17th May 2026

17th May 2026, 7th Sunday after Easter - David Matthews

Readings: 1 Peter chapter 4 verses 6 to 12

John chapter 16 verse 32 to chapter 17 verse 13.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”

This is how Charles Dickens starts his novel, A Tale of two Cities, and I can imagine it would have been this sort of conflicting uncertainty which beset Jesus’ disciples after he had Ascended and before they knew what Pentecost would bring. They found themselves in an in-between time. Unpacking different in-between times is what I’d like to do this morning – after Ascension but before Pentecost.

Last Thursday was Ascension Day. Jesus has lived, died, and risen from the dead; he has inhabited a body which bore his physical wounds, but he was not quite a mere mortal; he could appear and disappear at will. Now he has ascended; there is no longer anything ‘of the earth’ about him. And his disciples are waiting. They are probably not wracked by hopelessness and despair as they were during those terrible hours between the cross and the empty tomb. They are, of course, newly alive to what God can achieve – what Jesus has demonstrated. They are probably digesting more carefully, with increased insight, all that he said in those final days before his arrest, including what John relates in the Gospel reading we heard earlier. Though expectant, they do not know what, precisely, to expect. They wait. Uncertainty hovers. They are experiencing the first great in-between time.

We, of course, live in a post-Pentecost age. We know what followed the Ascension. Two thousand years after the events in Jerusalem, which we shall recall in a week’s time, the Holy Spirit remains a vital presence in the world. And yet… and yet (dare I say it?) it doesn’t always feel like that. While we have learnt about Jesus and glimpsed another dimension – a fuller, richer way of living – we are still rooted in the world, aware of our own mortality and exposed to whatever circumstances dominate the age we live in. And today, we look around and it can seem as though the Earth is spinning in the wrong direction at an ever faster speed. Politically, things are far less stable; tensions between and within nations are growing. There is a sense, in the West at least, that communities are disintegrating. The extraordinary development of communication technology, with unparalleled capacity for forging connections in real time anywhere in the world has – we are discovering – led to the creation of social media platforms with addictive functions. Corruption is growing alongside connectivity.

There is a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence and it looks like AI will be at least as cataclysmic as the Industrial revolution. This brought immense benefits but it came at a terrible price with the mass dislocation of peoples and widespread exploitation. Pollution was invented. Are we heading for something similar or worse? Uncertainty dominates. We are uncomfortably aware that, when faced with opportunity and change, humanity has a propensity to slide further away from moral and ethical living. We are left floundering.

We are left floundering because, when our security is threatened, we can feel abandoned as if Jesus has slipped away and the agency of the Holy Spirit has not been activated. We find ourselves in an in-between time. And it is not comfortable.

Of course, civilizations have survived in-between times before: the collapse of the Roman Empire; the Black Death; two World Wars; the Covid-19 pandemic. Maybe there is a rhythm to these things. Periods of relative stability are punctuated by catastrophes occur but they are followed by recovery; after recovery there will be calm before catastrophe. And so it goes on. Perhaps we should just take the long view. This is just how human history unfolds. Instead of getting exercised by it, perhaps we should just shrug. ‘Que sera, sera’ as someone once sang. The turbulence we are experiencing is just part of the rhythm of how things proceed. We might wish it to be different but hey! What can we do?

Shrug.

But I am not sure that a resigned surrender is a Christian response. If it were, surely there would be no need of the Holy Spirit, to support and guide us, to get us through.  And I think this Sunday, in-between Ascension and Pentecost is an ideal time to consider why a shrug might not be appropriate.

Jesus told his disciples, in explicit terms, that, though he was joining the Father, he was leaving his followers guarded, protected – and commissioned:

“The words that you gave me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.”

“All mine and yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”

Implicit, surely, is the nudge: “And therefore…” behave accordingly!

That these first followers understood something of what Jesus expected of them is borne out in the 1st letter traditionally ascribed to Peter (Although scholars doubt that the writer is indeed Peter – the Greek is too sophisticated for a Galilean fisherman – the Church has always accepted this letter as having authenticity, with one theory being it was scribed and edited by Silvanus.) The author of this letter states:

“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received… “

I think that reminding ourselves of this instruction is something we should especially do when we hit in-between times – globally, socially, individually. At these times, when we are metaphorically held between Jesus’ final departure and the coming of the Holy Spirit, we should say. ‘Yes – whatever my gifts, whatever my level of energy, whatever my ambitions, let me align them with God’s purpose.’ And then, we shall be primed, ready for the injection of fuel and focus and drive which the Holy Spirit can provide.

The in-between times call for more than a shrug. There should be a squaring of the shoulders, a standing tall: a readiness.

But this, at least in my experience, can be incredibly hard.

I whole-heartedly believe all I have said. I yearn to follow my own advice, hour by hour, day by day. I pray for strength and perseverance but, too often, I fail to pray for alignment. It is so easy, I find, to fall into the trap of believing that having told myself that all I do is for God, it automatically follows that all my actions are neatly aligned and compatible with what God actually wants from me. It’s so easy to assume that what one believes is for the best is indeed ‘for the best’. It’s so easy to create God in one’s own image and, even in prayer, hear only one’s own self-affirming voice.

