A Service for the 7th Sunday of Easter | Swanage & Studland Team Ministry

A Service for the Seventh Sunday of Easter - The Sunday after Ascension Day

Preparation:

Before beginning to read this short service, you may wish to find a space for prayer in front of a cross, a candle, or a special place.

We begin during these days immediately following the Ascension of Christ, to celebrate the season of Pentecost, as we approach its festival on Whitsunday, or the Day of Pentecost, which has its roots in the Jewish Feast of Weeks, which was completed on the fiftieth day after Passover.

On the fiftieth day of Easter, which will be next Sunday, we recall that God sends his Holy Spirit to empower the Church to perform the mission which the risen Christ has entrusted to it. Pentecost celebrates both the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Christian Church. The risen Lord is no longer present to the Church in the body of his flesh; the Church is now to be the new body of Christ, filled with his life through the gift of the Spirit.

May the light of Christ, rising in glory, banish all darkness from our hearts and minds.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia

Let us pray in penitence

Lord Jesus, you suffered a cruel death on the cross for

our redemption,

yet we have forgotten your pain

and stayed in the realm of the evil you defeated.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord Jesus, you were raised from death to bring us new life,

yet we have preferred the comfort of the familiar,

and the empty promises of a sinful world.

Christ, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord Jesus, you have ascended to your Father and our Father,

your God and our God;

plead there at the right hand of God

for our forgiveness and entry into the fullness of his presence.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

The Collect

Silence is kept.

O God the King of glory,

you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ

with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven:

we beseech you, leave us not comfortless,

but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us

and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen

The First Hymn

Come Let Us Join our Cheerful Songs - please access Simon’s accompaniment here:

https://youtu.be/fDfRzieP568

1 Come, let us join our cheerful songs

with angels round the throne;

ten thousand thousand are their tongues,

but all their joys are one.

2 'Worthy the Lamb that died,' they cry,

'to be exalted thus';

'Worthy the Lamb,' our lips reply,

'for he was slain for us.’

3 Jesus is worthy to receive

honour and power divine;

and blessings, more than we can give,

be, Lord, for ever thine.

4 Let all creation join in one

to bless the sacred name

of him that sits upon the throne,

and to adore the Lamb

The Reading:

Acts 1: 15-17, 21-end

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred and twenty people) and said, ‘Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus— for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.’

So one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.’ So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

In preparation for reading the Gospel let us say:

Alleluia, alleluia.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people

and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Alleluia.

The Gospel:

John 17: 6-19

‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to 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. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

Homily

The Sunday after Ascension Day finds us in an interim period; we are waiting, but waiting expectantly, as we enter the mindset of the disciples in that first hiatus of the affairs of the Kingdom; Jesus having gone, the Holy Spirit promised from some time before his coming in power and comfort, in direction, and as a flame to ignite the embers of the timorous faith that the followers of Jesus clung to.

Jesus seems to be, through the Gospel accounts, to have been at his most visionary when the chips were down, as we might see it, and he would demonstrate to his followers that, in the face of doom and gloom, that the light of Christ shines forth so remarkably and so strongly. When you are weak, then you are strong. Time and again the people of God needed to find their knees before they could move forward and regain strength.

What we have before us today, in verses from John 17, are some words of what we call Christ’s “High Priestly Prayer”. We need to note that this prayer is absolutely astonishing. What is proclaims is of crucial importance to us and to all followers of Christ. At the beginning of the prayer (at the beginning of the chapter) Jesus looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you….’

Jesus prays for his followers, but not only for them, he prays for all who will hear his disciples’ words and through them come to believe. In our day, a global view is how things are. We are very aware in beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, even before the current health crisis, that the Church’s context for mission is significantly changed from what it was even five to ten years ago. As a Church we have a massive challenge to interpret and communicate - to proclaim - the message of Jesus Christ, that isn’t just appearing in people’s lives as an adjunct to some social occasion or what has become to them a secular festival, but actually addresses the real life and death issues of their day to day concerns.

How else can we put this? The disciples were holding themselves ready in these ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost. They were full of joy and anticipation; they were daily in the Temple praising God. They were preparing in one way; by waiting and prayer and praise, but they were being prepared at the same time, through being told not to do anything until they received the power from on high to do so.

In these days as we consider these followers of Jesus huddled in the Upper Room, praying in the Temple, sharing with each other the words and works of their risen and ascended Lord, we see that they themselves were to become the exceptional people of God, but it came through the humility of the realisation that they were weak; several of them had failed big time - in fact all had failed to some degree - and THAT IT DIDN’T MATTER!

Why? Because this was not their notion; their plan - it lay in the very heart of the glorifying of God, as Jesus prayed with them and for them, as their unity became critical and the resurrection from the dead the sign that they were the followers of he, who, through the scourging and pain of crucifixion, became the man to save not only them, but to give life to the world. It is comfortable to draw the blinds and worship beyond sight, but it is liberating and sometimes very uncomfortable to accept Christ’s undying friendship and prepare ourselves to be compulsively launched into something new. That is what the disciples were preparing themselves for - whether they liked it; knew it; or even begun to understood it fully, or not!

John Mann

Second Hymn

All Hail The Power of Jesus’ Name https://youtu.be/d4Oy-G-FGrQ

1 All hail the power of Jesus' name!

Let angels prostrate fall,

bring forth the royal diadem

and crown him Lord of all.

2 Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race

ye ransomed of the Fall,

hail him who saves you by his grace,

and crown him Lord of all.

3 Sinners, whose love can ne’er forget

the wormwood and the gall,

go spread your trophies at his feet

and crown him Lord of all.

4 Let every tribe and every tongue

before him prostrate fall,

and shout in universal song

the crown-ed Lord of all

Prayers

We pray for God to fill us with his Spirit.

Generous God,

we thank you for the power of your Holy Spirit.

We ask that we may be strengthened to serve you better.

Lord, come to bless us