ascension Day, because I’ve found myself over the past week reflecting on the difference between false religion, of which there is much in our world, and true religion, which is what their Lord told the first disciples and their companions they were to take out into all the world.
St Luke tells us that it was as he blessed them that Jesus was taken up from them through the clouds and into heaven. As he blessed them, as his hands were raised in the act of blessing. The inference is that blessing is what he is always doing. There’s no point in our Christian lives, there’s no time in the history of the Church, in which we do not have, in which we are not offered, the blessing of Christ.
And our task as his people is to pass that blessing on, to everyone, in every way, at every time, to paraphrase John Wesley: not in order to earn brownie points, not in order to justify ourselves, not to merit eternal life, but simply because we have been already blessed, we have been redeemed, and we have the gift of heaven.
Luke tells us that Christ ascended through the clouds, and a picture in my Sunday school bible presents that in a very literal way, as his sandalled feet lift from the ground. Actually, the how isn’t so important. The clouds Luke mentions are in the Bible always a symbol of mystery, and those who first read Luke’s words would have known that. There is mystery here, but the simple facts are these: Jesus was with his disciples, teaching them, encouraging and preparing them, opening the eyes of their minds. And then there came a time when he was no longer with them.
They’d been told to wait, and Luke tells us they waited joyfully. Of course they did: they knew the truth, they knew what the cross now was - no longer a sign of defeat and death, of things having gone terribly wrong, of God’s plans being thwarted by evil men. Instead, the cross has become a royal throne, the place where God’s love had been proved triumphant, the sign of life, and the hope of glory. They knew this truth, and they knew they were blessed, and held securely in God’s love.
One of my favourite hymns is Timothy Dudley-Smith’s powerful hymn “Lord of the years”. I especially love the last verse, which begins, “Lord, for ourselves; in living power remake us, self on the cross and Christ upon the throne.” “In living power remake us” - that’s exactly what those first disciples will have prayed as they waited in Jerusalem for the gift that had been promised, the gift of the Holy Spirit that would send them tumbling joyfully out onto the streets to begin to change the world.
“Self on the cross and Christ upon the throne” - here in just a single line Bishop Timothy sums up the essential heart of Christian service and witness and mission. Self on the cross and Christ upon the throne. Paul writes in Romans chapter 6 verse 6 (in the New Living translation) “We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.” But it’s one thing to say that; now we have to live it. In obedience, in service, in love given that reflects and responds to the love received: knowing that Christ is on the throne, at the right hand of the Father, and that we have his blessing.
“Religion has been the cause of most of the troubles of our world throughout most of human history, and it still is today.” So said an atheist friend to me the other day. I think it’s often a good thing for Christian ministers to have one or two atheist friends. There’s always the chance we might convert them, but meanwhile they do help to keep us on our toes.
Now I could have pointed out that an awful lot of evil has been done by people who weren’t remotely religious, and by regimes some of which had banned all forms of religion. I could think of past atrocities perpetrated by Josef Stalin, I could point to the atheist nation that is North Korea today. But it’s hard to deny that religion has been involved in a lot of bad stuff through the centuries, and that some form of religion, however twisted and perverted, played its part in the terrorist outrage that last week in Manchester came close to all of us.
I can understand why some people, like my friend, want to switch off from all forms of religion. It’s all wrong, they say. Take no orders from anyone, only yourself. Live your own life, don’t expect any god to tell you what to do, don’t trust anyone who claims to speak the word of any god.
I can understand, but I don’t agree. Many of those whose bad actions are fuelled by hate find in religion a label to justify what they do; but if they didn’t have that label they’d find another. The Manchester bomber may have believed that what he was doing was pleasing to God, but he believed that because he had been brainwashed, indoctrinated, re-educated by people whose guilt is, if anything even more than his; he was in a way, simply a weapon they made and used, with evil intent.
Where religion is used to justify terrorism, violence, hatred, such religion is false: simple statement. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, leaders of every faith would I am sure stand together to affirm it. We’ll think in a moment about what makes it false, what proves it to be false. A word first about false sacrifice. The phenomenon of the suicide bomber is one of the saddest and scariest developments in terrorism over the past fifty years. It horrifies me that those who plan terror attacks can find or make willing candidates ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause. False sacrifices in the service of false religion: young people persuaded that the success of their sacrifice can be measured in the number of other young lives they take with them.
Such a perverted form of self-sacrifice is horrific and shocking and sick when compared with the man who as he hangs helpless on a cross is saving the world, is facing down and defeating the power of death itself, when compared with the sacrifice at the heart of our faith. Christ dies that we may be freed from death, Christ dies that we may live.
That word faith is crucial. Faith isn’t the same as religion, but true religion expresses faith, is founded in faith, is enlivened and enabled by faith. Faith isn’t just belief, it’s also trust: not just saying to God, “Yes, you exist” but seeking to align our heart to his, to make him our example, and to praise him not only in our prayers and the songs we sing, but in lives of active and obedient service.
For Christians, that’s expressed in those four words of Bishop Timothy, “Christ upon the throne.” We believe that God is like Jesus. John wrote in chapter 1 verse 18 of his Gospel, “No-one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” Faith rests in relationship; if we seek to make Jesus the centre of our lives, we’ll want to be as like him as we can be in all we do, in our living, our giving, in the care we show.
All the great religions speak of God’s call to his people in terms of love, justice, peace, service. There are many forms of false religion in our world, not all of them violent, but all I would say harmful. Some false religion is idle, lazy, self-interested, uncaring. Some is divisive, sectarian, factional. Some is ambitious and power-hungry in a worldly way. Some is cold, ritualistic, exclusive. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” said Jesus; and “I give you a new commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.” False religion works against the good of all, to promote the good of some; but Christ calls on us to seek the good of all. The message and challenge of Ascension-tide for all of us is this: “Self on the cross, and Christ upon the throne.”
So in his name, and with his blessing, and according to his will: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
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