Bible reading: Matthew 25:35-40.

Message.

I doubt very much if any of us have ever been ticked off by angels! But, if we take the Ascension story at face value, that was precisely the experience of the eleven disciples. For there they were at Bethany, feeling bereft, disappointed, awestruck, puzzled (feel free to add your own appropriate adjectives) at Jesus’s departure. Then, we are told, two men in Persil-white robes appeared from nowhere and said, “Galileans, why are you standing there looking up at the sky?”. To me they sound like a teacher upbraiding a child who is gazing out of the window when it should be getting on with its work. (At least angels couldn’t throw a board rubber or chalk to get the disciples’ attention; nor can – or should – teachers these days!).

The implication is clear. The disciples are not to waste their time waiting on the Mount of Olives, hoping that Jesus might reappear as amazingly as he had vanished; that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. The Eleven are, I think, a bit flummoxed; they meander their way back to Jerusalem, wondering what – if anything – was going to happen next. They hopefully remembered Jesus saying that, once he’d left them, he would send them a gift; that was something to wait for even though they really had little idea of what he had meant.

This little tale, and the angels’ words, remind me of two others. One is the Transfiguration story, where it’s clear that Peter, James and John would have loved to stay on the mountain, savouring their spiritual experience, but are soon hustled by Jesus back to the mundane world and plunged into hectic ministry. The other story is of Elijah, after his contest with the pagan prophets on Mount Carmel, hiding in the cave where he hoped he’d be safe from the vengeful Queen Jezebel. Well, she might not have known where Elijah was, but God did, and said, “What are you doing here?” It was the wrong place for him to be.

It seems to me that there is a message here for us in this service in which we’re thinking about Jesus’s Ascension and Christian Aid, two subjects which at first sight have little to do with each other. But perhaps I can link them with two verses from John’s Gospel, both of them quotes from Jesus. In one he tells the disciples that his followers “will do what he does”; in fact, they will do even greater things, because he is going to his Father. I suspect they were pretty sceptical of that, for how could they perform miracles and carry out healings? A couple of chapters later Jesus expands on this: he tells the disciples that he is going back to his Father, information which he knows will make them sad. “However”, he continues, “it is actually better for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Helper will not come to you. But if I do go away, then I will send him to you”. Did those words encourage or mystify the disciples? Perhaps a little bit of both!

In other words, Jesus is saying that, although he is physically leaving this world, his disciples not only remain in it but also have work – his work – to do. He is also saying that God will give them the resources, the necessary abilities, to carry out this work. Now, when we think of Jesus telling his disciples what they should do once he had left them, it’s the so-called “Great Commission” which comes to mind: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”. That’s very much a command to evangelise, something which (in my experience) churches either obey over-enthusiastically or prefer to ignore – neither of which are ideal responses. We need to find ways of passing on the Gospel message which are appropriate for our time and situation.

Well, that Great Commission is certainly there in the Bible, and comes very close to Jesus’s ascension. But perhaps we can think of three other statements he made. The first is the Gospel reading we heard earlier. There’s another. also in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus sends twelve disciples to preach, heal the sick, bring the dead back to life and drive out demons – a detailed yet daunting command, especially as he then says that he is sending them out “like sheep to a pack of wolves”! The final statement comes at the very start of Jesus’s ministry when he stands up in the synagogue and, quoting Isaiah, declares that he has come to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty for the captives, to give sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed and – perhaps most important of all – to give people hope by saying that God has not forgotten them but has come to save them.

These are far more comprehensive statements of mission than that Great Commission; they aren’t just about proclaiming the message and making converts (not that we should dismiss that) but are about ministering to people’s practical and physical needs. We might want to call this “holistic” Christian ministry; it’s not just about spiritual salvation. I believe that, when Jesus left his disciples, he didn’t expect them just to preach; the inner circle of disciples would have recalled their mission of two or three years earlier, hopefully all the believers would know how Jesus had described his own ministry. And so we should see a two-pronged approach in today’s world: yes, there are people who have a particular gift and calling for evangelism (although there are many ways of doing this and big stadium events are probably a thing of the past), but there also those health workers and community builders, those technicians and agriculturists, those educationalists and social entrepreneurs, those administrators and activists and many more, all fulfilling Jesus’s broader mission through Christian Aid and, of course, other agencies as well. They realise that they been left here on earth as Christ’s representatives and must continue his work even though he is not physically walking alongside them. Indeed, they are spread out around the globe in a way that the human Jesus, confined to one location at a time, never could have been. Their works may or may not be as dramatic as the ones performed by Jesus, but they are certainly being carried out in many, many more places – places which Jesus, in Palestine, would have never visited nor even heard of.

“Why are you standing there, looking up at the heavens?”, chided the two angels. To their credit, the disciples came down from the hill and then, empowered by the dynamic Holy Spirit, continued Jesus’s work on an ever-broader scale. That work continues, many centuries later. We can support it with our prayers for, and our gifts to, Christian Aid. But what work might Jesus be calling us, ourselves, to do?