Dear Friends
Christ is risen!
“He’s gone, he’s disappeared, and now we get on with our lives.” We’re often tempted to think in such a way: “Now he’s alive in heaven, away from us, and we continue his memory here on earth.” But this is wrong.
Today the powers above, beholding our nature in the heavens, were perplexed, being surprised at the manner of its strange Ascension, and said to one another, Who is this that cometh? And when they saw that it was their own Master, they were commanded to lift the heavenly gates. Wherefore, with them we ceaselessly praise thee, O thou who didst come thence in the flesh, as thou art the Judge of all, and Almighty God.
Matins, Feast of the Ascension
This feast we come to celebrate is not Christ’s “disappearing act,” it is the fulfilment of all that he has come to do. Christ perfected the Creation of mankind through his death and Resurrection and now takes our human nature to be enthroned at the Right Hand of God. The Angels wonder at the sight of the Man entering Heaven and we glorify what he has done for us.
Meanwhile we are at a loss, it has been a joy to be with the risen Christ, we have been comforted by the risen Christ, we have been enlivened by the risen Christ. And we, like the disciples, feel some sense of abandonment: as Mary Magdalen we want to hold on to the Lord yet he replies to us, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father.” (John 20:17) For the Lord promises to send to us the Comforter who will give us power to go out from our Upper Room and into all the world, telling all of the Gospel of the Resurrection.
Let us, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, honour and worship Christ who has taken our nature above the Angels to the Throne of God and who promises to send to us another, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
And here, in these last hours of our particular remembrance of the presence of the risen Christ here among us—not that he has left us, since “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them,” (Matthew 18:20) but that we are his Body and his physical presence—let us call out, one to another, the hope, the certainty, we have in the Resurrection.
Christ is risen from the dead
Trampling down death by death
And upon those in the tombs
Bestowing Life!
Come and see!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
Christ is risen!
We have come, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, to the last Sunday of Great and Holy Pascha, to the end of the period where we particularly remember the presence of the risen Christ here among his disciples. And we expect to hear in the Church a spiritual message, a heavenly message, a message of the mystical and esoteric nature of our Faith. We want a message of the Kingdom of Heaven, or of eternal Life, or of the promises of inheritance through Abraham—anything and everything to get us through the mundanity of life as we prepare to leave behind us the Paschal season for another year.
“We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day;” says the Lord,
“night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the World.”
And I am encouraged. Yes, this is the message I want to hear—one of hope, one of triumph, one of the Victory of Light over darkness. But then, at this mystical moment, at this declaration of the sovereignty of God, Christ acts against my preferences and desires: he shows me what it is to do the works of the Father. I want the glory of God to be demonstrated, Christ spits into the dry earth, makes mud from it and smears it into a man’s eye-sockets. This was as revolting then as it is now. “No, God: this is not true Faith,” I declare in my disgust. “This is earthly and physical, I want something ethereal, abstract and rarefied.”
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Read this Sermon, Get our hands dirty.
Archive of Past Sermons.
Services this week
Friday 14th June
Discussion on the Gospel of Matthew, 8 pm.
Online only
Saturday 15th June
Great Vespers, 6.30 pm.
At 3rd URC Scout Hall, Chandlers Ford
Sunday 16th June
Matins and Divine Liturgy, 9 am.
At 3rd URC Scout Hall, Chandlers Ford
Online session is via Google Meet: please get in contact for the details.
Please join us: all are welcome, come and see.
Attending Church
We meet at 3rd URC Scout HQ, Kings Rd, Chandlers Ford SO53 2EY. The Scout hall is behind and to the left of the URC Church. Come and See.
Can I help you?
I am here for you, you need only ask. Is there a way I can support your life of faith? Get in touch.
Can you help the parish?
Yes, absolutely. Offer yourselves to the Lord: pray! Make available to him all your talents and ask him how he would like you to use them — listen for his reply.
Your prayers!
With love in the risen Christ
Fr Alexander
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