Ascension Day: a reflection

Even in these times of ordeal, we must celebrate. All around us, people are lonely and afraid. They are suffering and dying. They are grieving, lost and sad. There isn’t a household in England that the virus hasn’t touched in some way. We could easily feel as forlorn as the disciples gazing at the sky Jesus has disappeared into. Like them, we could imagine he had abandoned us. 

Yet as it says in the funeral liturgy of the Orthodox churches, ‘even at the grave we sing ‘alleluia’. Forty days after Easter, it is still the season of resurrection. Christ is risen. In our troubles it’s all the more important to celebrate and allow this marvellous springtime to help us say ‘yes’ to life. For death is swallowed up in victory. 

And today, Ascension Day, we celebrate Jesus as Christ the King, our Sovereign enthroned in glory. It is as he has been proclaiming throughout his ministry, that God reigns. Ascension affirms that the exalted Christ ‘fills all things’, as the Letter to the Ephesians puts it, so that he may be in our midst and all around us, among us and within our deepest selves. Far from having left us orphaned and alone, he is Immanuel, God-with-us in time and eternity. And he invites us to embrace his reign and renew our citizenship of this glorious kingdom. Our hearts are full of joy.

Jesus’ ascension is of a piece with everything he has been to us in his incarnate life. In the New Testament his exaltation is spoken of in the imagery of the coronation of the kings of Israel. The Letter to the Hebrews quotes a chain of texts from the Psalms to show how the hopes and longings projected on to Israel’s human rulers are realised in Jesus who has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’ (Psalm 2); ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever’ (Psalm 45). 

But if we follow that imagery back to its source we find we are drawn to the duties of kingship as well as its privileges.  The king is to be God’s servant, loyal to the covenant. He is to be the agent of peace and justice, the guardian of the vulnerable and poor. In another psalm (82), God sits in a cosmic court with the heavenly beings gathered round him. Are they worthy to be called gods, he asks?  The test is simple. ‘Maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute; rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’  

But these lofty princes fail dismally and are condemned. ‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?’ ‘I said you are gods, nevertheless you shall die like mortals and fall like any prince.’  In high office they have forgotten who they are and why they have been raised up. They have forfeited the right to govern. They have ascended the hill of the Lord only to be toppled by the sin of pride.   

Not so the exalted Christ.  For he bears the imprint of the nails on his body, and takes us with him into God’s very heart. As we should have been singing today in the Ascension Day hymn:

See! the heaven its Lord receives
Yet he loves the world he leaves:
Though returning to his throne,
Still he calls mankind his own.  

The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of him as our great high priest who even in his exaltation is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters and to be with us. ‘We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect was tested as we are.’  That letter could not be more emphatic on this point that Jesus passes the test of what it means have ascended as the highest of the exalted ones, above all principalities and powers. High and lifted up as he is, nevertheless he is present to the lowliest of his family to deal gently with us, and especially with the needy whom he calls in St Matthew ‘the least of these my brothers and sisters’. 

So humility and service, not pomp and pageantry, describe the ascension of Jesus. For he is the same Lord who healed the sick and spoke kindly to the neglected, washed his disciples’ feet, felt the agony of Gethsemane and went out to die.  Any other messiah would not have been born in a stable with nowhere to lay his head, been executed between thieves, risen secretly behind the stone, or ascended on an obscure hilltop with only a handful of witnesses to tell of it.  

But this Messiah has taken the form of a servant, never more to lay it by. His ascension is as ‘kenotic’ as his incarnation and crucifixion: an act of humble self-emptying, for this is how he is not only in time but in eternity. There is one glory for the Lord who took the form of a slave: one abasement, one lowliness, one meekness, even in his exaltation and enthronement.  

Only this Messiah could still bear the marks of the nails as the risen Lord. Only this Messiah could be pictured as a Lamb upon a throne. Only this Messiah could be our great high priest who feels for humanity, intercedes on our behalf, and serves us by washing our feet. Only this Messiah could humbly come to us in bread and wine so that we might welcome him and exalt him in our hearts. 

We want to know in these times that God is not far away from any one of us. It’s the marvellous paradox of Ascension Day that while in one sense Jesus has ‘gone away’ as he said he must, yet he is closer to us than our own souls. He walks alongside us to lighten our burdens and share our joys. We can trust him to comfort us and help us, answer all our longings and make us whole again.

Ascension Day 2020
Ephesians 1.15-23, Acts 1.1-11, Luke 24.44-53

St Oswald: the king who shared his bread

In today’s gospel the crowd does what crowds always do: follow the leader who promises bread.  Jesus has just fed them with the five barley loaves and two fish.  Now they follow him across the lake, still hungry and expectant.  The appetite of crowds is never satiated.  ‘Amen I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves’.  In the unfolding of Jesus’ awareness of his vocation, this is a milestone.  Last week’s gospel reading told us how, after the distribution of the loaves, Jesus realised that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, so ‘he withdrew again to the mountain by himself’.  Later when Jesus has taught how he is the living bread from heaven, John says: ‘many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him’.  Crowds are fickle barometers of favour.  From popular acclaim to the loneliness of ridicule and contempt is a short journey. When the thousands have vanished and only the disciples are left Jesus faces them and himself with an awful truth.  ‘Did not I choose you the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’  The shadow of betrayal is felt.  This king has come to die.

