Ilkley Baptist

Nearly a month without a new entry. Dreadful! It's just been very busy.

I've never understood the patterns of ministry. Some periods are very busy, some not, and it's hard to predict how things will be. A week that looks full in the diary can work out fine, but one with lots of clear space can end up being a scramble.

And my moods and interests wax and wane. Sometimes I'll feel like reading theology, at other times I want to be creative and start new things going.

I tell myself that there is more than one sort of weather. Just as the climate has cold and hot spells, storms and wind, so I do, and so does the life of a church and a family. Best to go with it and wear appropriate clothes rather than complain.

Looking at the signs I think a bit more blogging is on the horizon. Meetings tail off at this time of year, things more more slowly. The partition on our top floor is partly in place - doing its job give or take a door or two.

Tomorrow's morning sermon will be about Jesus stilling the storm in Mark chapter 4! Very apt.

I almost always hand write my sermons, but for last night's Ascension Day sermon I used my computer. So I can post it here. Not that I thought it was very good. I seem to think better with a pen in my hand.


Ascension Day Sermon, preached at All Saints Church, Ilkley

The Ascension leaves me cold. I tried to fix it so that someone else would preach tonight, but leading worship in another church is complicated (much easier for the hosts to lead and the visitor to preach), so it's worked out this way round. Sorry about that! It's supposed to be a celebration, Ascension Day. Jesus is received into glory, raised to the right hand of God the Father, and we're all supposed to be very pleased about that. It's supposed to be a celebration, but it doesn't do it for me.

It leaves me cold for two reasons. The first is that I just don't believe it. I don't think it happened as we read it. I'm a sceptic about all miracles, but this one is surely too ridiculous for anyone. Going to heaven by flying upwards from the earth? Heaven's above! Heaven isn't above, is it? It might be above in the way that lofty thoughts are above low cunning, but it isn't above in terms of altitude. Yet Acts describes Jesus moving upwards, well, upwards if you are in the Middle East, off to one side if you're thinking about it from a Yorkshire perspective, and disappearing into a cloud. And the disciples are told off by an angel for staring at the sky. 'Men of Galilee! What do you think you're doing, then?' It all feels a bit foolish. Can Luke have meant it like that?

Whatever. I'm bemused. The second reason it leaves me cold is that it doesn't strike me as something to celebrate at all. It is a sad and forlorn occasion. Jesus has been crucified, to the horror of the disciples and their deep grief. Then the Resurrection. Joy! He meets them again, though not quite in the old ways. Sometimes they don't recognise him, sometimes they don't believe each other, sometimes they don't believe themselves, and it doesn't happen that often. He is alive, but they don't get him back as it was before. And it doesn't last that long. Forty days of sporadic appearances, then he lifts off into a cloud and that's your lot. This is actually very sad.

In recent years my wife and I have taken our two older sons to university and left them there, and remembered how it was for us to leave home. Exciting, of course, but also sad. You're grown up now, but you don't always feel like it. Your heart can ache. You miss your family, your room, your brother or sister, the cat, the cooking, the mysterious put-it-in-the laundry-basket-find-it-in-the-drawer thing. Then, lo and behold, your old folks come and visit. It's weird seeing them standing there in your student room amongst all the dirty clothes and unwashed plates, but nice. Really nice. They might take you out for a meal, might buy you something as a treat. It's great, but then they go away again, and you're left staring out of the window and thinking you ought to work or join something, but feeling too small and lonely to bother. Then a couple of weeks later they call in again.

If. halfway through your first term, your parents announced that they were going to go and live in Fiji and you wouldn't be able to see them again, well, not for ages, certainly not until after your degree was over – that would be dreadful, not a cause for celebration.

So Jesus dies, comes back, hooray, there he is in the room, here we are enjoying a meal with him, wonderful, but it's so short lived. After few appearances he announces that now he's off in a long term way. Going to live in heaven. Be back sometime, but this is it for now. Have a great life!

What's to celebrate on Ascension Day?

The Ascension feels like an ending more than a beginning. Here is Acts, the story of the infant Church, here is chapter one, and it's good bye Jesus. An ending, a bereavement. In fact a shorter version of the Ascension is used by Luke to conclude his gospel. “He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them he parted from them, amd was carried up into heaven.” A mini Ascension, or a shortened story of the Ascension. And after it, the final two verses, “And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.” Everybody's happy. How odd.

There's something else a bit odd the second time round when Luke gives us the longer version in Acts chapter 1. The disciples ask him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” I don't think this is a casual enquiry, of the 'do you have any plans for the weekend?' type. I think this is the big question his ministry has prepared them for. All the proclamation of the kingdom, all the signs of God being alive and working in the world, the healings, the making much of the lowly, the living out of the Good News. So is it all going to happen now? His death has been shown not as defeat but victory, so is his whole ministry going to be fulfilled?

They get a frustrating answer. “It is not for you to know.” I just don't see this making them happy. All they've been through, all the hopes and the learning to love, to care, to believe, to long, to yearn, and they ask if this is finally the time, and they're fobbed off. He's not saying. “But you will get the spirit,” he tells them, “and you will get a job, to be my witnesses.”

What makes all this good news? How does it make the disciples joyful? Because they were, I think. Certainly they were infectiously enthusiastic, they were full of commitment and confidence. They and their faith are the reason we are here tonight. How come?

