Seventh Sunday of Easter : Hollowell 13[th] May 2018 
Come Holy Spirit, thy kingdom come.
This seventh Sunday of Easter is sandwiched into the Church's calendar between two much better known festivals, Ascension Day and Pentecost.   So in thinking about this 7[th] Sunday of Easter there is a flavour of both those days in it. 
I don't really know why Ascension Day was designated a whole holiday when, quite a while ago, I was at school on the Welsh borders.  But it was very welcome  day away from the irregular verbs exams etc.;  and for me and a few friends there was an air of clandestine adventure about it.  The school master's wife had given us a packed lunch in a brown paper bag ( no polythene in those days) and with that in a rucksack we set off on bicycles for Ludlow, some 20 miles away.  Once there the ritual was that we would go to the castle, mostly a ruin, and hurled our brown paper bags off the battlements into the moat below - symbolic gesture of release from constraint.  Then we headed for The Feathers a picture postcard Tudor pub in the centre of the town that claimed to be one of the oldest hostelries in England.  There we imbibed for a pint (at 1/6d ) and enjoyed the speciality of the house,  jugged hare.  
This was almost a rite of passage at the age of 17 & 18,  a fairly daring release from the constraints of school discipline, which would have got us into serious trouble had it come to the ears of the housemaster  and, almost as bad,  incurred the wrath of his hard working, lunch making ,wife.  But I'm glad we did it.  For there are times in life when we need to break out  -  to do something different.
But it was Ascension Day. Jesus had gone to Heaven and we were soon to leave school and head for the challenges wider world.  We were about to get on with the business of life and make practical use of what we had learned.    There was a sense of euphoria and apprehension in our lives.  
And so it was,  I imagine,  that the same kind of feelings where with the  eleven, soon to be joined by Matthias. They had been on a roller coaster of emotions over the preceding  weeks, from the crucifixion and  Resurrection and had seen Jesus on several occasions since then.  The Jesus they met was however rather different from the Jesus they knew during his ministry.  True he had performed miracles before, fed 5000 and raised Lazarus etc.  But then he was still a carpenter's son from Nazareth who preached , courted controversy and moved about as anyone else.  Now, however, he had the air of divinity about him, back from the dead, appearing and disappearing at will, exhorting them to feed my lambs.  There was, as it were, a new dimension about him , or so I imagine the disciples felt.  He was as it were semi-detached  " These are my words while I was still with you"  he tells the disciples at the end of Luke's Gospel and then goes on to preach, to bless them and disappear for ever. 
Jesus, through his ministry and Ascension had had shown the disciples the way to God, a way he made clear that all of us can follow.  He had, in the words of the Te Deum, opened the Kingdsom of Heaven to all believers .   
The next stage, supported as Jesus promised by the Holy Ghost, a concept that we will think about next Sunday, was the start of the Church's mission. The disciples knew what they had to do and  were now holding the baby.  And it must have been a particularly powerful message for Peter whose renunciation of Jesus in the high priest's house must have still been fresh in his mind.  I notice that that text from Mark's Gospel , describing the cock crowing as Peter denied Jesus, is the one set for today in our Nine Days of Prayer booklet. 
The task that Jesus set his disciples before he left them is still the one that faces Christians today, to spread the Gospel, the good news of the Christian message, as widely as possible through our actions.  All of us in one way or another can be neighbourly Samaritans on life's road. 
But it is not that easy.  Yesterday in London at Pimlico tube station I came across a woman sprawled on the floor in a drunken or drug filled stupor. And what did I do? Encumbered by luggage and wanting to get back to my best beloved in Creaton, I passed by on the other side and caught the train.  But on my way home I regretted that neglect.  I had put myself on a par with priest and the Levite who did not stop either of course.  But they were on a lonely road the robbers might have still been lurking around, ready to attack them too.  I don't think I would have been mugged at Pimlico Station. But then if I had stopped what might have happened to me as I talked to the woman  -  a torrent of abuse, even vomit,  from her,  the raised eyebrows of passers by ?   But then, as I did not stop, what happened to her I shall never know.  
When some time in the 1980s John Humphreys interviewed Margaret Thatcher he asked her " What is the essence of Christ ? "  expecting some generalised response about love and neighbours,
" Choice" was her reply.  One chooses to follow Christ or not , and you need the means to do so as well.    No one, she once famously commented, would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions : he had money as well.  
At Ascension Jesus went up to Heaven and at Pentecost the tongues of fire an d the Holy Ghost  came down to earth.  So our task it seems to me is to try to bring heaven and earth together through the way we lead our lives.  Next time I'll hope ( hope ) to stop and help. Watch this space ! 