This, I think, is a widespread feature of the in-between times we live in. We have heard the truth, imparted by Jesus. We have been shown the way. But we inhabit confusing, disturbing, even threatening times. We now live in an age, where millions are turning away from or wholly ignorant of the Christian message. Where is the agency of the Holy Spirit?

I have reproduced, here above, a postcard I bought years ago, one summer in France. Taken between the two world wars, it is just entitled Les Chômeurs, ‘The Unemployed’.

When I saw it, it struck me as a visual metaphor for how the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – could be perceived during these post-Christian, in-between times we live in.

God is dozing. Jesus is dead, still splayed as if on the cross. The Holy Spirit remains vigilant, leaning forward, squinting into the sun, scanning the lie of the land… but he is sitting, neither standing, nor striding forwards. There is no obvious dynamic or agency.

This is how it can feel for me, during my personal in-between times. God can seem remote or disinterested. Jesus – a man on a cross - can seem to be no more than an iconic image. I sit. Unemployed, I stare into the far distance, trying to pray, my fingers loosely entwined. But I’m not getting through. It’s as if Jesus is still stuck between Good Friday and Easter Sunday and God has nodded off.

I try to keep alert but I am unclear as to what lies ahead and what I should be doing.

So – to make the point again – this Sunday, in the limbo between Ascension and Pentecost, seems to me to be an ideal time to confront that feeling.

And surely, one place to start is with those words from 1 Peter: “serve one another…” We do not live in isolation. We are social creatures. Connecting with one another, sparking ideas, igniting enthusiasms, offering mutual support, contributing to and participating in our communities to the best of our ability is, according to the writer of this letter, non-negotiable. Service may not be glamorous work. Sometimes it might be tedious. Like the Galilean fishermen, much of our time will probably be spent mending the nets. But we can whistle while we’re doing so, confident that what we are about should result in a good catch.

It’s not quite enough though, is it? We’re back to that question of alignment again – wondering whether what we’re doing is what God actually wants us to be doing. And sometimes, especially in the in-between times,  however busy I might be, I can still feel spiritually unemployed, sitting on a bench, lost, isolated.

But when we read on, the writer of this letter says, we must serve ‘so that God may be glorified in all things’. So that God may be glorified in all things.

I don’t know about you but ‘glorify’ for me is a difficult word. It has connotations of glitter and razzmatazz and brash behaviour not in the best of taste. And, frankly, I do not really understand how a mere mortal can possibly hope to add glory to God, who already embraces all superlatives. So I tend to interpret ‘glorify’ as ‘turning everything back to God’ so that, in all our actions, we reflect as best we can his shining influence.

Instead of ‘glorify’, we could substitute ‘magnify’. It’s Mary’s word, of course, proclaimed when she announces to her cousin, Elizabeth, that she is expecting God’s son: ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord…’

Many Anglican churches begin the service of Holy Communion with the Prayer of Preparation – it could have been composed for all in-between times – which asks God to “cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love [him] and worthily magnify [his] name.” It is, I think, a perfect prayer to start every day.

I like this word ‘magnify’ because it works in two directions. Through the way we live, our lives can indeed ‘enlarge’ God, if we make it clear to others that our drive and motivation, when serving, does not emanate from within; rather, we are conduits for something infinitely bigger and more powerful. God appears to be magnified – more magnificent – as the number of those who follow Jesus demonstrably increases. We can each play our part in this magnification process.

But when we use a magnifying glass what we are usually doing is looking in rather than projecting out. The stronger the magnification, the more detail we see. If we peer through the magnifying glass in this way, we see more clearly how God is constituted,

God as Father is the originator, the source, the creator of all that is seen and unseen, from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the farthest, far-flung galaxy in all its vastness. Every day, we should look around and marvel at the extraordinary comp0lexity of the natural world and take seriously our responsibility as stewards of all the world holds.

God as Son is Jesus, the embodiment of all we can be. We have enormous potential as the dominant species. No other creature has our capacity to shape life on earth. But we should always look to Jesus and be humbled by what he achieved. No one else has ever achieved complete union with God. To follow him, to that end, should always be our ambition.

God as Spirit is the agent, the inspiration, the fuel: providing us with a sense of direction and energy so that what we do may be aligned with God’s driving purpose.

By magnifying the Lord we can see in closer detail how we might fit within the divine plan.

There may be grim times when we are tempted to step back, give in and shrug. There may be in-between times when we find ourselves just sitting, peering ahead but spiritually unemployed and listless. But by glorifying and magnifying God through acts of service, we shall place ourselves exactly where the early disciples stood, ready to welcome the stirring invigoration of the Holy Spirit, standing tall, shoulders squared – no more in an in-between time but paving the way for the best of times… the season of light… the spring of hope: a New Jerusalem.

David Matthews