I was preaching last Sunday at Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in Arddleen, not far from where I live in Welshpool, and I mentioned in my address there that I really do find it so exciting when I read the Acts of the Apostles, when I reach that part of the book - chapter 16 - where the pronoun changes. Up till that point, Luke has been writing about things he’s heard about, been told about, investigated, so he writes about “they” and “he” - they did this, he said that. But then, in chapter 16 verse 10, he starts to write that we did this, we saw that, we travelled there. And you realise that he was there, alongside Paul and Silas and whoever else was with them, and that’s really exciting. People do sometimes say to me that the Bible isn’t trustworthy, that it’s a collection of myths and legends. No, that’s not true: these are things that happened, these are promises God is keeping - and nowhere is that more plain and obvious than when we find Luke talking first hand about travelling with Paul, and doing mission with him.
So I’ve read today from the words set for this Sunday in the Common Lectionary of readings used in all kinds of churches around the world, and I’ll be referring to the words in John’s Gospel and that short account from Luke about the Ascension. But I want to spend a bit of time on the first reading I used, where Luke tells us, chapter 16 of Acts, about what we were doing (Paul, Silas and Luke himself) in the city of Philippi, in Macedonia. They seem to have rather a busy and exciting time there, which for Paul and Silas at least included being thrown into jail.
When I was in full-time ministry I often used this reading in school assembly, because it’s such a great story. There’s Paul and Silas, unlawfully sent to prison, and chained to the wall in some dank cell. Still, they’re in good enough spirits to pass the night singing hymns. Then there’s an earthquake, which breaks the chains and bursts open the doors. You can have great fun with all of that in school assembly, and even the hardened year sixes are really paying attention.
Now I think that if it had been me in that cell, rather than Paul, I’d have seen all this as a divine sign that I should get out of that place as quickly as I could, but Paul and Silas don’t do that. They stay. Paul knew what would happen to the prison guard, and maybe to his family as well, if his prisoners escaped. He’d likely be put to death.
And in fact there’s the guard, aghast at what had happened, about to thrust his sword into his own chest, when Paul and Silas shout out, “Don’t do that - it’s all right, your prisoners are still here!”
The guard is amazed, and I would think highly relieved. What has led his prisoners to behave in such a strange and crazy way? The upshot of it all is that he and all his family accept the faith Paul has brought, and are baptized.
Ascension Day last Thursday encourages us to hail Christ as our King; and also, like those first disciples, to wait joyfully and prayerfully for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Many people use the ten days from Ascension to Pentecost to pray for the mission of the Church, and to do that in quite a specific way, focusing on people we know and wish to bring to God.
Paul, for all his credentials as a scholar and a Pharisee, knew himself to be worthless without Christ. The heart of the faith he proclaimed and lived was that he now belonged to Christ. Nothing else mattered. Think of that amazing last verse of “When I survey the wondrous cross”, a hymn which draws heavily on Paul’s own words in his Letter to the Galatians: “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.” That’s why he stayed in that cell. Everything was an opportunity to serve, to give, to share with others what he himself has received. God’s saving grace, God’s redeeming love, in Christ Jesus.
To be a Christian is to be a citizen of two realms, and to owe allegiance to two monarchs. As it happens, I think that our late Queen and our present King both provide examples of living by trust in God, and recognising that to be a monarch involves duty and service and care, to the nation and its people, and in the wider world.
But the fact is that whoever makes the laws which guide our civil society, we as Christians serve a higher authority. We do owe an allegiance to whatever Caesar rules our nation and our daily lives - but we owe a greater allegiance to God. And while we may often be able to serve God and the state at the same time, that isn’t always the case - and when what the state decides and does denies God’s graciousness and love, when it’s partial and exclusive, when it’s prejudiced and unloving, then our choice has to be for Jesus and for God.
So praise God that Paul’s thought for others above himself on that particular night in prison won for Jesus a whole family of new disciples. And remember how - in Luke’s account of the Ascension - when Jesus bids his disciples farewell and lifts his hands in blessing, he also instructs them that they must wait prayerfully for the gift of the Holy Spirit. For ten days between Ascension and Pentecost we’re encouraged to pray for mission, and to pray for people we know, that they might come to know Christ and discover the same faith in him that sustains us. And to pray for things like that, I think, has to begin with offering ourselves afresh to our Lord; the same offering of ourselves that we see in Paul. With Jesus acclaimed as Lord of our lives, and King of our hearts.
We are citizens of two kingdoms, for Jesus assures us that here on earth we are already, by his grace, made citizens of heaven. But the Church in mission must honour Christ our risen and ascended King, before all earthly powers and monarchs.
And - final thought - We must do this not only in faithful response to the call of our Lord, but in fellowship support for each other. The reading I used from John’s Gospel forms part of the prayerful discourse that John locates in the Garden of Gethsemane, once Jesus has gone out with his disciples from the room where they’ve shared supper, to the place where he will be captures and taken, and where the events of the Passion begin. We see how Jesus prays not only for those there in the garden with him, but also for all those who will come to believe because of what they will do in his name - their preaching and healing and serving.
“Father, may they be one as we are one,” prays Jesus - because then the world will believe. Our unity in Christ is an essential for mission. Not just our unity, our unity in Christ. When we are truly striving to be Christ-like, when our lives are rebuilt around his compassionate love and enriched by the gift of his Spirit - which is a purposeful gift, it’s not a feelgood gift for ourselves, it’s a gift to be used, and given, and shared. And when we have and use that gift we are drawn together despite our differences in style or organisation or modes of praying or what tunes we choose to sing. We are drawn together in him. In what we offer to him, and in what he gives to us, and draws from us.
And this is a matter of grace: something undeserved, unmerited, but given anyway, by the God who loves us just as we are, broken and confused and sinful, but loves us too much to leave us that way. Grace expressed in the gift of Christ. We’ll use those words at the close of our service, as I’m sure you do every Sunday. But just, as you say them, recognise just how transforming they are: grace and love and fellowship, the basis for all our mission, and the Trinitarian action of God among us, making us his people for the world.
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