Sermon: Let Gd Arise - Even As We Wait

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 22.05.20 

Easter 7 

• Acts 1.6-14; 
• John 17.1-11 

I have an Ascensiontide story (don’t think I have shared it). It didn’t happen in Ascensiontide, but the theme shines through.  

It was late-ish in the evening, in North London. I’d just moved into a place, and was getting to know the area. If you know me, you know that means I was lost. I was walking by a library. A man came out of the library, and called me over. He was an Asian gentleman, in a Muslim prayer hat. The matter was urgent.  

He pulled out of his bag a book. He showed it to me. He asked me, in very broken English, what the title meant. Now, as he seemed to be a Muslim, I did not suppose that Arabic was his first language, but maybe it might be as close as we got to a shared language. I know perhaps as many as thirty words in Arabic, mainly religious. I thought this, on seeing the title of the book. You see, it was Let God Arise. I know the Arabic word for God. Well, you do too. Allah. And I happen to know the Arabic verb to rise. How do I know the Arabic verb to rise? Because I know the Arabic Easter greeting. “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” in Arabic, enjoyed by Arab Christians, is “Al Masih qam! Haqqan qam!” So I brought the two words together. Allah. Qam. I also, as you can imagine, added a lot of British Sign Language.  

Fortunately, he seemed satisfied with this. I wondered what would happen next. I thought perhaps he would try to sell me the book. He seemed to have little need for it, after all. Or he might use the book as a hook to hang a defence of Islam on. Such as this has happened to me in North London. What he actually did... was thank me warmly and walk off. That was the end of our encounter. Two strangers meet, discuss how God arises, and walk off.  

Two strangers meet, discuss how God arises, and walk off. This of course should not have happened in London in the 21st century. Back in the 1960s many, really most commentators were convinced that the world, or at least Europe was becoming simply more secular, atheist, and the engines for the secularisation process were the great cities, where science and technology dominate. It hasn’t worked out like that. London is – I have to speak as I find – London is a religious city, where happenings such as the one I’ve mentioned can happen, any day.   

Two strangers meet, discuss how God arises, and walk off. It is a strange tale, I don’t deny that. But, then, life is strange. It has never been more obvious to all of us that life is strange. And... this. We don’t say this as often as we should: the Bible is strange; the story of Jesus is strange; the story of the emergence of the Church after Easter is strange.  

Let us think about the strangeness of today’s readings. In our first reading, we revisit the Ascension. Jesus is raised from the dead. He is asked whether we are on the cusp of fulfilment of all things. He says he can or will say nothing about that. Rather, you are to receive the Holy Spirit, and be sent out, not to conquer the world, but to bear witness. No fulfilment, but the Holy Spirit, and a never-ending task. And then? Then Jesus disappears. He is taken up. He is taken from us. And we wait. Before the Holy Spirit, before our new task, our sending-out, there is... a wait.  

Isn’t that strange? I mean: why? Why is there a wait? Why must we wait? We are not told. There is no hint of a rationale in the story. I am not sure the Church has ever really supplied a rationale. It is just that the disciples had to wait. It is just that we have to wait.  

Life is strange. The life of faith is strange. Sometimes, God requires us to wait. Sometimes, there is nothing to do but wait.  

Look, believe me, I am boring myself in saying this. I am scarcely saying anything that you do not know. You know it. You feel it in your bones. We all do. This is us. In the strangeness, in the waiting. At the heart of our faith, just at the moment, is the strange waiting, the waiting strangeness.  

Of course, we need not be bored by the meeting of themes, then and now. We can be moved. Because what this means is that we have the Bible’s own assurance that this can be done, that this can be borne, that we can wait, wait in Gd, wait for the gift of Gd which is to come, which comes, because Gd is faithful.  

Let us not be in any doubt that the disciples were as fearful as we are. They have, between them, spent 40 days with the Risen Christ, and now he is taken from them. And they, of course, do not – cannot - know for sure how the story is to continue. Imagine their sense of grief. Let’s name it! As we are grieving, missing our meetings, missing our churches, missing our fellowship, our toast, our cake, our lunch club, our chats with others using the Froud Centre – and all the rest of it... as we are grieving, so they were grieving.  

Certainly, as the Church reflected on the Ascension, it saw it as a cause for celebration, and rightly so. Jesus Christ takes his place at the right hand of Gd. All is glory. The glory that Jesus in our Gospel speaks of. But, at the human level, all is loss. All is the blankness, the bleakness of waiting. And that can be borne.  

Brothers and sisters, is that enough? Have I said enough? Should I be saying more of hope, joy, positivity, and the great scheme of things? Perhaps I should. Certainly, if we look for hope, joy, positivity, and the great scheme of things in our texts, we will find them. The texts are rich enough, we know that.  

But I want more to bring us back to where we are, in our reading and in our lives. The strangeness of waiting. The waiting strangeness. The knowledge – the confidence – that it can be borne. We can see this through.  

We can pray, for ourselves.  

We can pray for one another.  

We can pray for our parish and borough and city.  

can pray for the people we have determined to pray for in these days.  

And I add just this: in these and other quiet, unremarkable ways, 

let God arise! 

Amen.