Welcome to the Sermons from Christ Church Needham Blog

We hope you enjoy this archive of sermons preached at Christ Church in Needham, Massachusetts.

For more information, please visit our website at www.ccneedham.org.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Easter VII- Lynn Campbell

Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11

As many of you know, my parents live in Delaware. Thankfully I’m able to get home every few months to spend some time with them. Most recently I spent Memorial Day weekend with them enjoying the beautiful beaches of Delaware. No matter what we do while I’m home, the visit always ends the same way. I hug each of my parents tight, not wanting to let go. I know I’ll talk with them while I’m here in Massachusetts, I know we will e-mail and send cards. But that isn’t the same. There is something about being physically present to one another. We want to grab hold of the one’s we love. I imagine those of you with seniors graduating from high school and preparing to leave for college can relate this feeling of wanting to hold on.

Today marks the last Sunday of the Easter season. This, the 7th Sunday of Easter, is sandwiched between the Ascension which the church celebrated this past Thursday and Pentecost, which is next Sunday. Here we are, caught up in this time between Jesus ascending to the Father in heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Ascension, and this short time leading to Pentecost, is a time in our church calendar that is too often brushed aside with little notice.

For 40 days following the Resurrection, Jesus is physically present to his disciples. He reinforces his teaching about the coming of the Kingdom of God. He continues to show them the way forward. He tries to prepare them for a time in which he would no longer be present to them in the same way. I’m sure his physical presence was a comfort to the disciples, especially after the fear and pain of the cross. I imagine that the disciples wanted to grab hold of Jesus- keep him with them even if for just a little while longer. He was their friend, their brother. And as we know, the physical presence of those we love is important.

In this morning’s lesson from Acts, we hear the story of the ascension, we hear of Jesus who is lifted up to heaven as the apostles watch. I wonder if they felt a sense of abandonment or sadness as they watch their friend disappear behind a cloud. But before ascending, Jesus shares some final words of promise and commissioning. Listen to these words. They are spoken to us, who gather together some 2000 years later, just as truly as they are spoken to the first apostles. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Although Jesus will not be present with them in the same way, he does not leave them abandoned. He promises them the Holy Spirit and he commissions them to a life of witness.

After Jesus ascends into heaven, Luke, the author of Acts, tells us that the disciples return to the upper room where they join together with some women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. They come together and they pray. In the Gospel of Luke we also learn that the disciples praise God in the Temple. They come together, they pray, they praise God, they prepare their hearts for the coming of the promised Spirit.

So, like the disciples, we have been given the gift of time to ready our hearts for the coming of the Spirit. We have a week of anticipation, expectation, and preparation. We anticipate the coming of the Holy Spirit, we expect this gift, and so we prepare our hearts to receive it. I have heard this time of the church year compared to Advent. Advent is also a time of anticipation, expectation and preparation. We do so to ready our whole self for the gift of Jesus, born to us as Immanuel, God with us. Now, we are readying ourselves for the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

With Pentecost on the horizon, we join with the disciples in preparation for the coming of the Spirit. We take on the posture of anticipation. We prepare for the coming of the Holy Spirit with the expectation that God WILL do something and we WILL be more deeply empowered to do the work God has given us to do.

But, do we really expect the Spirit to come anew and renew our lives? Do we want this? The Holy Spirit has the power to form and transform us. If we are open to the Spirit, she will call us and form us into new ways of being church, new ways of being in communion with one another and with the wider world. The Spirit will call us into the world to be witness to Jesus Christ. It is worth asking ourselves, are really open to this transformation? Do we want to invite the Spirit into our lives, even if we know we will be changed? If our answer is yes, then we must be ready to be drawn deeper into relationship with God and to participate in God’s mission of building a world of justice and peace. These are question we ask ourselves as individuals but they are also questions for us as a Christian community. I invite you to sit with these questions this week. It is one way of preparing for next week’s important celebration of Pentecost.

In today’s Gospel reading we overhear Jesus’ intimate prayer to his Father in heaven. In this final prayer before the betrayal that will lead to his crucifixion, Jesus prays that we may all be one as he and his Father are one. Jesus prays that our communion with one another would mirror the communion which Jesus and the Father share. During this time between the Ascension and Pentecost we pause to hear Jesus’ prayer for us. We pause to reflect on Jesus’ desire for us, that we become one with each another in order to create a world in which God’s reconciling love and truth is known by all. This is only possible with the power of the Spirit.

I don’t like change. I tend to like things to stay the way they are. I like to be comfortable. But the Holy Spirit is not about keeping things the same or making us more comfortable. Jesus does not send us the Holy Spirit so we can continue to live as we always have. It takes prayer and it takes community to be willing to open our hearts to the catalytic power of the Spirit. It might make us a little nervous, but it is also amazingly exciting. The Holy Spirit makes possible our work in the vineyard. The Spirit makes it possible to be co-creators in bringing about God’s dream for us and for the world.

If nowhere else, we experience this each week as we gather to celebrate Holy Eucharist. During the Eucharist Prayer as the priest prays over the bread and wine, she or he calls on the Holy Spirit to come upon the bread and the wine so that they may become for us the body and the blood of Jesus. Jesus becomes present to us in a real and profound way. By the power of the Holy Spirit the bread and wine are forever changed so that WE might be forever changed. The work of the Spirit allows us to enter more fully into communion with God and with one another- that we may become one as Jesus and the Father are one. THIS is what the Spirit is capable of doing in our lives and in the world. Perhaps this week would be a good time to imagine, with God, what the Spirit wants to do through you for the life of this particular community and in the world. I believe this will help us come ready to be renewed by the Spirit next week.

As we prepare to celebrate the Eucharist together this morning and as we enter into this week of preparation before Pentecost, may we find time to explore what we expect and anticipate will come with the renewal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. May we open our hearts and our imaginations so that we can be ready to receive anew the power of the Spirit in our lives.

Amen.