We are pausing to acknowledge and grow in the presence of God in our lives. We are meeting as part of a church community, albeit a scattered one. We are stilling ourselves, our fears, our anxieties, and all the distracting things around us, to seek and delight in God’s life with us. Let us worship God!

We are called into worship today with words from Psalm 68

Let God rise up, let his enemies be scattered; let those who hate him flee before him.

As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, let the wicked perish before God. But let the righteous be joyful; let them exult before God; let them be jubilant with joy. Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds— his name is the LORD— be exultant before him.

Prayer on the Way (This prayer is ‘borrowed’ from the website [leadingworship] of a Mennonite pastor from Canada, Rev Carol Penner.)

I seek you, God, in the spaces of my life.

The spaces between what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone.

The spaces between my convictions and my actions,

the spaces between all that I hoped to do, and what I’ve actually done.

I come with humility, knowing that I can’t always see the way I’ve disappointed you,

nor can I always see the long-term effects of the good I’ve done.

This is a prayer for the road ahead, which is an empty space stretching before me.

Fill me with a burning compassion for my brothers and sisters, a love that will not let me go.

Give me courage to give boldly, love simply, hope deeply, risk greatly.

My light is small, my time is short, but let it shine for you, always, ever, all for you. Amen.

Bible Readings: Acts 1:6-14 & John 17:1-11

Reflection: by Martin Stewart

At Eastertime I was thinking about the view from the cross. Not the landscape – the Lord was not sight-seeing! The people-scape. Before him, the collective of people at the foot of the cross – some with their backs to him, others looking for one last miracle, others with broken faces as they wept their tears. Plus, another whole dimension of seeing: could he also see past and future from that vantage point? I like to think that he saw me, and you, from that vantage point. That the crisis of the cross would one day have an impact, not only on my life, or your life – but that all human suffering would be caught up in his suffering. And, we would know that we are met by a God who suffers for us, holds us, serves us, loves us, and blesses us. That was the Friday of Easter, then came Resurrection Day and hello, this and much much more just might be so!

This Thursday just past was Ascension Day. The 40th day of Easter. Let me tell you from the outset that I struggle, hugely, with the idea of Jesus rising into the clouds. I can’t imagine how that even begins to work out, as I don’t think of heaven as up, for when I point up, a person on the other side of the globe, who is pointing up, has a finger waving in the opposite direction! As I said in the Wednesday notes, I confess that I have not had a great interest in saying much about the ascension over the years. In thinking about why I haven’t said much is because I have a struggle finding my way past the depictions of ascension as they were represented in all the circles, I grew up in. To put it bluntly, there were far too many unhelpful pictures of a Scandinavian Jesus drifting up into the clouds for my liking! However, now that I am a grown up, I’m learning to look at this differently, rather than literally. And, obviously, I wasn’t there, thus I don’t know what the disciples saw other than what they have told of what they saw – and how are you really meant to find the language for something that is impossible to conceive? But I do accept that the Risen Jesus had to have done something to disappear from the physical experience people had had of him…he had to drift away from them. I also accept what the theologians of the church have come to a general consensus on – that Jesus came from, and returned, to the Godhead somehow, and, that his presence continues with us in the Spirit, somehow.

In that ‘in the Godhead sense’, Jesus is with us still, but not appearing through locked doors in upper rooms in Jerusalem, or on the road to Emmaus, or on the banks of the lake at breakfast time… he had to disappear. However, the ins and outs of how ascension actually works… well, I really don’t know. We can’t know. And so we don’t talk about it much. Ditto with a lot of things, by the way. We don’t know how a lot of things work. But the hand of Jesus still at work in the life of people tells us that there is more going on than we can explain. And don’t we have faith enough, to believe enough, that the life of God is among us enough, and that that seems to be enough, if you know what I mean? And I am interested in the view. The view as he ascends. I wonder, what, as Son of God, he gets to see behind. Can he see all the way back to the Word that was in the beginning, hovering over the deep and crying out and bringing the universe into being? In his ascending, I imagine him being able to see all that way back. Isn’t that quite possible when you are no longer constrained by the limitations of flesh and blood and time and space? I picture him ascending and seeing 40 days back to a tomb, and then before that to an agonising last cry on the cross, and then across Jerusalem and Judah and Galilee and Egypt and Babylon, and prophets and kings, and the sea parting, and a burning bush, and Canaan, and a wandering Aramean hearing a voice speak in the desert, and a flood, and a garden, and the lands and seas taking form, as what we would call Gondwanaland began to separate.