The king who gives bread and dies for his people is celebrated in one of the saints of this place whose feast falls on Wednesday.  The king who feeds the poor is how Bede lovingly depicts St Oswald.  One Easter Day, he and Bishop Aidan sat down to feast.  ‘A silver dish was placed on the table before him, full of rich foods.  They had just raised their hands to ask a blessing on the bread when there came in an officer of the king, whose duty it was to relieve the needy, telling him that a very great multitude of poor people from every district were sitting in the precincts and asking alms of the king.  He at once ordered the dainties which had been set up in front of him to be carried to the poor, the dish to be broken up, and the pieces divided amongst them.  The bishop, who was sitting by… grasped him by the right hand and said: ‘May this hand never decay’.  In a thirteenth century missal there is a charming image of Oswald’s charity.  Under the table where he and Aidan are sitting are two poor men crouching like dogs, pathetically lifting up their hands to catch the crumbs falling from their masters’ table.  Oswald holds the precious vessel he is about to break up, a symbol, perhaps, of how he will give up his own life. On the table are bowls with loaves and fishes.  The meaning is plain: Oswald is like Jesus.  He gives bread to the hungry.  He gives himself to his own. 

I wonder if Oswald is the neglected saint of Durham.  His head had been interred with the relics of St Cuthbert and carried brought to Durham with the Lindisfarne Gospels by Cuthbert’s community, finally to be laid to rest in the shrine behind the high altar.  There in the feretory there is a thirteenth century statue of Cuthbert.  He has lost his own head in some violent act of the Reformation or civil war.  But he has kept Oswald’s head, which he holds in his left hand, which is how Cuthbert is often portrayed in medieval iconography.  Once there would have been a statue of Oswald, like Cuthbert, flanking Blessed Mary in the central, most prominent niches of the Neville Screen above the high altar.  You can see him in stained glass, in Thetis Blacker’s striking banner in the feretory and, maybe, in a wall-painting in the Galilee Chapel.  Of all our saints, Oswald is the one whose relics appear all over Europe as a true catholic martyr.  Given his vital role in the unification and Christianisation of Northumbria, and therefore the Christianisation of England, he deserves our recognition. 

What do we know about him?  He was not the first Christian king of Northumbria: that honour belongs to Edwin.  But it was he who decisively led his nation into embracing the gospel.  He had been exiled on Iona as a young man and had been baptised there.  After Edwin’s death, he inherited a weak and divided kingdom threatened by native British rulers.  Famously, Oswald set up a cross at the place we now call Heavenfield, above the Tyne near Hexham, and ordered his soldiers to pray for victory against the British king Cadwallon.  This established both Oswald’s kingship and his faith.  From Iona he summoned Irish missionaries to preach the gospel in his kingdom, from where Aidan came and founded his monastery on Lindisfarne as the base for the Northumbrian mission.  Oswald often travelled with Aidan on his journeys, translating the message into English, caring for the poor and building up the church.  He was both parent and midwife of a project that changed the face of England. He died in battle in 642 at the hand of the pagan king Penda of Mercia, ‘slain by the heathen fighting for his fatherland’ says Bede, not just for Northumbria but for a kingdom not of this world. 

Oswald is a potent model of the Christian statesman.  Bede portrays him as the ideal king, a new David who unites his kingdom against the threats it faces, establishes a secure capital, promotes religion, dispenses justice, cares for the least of his people as well as the greatest, and finally gives himself up for their sake.  The synergy between the two cities, sacred and the profane, church and state, is symbolised by the geography of the sites associated with the Northumbrian royal court.  Oswald’s capital at Bamburgh and Aidan’s monastery on Holy Island were within sight of each other.  It was a reminder to this world’s ruler of his divine call and accountability: ‘knowing whose minister he is and whose authority he hath’ as the Prayer Book puts it.  For Bede, the politics of God and of mortals serve the same end, that justice, truth and peace should be established in the nation.  He is saying something that we may not always welcome: that God works through institutions as well as individuals.  This is why we have organised religion embedded in the structures of society, part of the glue that holds it together. 

