Sermon: Easter 7: Leave us not comfortless...

Easter 7 (Sun after Ascension Day) Acts 16.16-34, Jn 17.20-end

"O God the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: we beseech you, leave us not comfortless, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen"

“We beseech you, leave us not comfortless”.

Today’s collect is one of my favourites. That phrase, “leave us not comfortless” seems to me to come straight from the heart. It taps into one of our deepest and earliest fears, fear of abandonment, of being left to face the world alone, which goes right back to our childhood.

“Leave us not comfortless” Comfort, in this context, of course, isn’t about a cup of hot chocolate or a cosy blanket. It’s about strength – “fortitude” – the capacity to keep going, to get through the stuff that life throws at us.

 We may not face the challenges that a starving family in Gaza does, under a barrage of bombs, but my experience is that everyone in this world is confronted at some point with things that seem too heavy to bear: bereavement, illness, anxiety about work or money or friends of family members, regrets, guilt, crushing disappointment.  It’s not a sign of weakness when we struggle with these things; it is simply a sign that we are human. For all of us there will be times when we look around for the adult in the room, and find that it is us, and know that we aren’t up to the job. And often we’re right - we aren’t.

This Sunday is the Sunday after Ascension Day, when we hear the story of Jesus returning to his Father. His followers have been on an emotional rollercoaster as he has been arrested and crucified, then raised from death and restored to them, and now, it seems, taken away again. According to Luke’s story, they stand on the mountaintop, gawping at the space where he was, until two angels appear and ask them “why are you looking up into the heavens?”

What else are they supposed to do? The person who made sense of their lives, the person who knew the answers, the person who they felt safe with, the person who had turned them around and transformed them has gone. But the challenges they face haven’t. The New Testament was written by and for people who lived in a tough and precarious world to start with, and now faced persecution as well. The Romans didn’t take kindly to threats to their rule – that’s why they had killed Jesus. Those who followed him often faced the same fate.

The reading we heard from the book of Acts illustrates that. Paul and Silas have been jailed because they have healed an enslaved girl who was being exploited by her owners. But in doing that they’ve wrecked their “get rich quick” scheme. They probably aren’t surprised to find themselves arrested, beaten and flung in jail. But in the middle of the night an earthquake throws the doors open. Great news for Paul and Silas, we might think. But not so much for their jailer. He knows that if his prisoners escape his own life will be on the line. In a way, he was just as much a prisoner as they were. He would rather die by his own hand than wait for the punishment he knows will come, but Paul reassures him that they are still there, and intend to remain so.

The jailer is stunned, but his response might seem like an odd one to us. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” he asks.

The word “saved” has picked up a lot of theological and historical baggage for us. It’s often distorted into simply being a matter of getting a ticket to heaven when we die. But I don’t think that’s what’s in this jailer’s mind. He’s not looking for a theological debate with Paul and Silas, about faith vs works or theories of the atonement. I think his question is far more basic than that. “Saved” is essentially the same word as “safe”. If you are saved, you are safe. And that’s what he’s seen in Paul and Silas, a deep and unshakeable sense of safety, of ultimate security, a conviction that, whatever happens – even if they die - “all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” to quote the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. It’s this which has enabled them not only to sing hymns in their jail cell, but also to stay there when they could have escaped, putting their jailer’s needs before their own. The foundations of the prison may have been shaken by the earthquake, but the foundations of their lives and of their faith haven’t been. “How do you get to feel that safe,” the jailer asks, “and can I have some of it too, please?”

“Believe on the Lord Jesus” says Paul in answer. That can lead us down another blind alley if we’re not careful, because, like “saved”, “believe” has also picked up a lot of baggage over the centuries. What must we believe? How strongly? What about our doubts and questions? But again, these aren’t really the questions Paul is trying to answer. “Belief” in the New Testament isn’t about creeds and doctrines, it is about action.  The Greek word is more accurately translated as “trust”.  It’s not about giving intellectual assent to a list of statements about Jesus – that he is the son of God, born of a virgin and so on. It’s about living our lives in the way Jesus did, walking in the way he did and letting the journey shape us; welcoming, loving, serving. Paul and Silas don’t know what will happen to them, but they do know that they can’t fall out of the hands of God. That’s what the death and resurrection of Jesus has taught them, and as they have followed in his footsteps they have found a fullness of life and richness of meaning that nothing can take away or destroy. As Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “ If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14.8) This is what the jailer sees in them, and what he wants for himself, the assurance that he is not alone, not forsaken, not left comfortless, and never will be, because he is held in the love of a God who will never let him go.

Jesus’ prayer for us in the Gospel reading is that “as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…” He knows that the comfort we need, the strength to get us through , comes ultimately from knowing that we are woven into the love of the Godhead. It comes through the power of the Spirit, through prayer and the words of the Bible, through loving and being loved by one another, through serving those around us, walking in the way of Christ and finding it a way that leads to life. “Leave us not comfortless,” we cry. “Lo, I am with you to the end of the world” answers God –" I am here, I am here. " Amen