And let’s dare to go further, as we see stars and galaxies taking form as the whole universe snaps into life in a crescendo of light. Quite a view! And I wonder if his whispered ‘Amen’ spoken over those tumultuous millions of years, does something in that act of rising, to tie the past together to make them one in love as he is one in God’s three-in-one – an eternal dance of love. I wonder also what he could see ahead. If he could see the beginning what would he see as an ending? And, was his ‘Amen’ an announcement of love over whatever ‘next’ looked like, all the way to the completion of all things? I believe it to be so. I believe we are to understand ourselves caught up in this eternal love

And thereby picture ourselves seen from the heights of cross and ascension – our ‘particular-ness’ and our ‘part-of-everything-ness’ seen, and valued. All caught up in Eternal Love: God’s big YES from the beginning to the end, and over everything in between; even the ugly and the horrible are swept into love in a way that we cannot possible imagine because we are immersed in the thickness of things, and we have such a limited view of the whole. We need a vantage point, and where we stand is a way too low, we can’t see the wood for the trees. Most people can’t see beyond their own troubles, let alone their neighbours, let alone the good of the whole. We need a vantage point, and so we look to where Jesus is – ascended – and we find our footing in faith, and hope, and love. By the way, I think that that footing is sufficient. We learn to craft our lives in the space where faith and hope and love can work their magic. ‘But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us…raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…’ Ephesians 2:4,6 ‘What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? …It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? …I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ [from Romans 8:31-39] God’s YES.

The view from the clouds – the beginning, the ending, and all in between is held in love. Now, I have spent quite a lot of time painting a kind of cosmic picture, but to be honest, I am only really interested in exploring this way of seeing for its earthly usefulness. I think I come from the school of thought that recognises that some people have their heads in the clouds and aren’t of much earthly use! It even might surprise you to hear a minister of the church say that what is beyond me isn’t really my concern, if it appears to be an escape from reality. But that is how I see things. I don’t invest in cosmic things in order to avoid reality, or excuse myself from my responsibilities. I just happen to think that the big picture view ‘from up high’ informs how we can better be present here. It provides a framework. I get to know ‘how’ and ‘what’ to get about doing because of the ‘why’.

Thus, if I was an African slave in America seeking to make my way through the day without giving into despair, I would fasten onto the big hope of the gospel (that the slave-owners had passed on but entirely missed!): ‘Hold on,’ I would sing, ‘keep your hand on that plough and hold on!’ And, if I was a child with abusive parents, I would want to know that there is a future coming, and it will grab me and lift me up. And if I was in my dying days I would want to know that what I fear is not the full story. And every day when I wake up, I would want to know that this is the day that love has come to town and is calling me to join in its song. I think that is what the ascension means to me – that what comes from God meets us here, and is lifted back into God, and its ripples keep being played out in our daily lives in such a way that we can overcome, and be turned around, and the ugly can be made beautiful, and the light will shine in the darkness, and the life goes on, and what we think are dead ends are opportunities, and God meets us on the road – always.

Offering & Prayer for the Road

Collectively now at this moment as we turn our hearts and minds outwards let us be grateful for God’s ongoing gifts, the many different ways we experience the generosity of God, and be grateful that many of us can still give to the ongoing life and work of our church community in various ways and dedicate ourselves to the presence of God in our various lockdown spaces.

Our Prayer for the Road Adapted from a prayer from the Iona Community Worship Book, 2017.

With the disruption of Covid-19 and the ensuing simmering below the surface of many things – some of which are now beginning to come to light – some pleasant and some nastier! This prayer seems appropriate. We are not alone, God is with us but we are not to be passive in our living into the ways of God. God, where are you and what is your call to us?

Creator of this world and all its people,

We are glad that all things are held in your hands.

You have not left us alone.

And we celebrate the work of your Spirit

Encouraging people the world over

To stand up for justice and peace,

To speak for the voiceless

And always anticipate

That the best is yet to come!

If, however,

We have driven a wedge between piety and peacemaking,

Erected a wall between prayer and politics,

Associated the purposes of heaven

With only the gentler things of earth – God of justice, Show yourself!

If we have offered to pretenders

The devotion you alone deserve;

If we have dismissed the Gospel

As irrelevant to the world – God of justice, Show yourself!

If we have dumbed down your Word

And domesticated your Spirit

Because we wanted an easier faith

And a tamer dove – God of justice, Show yourself!

Wherever in our nations

The poor are endangered,

The sick are neglected,

Prisoners are refused redemption,

And strangers among us are treated with suspicion – God of justice, Show yourself!