If Aidan is a model of mission, Cuthbert of sanctity and Bede of wisdom, Oswald is an inspiring image of leadership.  No doubt public life today is infinitely more complex than the 7^th century, but that does not mean it is more exacting or difficult.  Yesterday I led a pilgrimage of Cathedral Friends to the wondrous Saxon cross at Bewcastle deep in the Cumbrian fells.  The church is dedicated to Cuthbert, so perhaps Cuthbert’s body and Oswald’s head rested there on their long journey.  The cross dates from Cuthbert’s time, the generation after Oswald.  You can see a replica of it in the Cathedral dormitory.  As I gazed at the intricate knot-work chequers and vine scrolls on the shaft, I thought about complexity and order. It’s as if the artist is saying: this world is puzzling and chaotic.  How do we chart our voyage across it?  And how, in particular, does any leader negotiate the hazards of public life in the face of difficulty and threat?  The answer is: by going to the source of pattern and order, God the Creator and Saviour of the world, and by emulating this ordered life in how we live out our humanity.  And given that this is a churchyard cross, it is also saying to us: the clue if self-giving, service, sacrifice.  

I have been reading a remarkable new book called Good Value: reflections on money, morality and an uncertain world.  Its author, Stephen Green, is Chairman of HSBC.  He is writing about globalisation and the question the economic crisis is putting to us.  We can assume that in his role, to negotiate the economic, political and societal challenges of today is a daunting assignment.  But he is not only an economist but an ordained Anglican priest.  He is not afraid to speak about what is demanded of us in these difficult times, how we need to live according to wise, ethical and humane values that are not simply based on than the impersonal market forces of price and profit.  He is keen on altruism and on doing something for posterity instead of falling for the Faustian bargain of selling our soul for the pursuit of gain.  He calls for a style of leadership ‘whose essence is not psychological dominance, but which seeks to share itself, to set an example, to instil the instinct of leadership in others, and thus to serve the common endeavour…. Seen as domination, leadership impoverishes both the leader and the led; seen as service… it enriches both, and is more enduringly effective.’   He might have been writing of Oswald sharing bread, giving himself for the people.  Bede would certainly have approved. Our leaders should be paying attention.  So should we.    

Durham Cathedral, 2 August 2009 (John 6.24-35)

Jesus and the Psalms

At evensong in Lent we are offering short reflections on the Psalms. In the Hebrew text, both of tonight’s psalms, 61 and 62, are attributed to David. We should not read too much into this. However, it may preserve an ancient memory of how the psalms had a close relationship with kings of Israel as songs that depicted them in many aspects of royal life: coronation, wise leadership, facing the threats of invasion or famine, leading in battle and knowing either defeat or victory. If we put the psalms on to the lips of the Israelite king, we shall not be far wrong.

Psalm 61 clearly has a royal character with its prayer to ‘prolong the life of the king’ so that his throne will be protected by God. This is a lament in which the king is seeking a bigger defence than any army or fortification can provide. He looks for a place of safety in ‘the rock that is higher than I’, ‘a refuge, a strong tower against the enemy’. We don’t know what has induced this sense of helplessness: it may be the onset of war, or the imagery may be a metaphor for some other threat he faces. But there is no mistaking the ‘certainty of hearing’: he already knows that God has heard his plea, and at the end, looks forward to a good outcome for which he will thankfully be able to praise God.

The second psalm is so close to the first in tone and imagery that I see it as another song of the king. The rock of salvation, the trusted fortress is there again in contrast with the unstable tottering wall on which you lean at your peril. ‘On God rests my deliverance and my honour; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.’ So this psalm is like the 23^rd, ‘the Lord is my shepherd’, a restful song of confidence in God. It is the answer to the lament of Psalm 61: God has indeed heard, and has done all that the king had hoped for. For this is his character: not only power but steadfast love belong to God, says the psalm, God’s covenant loyalty to his people especially as they are held in the person of the king.

It’s natural as we read the psalms to place ourselves within them and make their prayers our own. But before we do this, we might reflect on a very ancient way of reading the psalms which harks back to the idea that it is the king’s voice we are hearing. I mean thinking of the psalms as the songs and prayers of Jesus himself, for in the gospels, he quotes the psalms, and they are quoted of him, more than any other book of the Hebrew Bible. This is especially true of the passion accounts we read during Holy Week. So if we try to hear the voice of Jesus in this afternoon’s two psalms, what do we find?

On Palm Sunday, we recall how Jesus comes into his city as the king who is hailed as ‘the son of David’. We know that he is destined to die there, and also to be raised from death. So let us think of this pair of psalms as songs of the dying and rising king. In the first psalm he yearns to know that God has not abandoned him, in the spirit of St Luke who has Jesus pray trustingly, ‘into your hands I commit my spirit’. In the second, he finds deliverance from death, knowing that his victory comes from the one who has been with him all along. And if we read them in this paschal, death-and-resurrection way, they remind us how we walk the via dolorosa with Jesus, are crucified with him, are buried with him in baptism, and are raised with him to newness of life. In Christ there is a new creation. So we tell our own story of how God has indeed proved to be our steadfast rock, the one who is higher than we are, to whom we can safely entrust our lives for time and for eternity.