1st June 2025

 1st June 2025   ASCENSION and ST PETER - Jess Jephcott

Readings:     Matthew ch 16 vs 13 – 19   Acts ch 1 vs 1 -11

Good morning.

In Martin’s absence, he asked me to stand in for him today. This is a message in two parts, as will be revealed.

A prayer: Heavenly Father. The miracle of the Ascension brings joy to our hearts. Because it reminds us of Jesus’ power, His promise, and His presence among us. May our belief in these things bring joy to our hearts, purpose to our lives, and praise to our lips. To the glory of God. Amen

Today is what, since the 1990s, is known as Ascension Sunday, when it was moved from the Thursday that the traditional church commemorates, and for which, France, a secular country, has as a national holiday. The Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ, commemorates the Christian belief of the bodily Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It is one of the ecumenical feasts of Christian churches, ranking with the feasts of the Passion and Pentecost, always commemorated on a Thursday and so named after the 40 days following Easter Sunday, when Jesus ascended into heaven.

It all gets a bit confusing, especially with Pentecost (or Whit Sunday, or Whitsun) that comes next week, the time of the year when we commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles of Jesus. I understand that David will be speaking to us then.

Our second reading from Acts, Chapter 1, read for us by Philip, believed to have been written by the Apostle Luke, describes perfectly how Jesus was taken up into heaven. Verses 2 and 3 gave us ‘..until the day he was taken up into heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God’.

From Luke 24, vs 50 -52, we have, ‘When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.’.

Power – As St Paul said, God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

Promise - The Ascension is also about a very important promise. Jesus promises that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon us, so that we can be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. The power that Jesus is given in the Ascension is shared with us through the promised Holy Spirit. And that helps us to do what Jesus did while he was on earth. It helps us to continue his mission.

Presence - And finally, along with power and promise, the Ascension is about Presence. Through the Ascension, Jesus actually becomes more present to us than he ever could before. Before Jesus ascended into heaven, and because he was fully human, Jesus was confined to the rules of this world – he could only be in one place at one time. He was the Son of God, but he was fully human. And so, he couldn’t be everywhere at all times. He performed many miracles, but as we know, never the miracle of being in two places at once.

After Jesus ascended into heaven, he could be present in a new way, through the Holy Spirit. In fact, he could be present everywhere at all times.

Yes, today we celebrate the miracle of the Ascension of Our Lord; and this is one of those stories that is hard for me to get my mind around. For me, this story is one of many stories in scripture that I accept on faith – not because they make sense to me – but because it is God’s word to me. And because I trust God’s word. I don’t have to be able to get my mind around it to accept it on faith. What does it mean that Jesus was ‘carried up into heaven’? How did this happen? And is Heaven really ‘up’? What does that mean? If we had a large enough telescope, could we look to the skies and actually see Heaven? How about Jonah being swallowed by a large fish? How did he survive that? How could he breathe in the belly of that fish for three days? Or how about Noah? How could he fit all of those animals on the ark? How did he keep the animals from killing or trampling each other? How could he feed them all?

But I digress.

Power, promise, and presence. These are all gifts of the Ascension. Difficult to comprehend, perhaps, but not difficult to believe.

..and so to the second part of my message today.

I thought it appropriate to speak about Simon, a fisherman, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, later to be re-named by Jesus as Simon Peter,  Peter the Rock, appointed by Jesus to build His church - St Peter. It follows nicely with what Martin has been sharing with us over recent weeks, his series of heroes from the bible. Also it connects nicely with the recent arrival of a new pope, a pope who is younger than me. I must be getting old! Pope Leo the 14th, to use his chosen name. Each pope is claimed to be the successor to St. Peter, not the successor to the previous pope (curiously, there has never been a Pope Peter!), and the Pope is simply that person who becomes bishop of Rome. Incidentally, The bishop of Alexandria was the first on record to have been called “pope”, one Bishop Heracleus (from AD232 to 249).