Wherever in our world,

The lust for profit

Undermines the value of human life;

Or the greed for power Overrides the need for fairness – God of justice, Show yourself!

In the social worker

And the mediator,

In vigils for peace

And protests to protect the earth;

To all who fear for the future of children,

To those who long for a different day – God of justice, Show yourself!

We pray in Jesus’ name and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Go into your week confident of God’s strong arms around you, resting in the sweetness of God’s love every moment of the day and night, Amen.

We are pausing to acknowledge and grow in the presence of God in our lives. We are meeting as part of a church community, albeit a scattered one. We are stilling ourselves, our fears, our anxieties, and all the distracting things around us, to seek and delight in God’s life with us.

Let us worship God!

We are called into worship today with words from Psalm 66

Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.

Prayer on the Way

Creator God, our ground of being, you sing and the universe comes to life;

Breath of life, you blow and all things are animated from within;

Divine Word, you speak and creation is sustained;

Word become flesh, you are born among us;

Ever dancing Spirit, you fill all that has been formed;

Eternal life, you are the heartbeat of all that is.

In delight and awe, in wonder and celebration we come to know;

In you, all things live and move and have their being,

And as part of this, we choose again to join our lives, living in this fully;

As much as we are able, joining in with the eternal dance of your life.

Your life.

Life itself offered freely to all the world.

In the times when we mistake this life,

Being only for ourselves, forgive us.

May we know again and anew, the vastness of your love, all-encompassing.

We bless you this day.

With Christ, we journey, Amen.

Bible Reading: Acts 17:22-31

Reflection: Anne Stewart

The setting

Paul is on his second trip to the outlying areas to support the new Christians and the churches as they begin to find their way. In this instance, he is standing on an area known as Mars Hill and he is addressing a crowd of Gentiles. The Areopagus is a hill near the Acropolis where the Athenian Council met. It is a place where the council would deliver its judgements, but it is also a place where Greek philosophers would gather to debate, and where crowds would gather to enjoy the intellectual jousting. The word Areopagus is used to refer to the council as well as the hill. When Luke says that Paul stood in front of the Areopagus, he probably means that he stood before the council.

What is striking about this context is that Paul went to where the people and the powers that be were, and he spoke in the language they understood; in this case, the language of philosophy. His speech was sophisticated, and shows he was alert to his context. But he did this without losing anything of his solid theological Christians beliefs. This way of relating, immersed among the people, speaking in words they could relate to, was to become a hallmark of Paul’s ministry. He adapted his speech so as to be accessible to his audience, and sought to address them in terms that were familiar to them.

Worshipping the unknown god. The first thing that struck me was the idea of worshipping something ‘unknown’. I find that thought quite troubling. To worship something unknown, to me, feels like it could, all too easily, become the worship of a ‘good idea’. I think I would find it difficult to worship, or indeed to submit to any ‘way’, ‘thing’ or ‘one’ that I did not know well. Although I can accept that it is in the act of worshipping that we may well come to know God more fully. Some of us need to take a leap of faith and ‘fake it till we make it’ so to speak. From my own experience, and from what we know of God through the witness of scripture, doesn’t the God we worship constantly seek to engage with us relationally? I can find no evidence of God hiding from us, avoiding us, or being unknowable. God is known and knowable.

Do we find God, or does God find us?

However, God making Godself known to us is not always a popular way to see things these days. Such thoughts are often dismissed as overly ‘supernatural’ or ‘unreal’. Instead, we like to be the starting point, and we tend to struggle with the tension between what we can’t see and what we can. If we can’t see it, some of us say, then it can’t exist. Seeing something confirms for us that it is real. So, if we can’t see God, as such, can’t we just redesign the idea of God according to how we would like God to be? Taking that a bit further, it follows that if we can create our own God then isn’t God simply a figment of our imaginations? God then becomes a creation of something whose existence cannot be proved and is therefore easily dismissed.

But this is not the experience recorded in scripture, and nor is it the experience that many of us are familiar with. To know God at all, we have to be prepared to let God reveal who God is. We have to be open to how and when God comes to us in order to know more of God.

How can we know an unseen God?

So how does God go about making Godself known to us? The classic response is through Creation and, Jesus, Scripture and Tradition. We see the hand of God in the created order that is often beyond our own ability to understand, or describe. In scripture we read in many places that we can and do know God through who Jesus is. For me, it’s a merry old mix of all of these things, often presenting themselves to me as an ‘aha’ moment. A ‘knowing’ that I often find quite challenging to articulate; but a knowing that feeds me deeply, nevertheless.

