Preached by Revd Peter Haughton on 24 May 2020: Seventh Sunday of Easter
Hello – and welcome to the sermon slot, though in this format perhaps it is more helpful to think of what I shall be sharing with you as ‘reflections’ or ‘musings’ or a sort of podcast rather than a sermon or homily.
This Sunday, the last of the Easter season, is, for me, a sort of “Limbo Sunday”, placed between the Feast of the Ascension that we had on Thursday and the Celebration of Pentecost next Sunday – it is a sort of nothing Sunday, a hanging around Sunday – but in spite of me seemingly devaluing it, maybe there are some things, some insights, that we might find helpful. I call it a “limbo Sunday”; those of you with a more nautical turn of phrase might call it a “doldrums’” Sunday – from mariners, we have the phrase, and perhaps, their dread of, being stuck in the doldrums, that belt of ocean around the equator where it is often windless and, when wind was your sole means of propulsion, when you needed wind in your sails to get going, then being stuck in the doldrums might indeed be something you do dread and fear.
And so too with our current situation; we may well be coming out of lock-down; we may be able soon to meet once again face to face, to have that more intimate and personal fellowship one with another, but for the moment we are still in limbo; we are still in the doldrums.
But perhaps this is to see it all from a rather negative perspective. Sometimes waiting can be a helpful thing, a gift in itself. In the scriptures, and elsewhere, we find a human longing arising in the waiting. Might we find that in our current situation, our waiting may be productive? What might God be saying to me in all of this? Or, if you don’t find that a helpful question, maybe you might wish to ask yourself, “How might I flourish, be more of myself through the gift of waiting”. For our senior generation the notion of waiting with expectancy is familiar, whereas in the recent past our society has played down waiting in favour of instant gratification, of having everything now. With this forced period of waiting, through lock-down, we can either feel trapped, stuck, in the doldrums or see it positively as a gift, a time for reflection, meditation, a time of preparation for what is to come.
In a way, this Easter period in the Church’s year, these past 7 weeks, has encouraged us to explore what it might be like to be a Resurrection People, or if you prefer a Post-Resurrection People. Now, we figuratively join those first twelve disciples in their 10 day wait for a further development, a further transformation of what it might be to be people who are empowered by God through the gift of the Holy Spirit, that the Church shall be celebrating next Sunday – that brought about a transformation in those first disciples from being disciples of Jesus to becoming apostles of the gospel – sent out to proclaim the Good News.
There has been much talk about what might be the “New normal” – how our society may be markedly different post-Covid-19. And not only our secular society but also how we as a church might flourish and operate. This period of enforced waiting may just be what is needed for us, as a church, to reflect, to pray, to plan for how we shall live out our faith, just as those first disciples did, waiting on God in an upper room, waiting to be empowered by God’s Holy Spirit; what it might be to have the wind put back into our sails so that we can venture out and set sail once more with a fresh purpose.
As our Collect today requests, “We beseech you, leave us not comfortless, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where Christ has gone before”. Amen