For my part, a nobody in the grand scheme of things, I see Peter as the founder of the church that Jesus asked him to build. Whilst many see him as the first pope, I don’t. As a Roman historian, I see the Emperor Constantine as the enabler of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, in the 4th century, encouraged by his mother, whom we know now as St Helena, also patron saint of my home town, from which the present system of popes derives. But again, I digress.

Our first reading, read to us by Briget, taken from Matthew 16, shares with us the moment when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”. “You are the Messiah”, Peter declared, “the Son of the living God.”  And in that moment of God-given clarity and vision, Jesus gives Simon Peter his new identity as the foundation stone on which the church would be built.

But then, almost immediately afterwards he seems to get it so wrong,

From Matthew 16 v 22, “Never, Lord!  This must never happen to you”, he protested when Jesus talks about going to Jerusalem, of suffering and of dying.  And suddenly Peter the rock is Satan!  “Get behind me Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me.  You set your mind on human things rather than divine things”. How did Peter feel then? Is it so very wrong to want to protect someone you love, to prevent them from being harmed?

I don’t know whether any of you have been following the Netflix series ‘The Chosen’. The series depicts Jesus's life through the eyes of the people who interacted with him, including the apostles and disciples of Jesus, Jewish religious leaders, Roman government and military officials, and ordinary people. Jonathan Roumie, who plays the part of Jesus, gives a powerful, and, to my mind, very credible, view of how his life would have been. The series portrays Simon Peter as a bit headstrong – hot-headed, even, (John 18:10-11) how Simon Peter cuts off a soldier's ear when they are taking Jesus into custody. Many other accounts in the Bible show that Simon was a bit on the impulsive side, with Jesus sometimes rebuking him.

But, as somebody once said, ‘sometimes God writes with a crooked pencil’. So many unlikely people, Gideon, David, St Paul even, have been chosen by God to lead. Simon Peter is no exception.

There are many books from early Christianity that claim to be written by Jesus' closest disciple, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, the Letter of Peter to James, and so on. How could a humble fisherman even have been capable of such works, one might wonder?

We have so much to learn from Peter because, I suggest that, perhaps, we recognise so much of ourselves in him. Martin presented a series on Peter last year, so I don’t want to repeat that. We have mentioned Peter many times too in our other sermons. Our church website offers an archive of past sermons, so do please dip into that, hopefully using the search box to find what you are interested in. No, I mainly wanted to talk about Peter as a person, rather than draw on Peter’s writings.

So, how do you picture Saint Peter? Is he a saintly figure, complete with halo, eyes raised heavenwards, hands folded in prayer or holding a huge bunch of keys – the keys to the kingdom of heaven with the authority to judge whether or not we may enter that kingdom? Is he a remote figure beyond our reach, part of an élite inner circle of saints who are especially holy?

Or do we see the human Peter, Simon son of John, the Galilean fisherman; Simon Peter, the devoted disciple of Jesus; Peter the rock – strong and solid but also at the same time vulnerable and sometimes erratic in his behaviour?

He seems to have been an ordinary, fallible, flawed man, who sometimes perhaps failed to engage his brain before he opened his mouth and puts his foot in it, is called and claimed by God, and through God’s grace and some tough lessons, becoming the foundation of the movement that sought to bring the kingdom of heaven into this world; to bring order to this world’s values and to re-form it into the world that God intended it to be.

From Simon Peter’s books, we see him to be consoling, encouraging, challenging and understanding, because he knew what discipleship meant and what it felt like on:

good days,

not so good days,

and downright bad days!

Whilst so much more can be said about this exceptional man, St Peter, I would like to finish this message by reading some of what Pope Leo said recently, when humbly acknowledging his newly exalted position.

He said,

“I invite you to recognise the marvels that the Lord has done. The blessings that the Lord continues to pour out upon all of us. Through the ministry of Peter, you have called me to carry that cross and to be blessed with that mission, and I know that I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me as we continue as a church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers, to announce the good news, to announce the gospel.”

Amen.