Can we keep God in a building? The second thing that stood out for me is Paul’s statement that, “The God who made the world and everything in it, [God] who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands…”

We know, don’t we, that God is not contained in the walls of any building even if it is designed and built for the purpose of worship! It is the worship that makes the building sacred not the other way around. It’s the people who do the worshipping who are the church, not the building. We talked a lot about this after the earthquakes shook our old assumptions about what church was.

Yet we also know that where we meet for worship is important to us. These places that we set aside for the purpose of worship take on new significance for us because of those experiences. Because these buildings are important to us, we have, over the centuries, enlisted the help of our best architects and artisans to help us create these purposeful spaces. But even if it the most beautiful of spaces, we still know that God is not contained in it. God is not to be contained! The life of God is in and around us – and free.

The church where Martin ministered in in Dunedin had a sign that greets you as you leave the building. It always intrigued me. It read, ‘You are now entering the mission field.’ While I have to say that the mission field is also within the building, I like the sentiment. It says to me, go out from this building and take the God you have met and known inside the building into the world where God may not be so well known. Whatever the building represents, it does not exist to contain, define or constrain. Instead, don’t we look for signs of God’s presence in every corner and in every part of God’s creation?

Does God call us to worship to fulfil God’s needs, or ours?

The third thing that caught my attention was this, “…nor is [God] served by human hands, as though [God] needed anything, since [God] gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” Which brings me back to the idea of worship. We are ‘called’ to worship, yet, says Paul this is not something that God needs. God is not served by human hands, as though God needs anything we can offer, since God is the One who gives to us all life and breath and all things, including our hands. So, if we are not called to worship to satisfy God’s needs then whose needs are being attended to here?

I want to suggest that the call to worship is to satisfy our need, even if we are not aware that we have such a need. In worship we are re-established in our rightful place before God. We are re-formed and re-membered as children of God, as part of the Body of Christ, refitted into the community of saints, and reminded again of our call to serve God by serving one another. But most importantly, we are re-established as being something ‘other’ than God. We are not God. We are not in control! We are not able to contain God and we are certainly not safe when we try to do this. We are God’s – not the other way around!

Offering & Prayer for the Road

Collectively now at this moment as we turn our hearts and minds outwards let us be grateful for God’s ongoing gifts, the many different ways we experience the generosity of God, and be grateful that many of us can still give to the ongoing life and work of our church community in various ways and dedicate ourselves to the presence of God in our various lockdown spaces.

Prayers for the Road

[including an adaptation of a prayer by Ted Loder’s book Guerrillas of Grace]

In the quiet, we ponder what response we will make to what we have been reflecting on.

Usually at this time in the service of worship, when we are face-to-face, we make an offering prayer as a sign of our Yes to the life of God unfolding among us. It is an act of re-commitment. We can so that sitting where we are, and we can do that anywhere and anytime where we are.

We do that again today as we ponder the road ahead and the way God journeys with us on it.

Teach us your ways, Lord,

that we may be open to the same Spirit who moved

over the face of the waters in the first day of creation

and moves also over the chaos of this time to fashion a day like this,

a world like ours, a life like mine, a kingdom like leaven in bread,

like a treasure buried in the fields of the daily lives we lead;

and make us aware of the miracles of life, of warm and cold,

of starkness and order, of screaming wind and impenetrable silences,

and of the unfathomable mystery of the amazing grace in which we are kept.

Teach us your ways, Lord

that we may praise you for all the surprising, ingenious ways you bless us,

and for all the wondrous gifts you give us through artists and poets and dreamers

who introduce us to the beauty of holiness,

who usher us into awesome worlds of understanding and seeing,

and help us as we negotiate our lives with their joys, sorrows, triumphs and struggles.

Before you, we quietly name the concerns and cares that come to mind.

Teach us your ways, Lord, that we may accept our own talents for what they are

and partner with you in being a blessing in the lives of the people about us.

Teach us your ways, Lord, that we may live and love with courage and conviction,

and kindness and compassion, and so bear your light in every corner that we come across.

Teach us your ways, Lord, that your name is known, and your life among us, and for us,

is at the heart of our desire and our motivation.

Teach us your ways, Lord, that the fire of your light will continue to illuminate

and inspire this world you have brought into being and loved so wholeheartedly,

as we make our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

A Blessing:

As you go about your week, look for Jesus!

Seek him as a treasure in this great wide world.

Seek him in the eyes of your loved ones

and in the eyes of strangers.

May your heart burn within you

as the Lord draws close to you this week.