Last week we heard in our Genesis reading that God had a deeper and better plan for Ishmael and his mother Hagar then first appeared.  At first appearance it all looked pretty grim for Abraham’s first born and his mother.

If we thought last week’s reading was grim, then on the surface, today’s reading from Genesis could seem horrific.

When God ‘sees’ us - it is our eyes that are opened. Last Sunday we heard the Lord’s wonderful promise to Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would give and give birth to a son, despite their very advanced years.  The Lord promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as grains of sand on the beach and the whole land of Canaan would be his inheritance. Today we enter this story before all that happened, when the promised child, Isaac is a very young boy.

Last week we looked at how it is faith alone that, through the great gift at Pentecost of the Holy Spirit, that allows the Lord to use us in the bringing about in the world, the great work of God, as commissioned by Jesus; to go and make disciples, baptising them and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded.  Our passage from Matthew begins today with the focus firmly on Jesus himself (vv. 35-36).  “He saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (v.36).

Our readings today are, I think, linked by common themes of faith and new life. We will be mainly talking about todays beautiful gospel reading, but for some context, we briefly need to begin with Genesis and Romans.

Trinity Sunday is the most difficult Sunday to preach without sounding really academic and doctrinal and theological, which I won’t do because I end up confusing myself, let alone everyone else.  I could have avoided it altogether and preached on the wonderful psalm 8 we heard this morning.  But we have been talking about the Trinity in some way or another ever since Easter, so this morning I will avoid doctrine and try to talk about the trinity in a very practical way.

Happy Birthday everyone!  Pentecost is often seen as when the Christian Church was born.  The apostle Peter says in today’s reading from Acts 2 (v.17), quoting the prophet Joel, “in the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”  In the New Testament, the phrase ‘last days’ refers to the time between when Jesus ascended to the Father and when he returns in the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.  All flesh, that is all human beings, now have access to the Holy Spirit.  God pours the Holy Spirit into us when we come to faith and are baptised, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  So thus, the Church was born at Pentecost.

Now today we are celebrating Ascension Day which fell three days ago on Thursday, which happened forty days after the resurrection. Now, if you would, I’d like us to consider the ascension as the essential ‘third movement’ of the completion of Jesus’ work – death on the cross, resurrection, and ascension.

Today is the last in our little series on discipleship. This week, we look at you and me as individuals and how we get to be an important and functional part of this unique thing we call the Church.

So in this season of new life, we continue to look at what it means to be disciples of Jesus. Last week we looked at the first part of Peter’s letter to the church where he establishes our distinct identity as a Holy People, a Royal Priesthood, as a people whose primary loyalty is to Jesus.  He now turns to the subject of our relationship to the non-Christian world we live in.

Last week we spoke about how the Holy Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, opens up wide the lives of we disciples.  We believe in one God, they are fully unified.  This week we look at what might happen in the life of the church if we were unified in the same way that God is unified.

On the same day that Jesus was mightily raised from the dead, he breathed the Holy Spirit, the Holy Wind, into his disciples and telling them they will be sent by Jesus in the same way he was sent by the Father.

Shortly we will receive the Eucharist, the body of Christ who is the bread of life, a true and real symbol of forgiveness and a new beginning. Let this be the moment when we put it all behind us and we allow Jesus to breathe his Spirit on us and say to each one of us, “Peace be with you…Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Every day, we just remain in Jesus in this newness of life brought about by the resurrection we celebrate this evening.  Trusting in his love and forgiveness.  Hanging out with him all the time.  Now, not just later in heaven.  Now.  Jesus is risen and the Kingdom of God is truly among us.  Alleluia! 

All these questions.

But the Good Friday message is always the same and the biggest of all the questions remains the same. What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us on the cross?

Matthew leaves out talk of victory to stress humility.  Jesus, in his entry into Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives rides a humble donkey.  Triumphant Kings and warriors rode war horses, didn’t they?  The donkey is absurd, isn’t it?   

Then we come to a moment of emotional intensity unmatched in the New Testament.  Jesus sees Mary crying and he begins to weep himself. Jesus cries with Mary. What a powerful example of Jesus’ compassion and what a testament to his fullest embodiment of the human emotional life.

The religious leaders even turn against the now-sighted man with disgust that he, a sinner, would deign to tell them how to think about Jesus. You can almost smell the self-righteousness of these affronted religious types. We know them in our own time. They often get caught offending in just the way they accuse others of sinning.

Time and again we see the witness of an individual, in this case the Samaritan woman at the well, lead to a whole group believing in Christ.  Jesus stays in the village for two days.  The people are first drawn to listen to Jesus by her witness, then converted by Christ himself. 

In terms of humans being in control of their own lives, of course the cross is a moment of profound humiliation and defeat. But in John, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are collapsed into a single movement of absolute divine control or God being sovereign and in control of everything.

These messianic temptations were the devil’s ways of tempting Jesus to bypass the cross, to satisfy the expectations of the Jews and bring down the fire of heaven on the Romans. To be a hero. To be obedient to someone other than God and adopt the role of the Son and King of Kings without being the suffering servant prophesied in Isaiah.