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Ezekiel 36.24-28, Acts 1.6-14, John 17.1-11

Spring, according to the Second Book of Samuel, is the time when kings go out to battle (2 Samuel 11.1). Spring is also the season when politicians often go out to fight elections and, since UK elections happen on Thursdays, that means we sometimes go to the polls on Ascension Day (which always falls on a Thursday in Spring). It happened for the General Election in 2005 and it happened last week. And the timing is good, because Ascension Day is a very political festival.

Today we get a brief re-run of the Ascension story. The book of Acts opened with a summary: Jesus was put to death but raised to new life; he appeared to his disciples for forty days, and taught them about the kingdom of God. This morning they ask him, ‘Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel (that is, kick out the Roman imperialists)?’ ‘We’re not going to talk timing,’ says Jesus, ‘but you will be my witnesses, not just throughout Israel but to the ends of the earth.’ And then he is lifted up, and a cloud takes him into heaven.

What would a modern historian say about all this? That Jesus was executed by the political authorities, who saw him as a threat (his talk of the ‘kingdom’ – or ‘empire’ – of God may have been part of it); that his followers were convinced that they saw him after he had died; that reports of his appearances stopped after a while; and that this did not lead to the movement fading away, but rather began a period of rapid expansion. The writer of Acts, who is a different kind of historian, tells the story from the inside, says what he thinks this is really about. It culminates in the scene of Jesus’ ascension, which is what political commentators would call a coded message. The code-words are ‘up’, ‘heaven’ and ‘cloud’ (Acts 1.9,-11).

Why is Jesus taken up? Because ‘up’ is the direction of heaven, seen in those days as a specific place, above the blue vault of the sky, where the throne of God is. Jesus is taken up to heaven by a cloud and, according to two mysterious commentators at the scene, he will come back in the same way. Now the book of Daniel had spoken of ‘one like a son of man’ coming on a cloud at the end of the age to rule the nations (Daniel 7.13-14). Put it all together, and here is a sign that Jesus is not just the one who is to direct the lives of his followers, not even the one who will just save Israel, but the one who will exercise God’s authority over the whole world. It’s a way of showing what the first Christians used to say to sum up their faith: ‘Jesus is Lord’. Jesus – his concern for the least and the lost, his way of living and dying – he is the one who must direct your energies, your choices, your life. And if Jesus is Lord, then no-one else is. It’s that kind of job.

There are, naturally, other contenders. Think of Stalin. Think of President Mugabe, who, in 2003, threatened to act like a 'black Hitler' against the opposition in Zimbabwe. I wonder what it would cost to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ under such regimes? Some do, of course. Hans Erhenberg, a pastor in Germany in the 1930s, recalled a church summer camp, and a service in a room dominated by a large picture of Hitler. A recently-confirmed Lutheran girl grabbed the picture and threw it against the wall, saying ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’. What happened to her, I wonder, and to her family?

So, the ascended Jesus is our defence against false gods. But in British politics false gods like that are not really the problem, are they? In the Ascension Day elections, barely a third of those eligible to vote across the country did so, though London did much better, with a 48% turnout: a very high figure for a local election, and seen as a bit of a triumph. In truth, it’s pathetic. Imagine a church service where less than half the congregation sang the hymns. Look at our new mayor or his predecessor, and the idea that any British political leader could be elevated to godlike status is hilarious. The business of politics is discredited here. Politicians are kept up late to be belittled by Jeremy Paxman, and they are fair game for casual public insult. Two examples.

One of my favourite bits of Sunday-night unwind TV is the wartime whodunit Foyle’s War (think Inspector Morse meets Dad’s Army), but the last episode annoyed me. Foyle tracked down a bad’un called Longmate, who hoped to go into politics after the war. Accusing him of draft-dodging, murder and deception to feather his own nest, Foyle concluded, ‘I'd have said you were a born politician.’ And this is not new. A hundred years ago Bernard Shaw wrote the play Major Barbara (currently revived at the National Theatre). In it, a professor of Greek says that, like most intelligent people, he never votes; and an arms manufacturer says of his son, ‘You know nothing but think you know everything; that clearly points to a career in politics’. Cue laughter. Easy targets, cheap shots.  

Our problem is not that we idolise politicians but that we virtually demonise them, and that we turn away, not just from voting, but from the whole public sphere of which politics are a part. Our democratic comrades in Zimbabwe, who have waited thirty-four days for the – surely questionable – results of their presidential election, might make a lot of us feel rather ashamed if ever we say, ‘Politicians? They’re all the same.’ 

• So, in times like these, what will it mean for you and me to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ and mean it?  

• It will mean seeing in the image of the ascended Jesus a reminder that he died for the world, not just each individual human heart.

• It will mean admitting that God is calling some of us to work in that public world: in party politics, perhaps, or in those other tasks  – school governor, local campaigner, charity worker, Scout or Guide leader – that are concerned with the life we shape for one another and so are in a deep sense political.

• It will mean praying for people in that public world, because God’s work is to be done out there as much as in here.

• It will mean seeing ‘in here’ a place that gives glory to God, and then equips men and women to give glory to God in all the rest of what they do.

To do the last, we can’t afford to use up all our energies maintaining the inner life of the Cathedral. Avoiding that is partly a frame-of-mind question: ‘Am I more interested in the Church, or in the Kingdom of God?’ It’s also a matter of money, paying for important work to be done in here, and leaving more of our energies free for God out there. Last time we touched on the small percentage of us who were in the planned giving scheme, ten people signed up or increased their giving, which was great. I bet at least another ten meant to, but forgot. So how about it today? Same deal – stick your name on the sheet by the pigeon holes by the font.

But – gosh! – all  this sounds so exhausting. Where will we ever find the energy for all that? Yet more stuff to feel guilty about. Well, there is a principle of Christian faith that God never calls us to anything without giving us the means to do it. Next Sunday begins Christian Aid Week, and I marvel that Christian Aid was founded in 1945: at a time when a world was exhausted by war, how did some Christian people find the energy to create an organisation like that? In today’s reading, Jesus tells the disciples that they are going to be his witnesses to the end of the earth. Where will they find the energy for that? They needn’t worry: the energy will find them. ‘You will receive power, says Jesus, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you (Acts 1.8).’ But that’s next Sunday’s story.

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