I'm not sure. I think it might be to do with this ending and beginning thing. Here at the start of the Church is an ending, the Ascension. A birth and bereavement together. But when the disciples ask Jesus if it's all going to come to an end now, a good end, in the restoration of Israel and the fulfilment of all God's promises, he says no, and instead gives them a new work to do, a task to begin. So there is a beginning that turns out to be an end, and an ending that is expected but turns out to be just a start.

This is where we live. The end and the beginning are both here, yet neither is in our hands, but both in God's. We're not given an end to work towards – a deadline for the kingdom – and it's certainly not here yet.

It stops us being too task focused. The Church's job is not to build the kingdom, nor even to be the kingdom. It is God's kingdom and God's mission. But the Church is to be a place in which and with which God will be present and active. We are called to be faithful, not productive. No managers hanging over us with target sheets. We are called to be more than do, and as we become not so much effective as open, God who is the creator will use us.

There is a beginning here – the great journey of the faith through the ages, the story of the Church and our story. And something is finished: God has acted decisively in Jesus. The kingdom is here, though not fully expressed. And we are to join in with this, leaving the final outcome in God's hands.

So the work becomes a gift. God's service, as they say, is perfect freedom. And perhaps this is the source of joy.

Not that the world doesn't bleed, still. Israel, far from being restored, is engaged in a sort of slow genocide, and the hungry hunger while the rich wage war. But something has changed, as well as a beginning, there has been an end, and all is now in God's hands.

Well, perhaps. Perhaps if I could believe you can get to heaven by copying a helium balloon I could believe that “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”



The disciples stand foolishly watching a cloud, until their thoughts come back to earth. And what do they do then? They look at each other, of course. And they smile. This much I do believe: if Jesus is ascended and gone from view, then we are given each other. And as he knew each of us, as God's children, infinitely valuable, so we now see each other. In love and freedom we can explore our diversity, learn from the stories of sister and brother, find ourselves in relationships of respect and regard, and find encouragement in each other; companions on the Way. We are given new identities as we learn to value and trust each other and as we take up our new role in God's mission – as the Church is born.

Men of Galilee, and women of Yorkshire, why do you stare at heaven? Look around, and see the work God is doing and your part within it, and see each other. Here is a task and people to do it with. And that is good.

A while ago I read a line that made me think: "despite the way it may seem, I honestly believe that everyone is doing the best they can in the cricumstances." Something similar has been put more grandly, but equally strikingly, by Theodore Zeldin (who I think is best described as 'an intellectual'): that there is a world shortage of appreciation.

I was listening to the Today programme just now, as you do. The whole programme and the political world it reports is about blame. A government minister has just got the sack; the Sun is very pleased about this, describing him as a bungler. There was an edgy interview about City Academies and standards which have failed to rise as promised. I could go on, but I've turned it off to write this, and we all know it will just be more of the same. Whose fault that prisoners absconded, whose lack of leadership that a system is failing, whose head to roll because things aren't as we want them? Sniping, criticism, accusation, blame.

I'm so glad I'm not a politician. I'm glad I don't work in the culture of demand, pressure and 'you're fired' that dominates many work places (though not, I suspect, Alan Sugar's). It's not what human being need.

There are alternatives. There are management styles that are based on praise. There are leaders who look for opportunities to say 'I'm proud of you.' I think of Jesus, going up to someone who has had a thousand kicks from the world he lives in - you're a leper, you can't work, you can't come into the Temple, you can't live with your family, you're dirty and sinful and dangerous, you're not good enough for the rest of us - and reaching out a hand to touch and identify and forgive and make clean.

Society is turning into a big thug, a hostile environment. Well, society is just us. We can change it if we want to, if we think a little appreciation would be nice.

I thank you.

Christian Aid week runs from 14th to 21st May this year. Many years it falls in the first week of good weather, and calling on local houses is a real pleasure. This year it looks like being a week with a return to grey cool conditions. Not so appetising.

Getting enough volunteers is going to be difficult this year. A few older regulars have decided to call it a day, so we need to find some new people. Unfortunately collecting doesn't fit easily into busy family life. Many people don't have free time during the day until after their evening meal, which is a bit late for collecting.

I feel rather protective of people when it comes to finding volunteers. I don't want church to be a place of nagging and 'you ought to do this.' There are enough things to feel guilty about without the church adding to them. I also think that people genuinely have less time than a generation ago. So, though I'd love Christian Aid to find its collectors (as much for the publicity the week gives to the issues of aid as for the money that comes in), I don't feel inclined to ask too insistently.

Starting next week, on 3rd May, I will have a regular time of prayer in the church on Wednesdsay mornings at 9.30am. You are invited to join me, either by coming to the church and sharing in prayer, or by praying wherever you happen to be at that time.

I've floated this idea here and in other places and it has been positively received. I follow a simple pattern of prayer: a bible reading, a poem, a written prayer, then I pray for a list of poeple I regularly update. If you would like to add to that list, please let me know. I will keep all names completely confidential.

If you are praying by yourself, then find a way you are comfortable with. I have found things like regularity and using objects helpful, so you might go to a certain place, you might kneel or stand at certain times, you might like to read something aloud, you might light a candle or an incense stick, look at a view, or get out some item that has meaning for you. Use a certain amount of silence. Take time to not actually do much but just to be there, you and God.

Some people keep a diary of their prayer. Do you think it would be helpful to know who is praying? On the other hand we are told to pray in secret. Should we have a book, perhaps, in which requests for prayer could be written and which I and anyone who joins me could use on Wednesday mornings? It could be in church on Sundays, too.

Post your comments here!