Today my friends we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at the time of the Jewish harvest festival called Shavuot, or the festival of weeks, or Pentecost, as it was fifty days after the Passover.

Jesus ends today’s gospel with,

“’I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father…  If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, the helper, to be with you forever.  17 This is the Spirit of truth, … You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you’”  (Jn 14:14-17 selected).

That’s what this day, the Day of Pentecost, is about.  It’s about the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ sending the Advocate, the Comforter, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to the church, to help the church, who, as one, are the children of God.

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

I found this confirmed in my reading this week, as the gospels, Acts and Peter’s and Paul’s letters also see Ascension Day as a third movement of the completion of Jesus’ work as the Son of Man.

Here is just a sampling of how Scripture refers to the importance of the Ascension, then we’ll conclude by looking at what that means for us.

For one last week, we look at Jesus’ remarkably comforting words to his disciples at the last supper.  This morning we are talking about that very underrated fruit of the Holy Spirit - peace.

The worldly culture we live in tries to sell us its version of it every day.  It’s not hard to see how much time and energy and attention and purpose we spend in the search for peace of some sort.

We may not use the word ‘Peace,’ but it is the one thing everyone in the world seeks.

Last week we spoke about how Jesus knows us by name, and if we listen for his voice and follow him, he will lead us into rich and protected pasture because he is a Good Shepherd.

Today’s passage from Revelation 21:1-6 shows the purpose for his shepherding of us – so we can live with God forever.  It also shows the extraordinarily deep devotion God has for his children, his people.

This reading is often heard at funerals because it offers such comfort to the grieving.  It also provides great comfort for us, the living.  Grab hold of these beautiful promises and don’t let go of them ever.

When Moses asked God, by what name should he be known, God answered, My name is “I AM.”  Seven times in John’s gospel Jesus names himself the same way, followed by an aspect of what he does for us.

Today we look at a core name of our Lord from both old and new testaments.  Jesus says earlier in this chapter from John’s gospel we heard this morning, “I am the Good Shepherd” (v.11), and more than that, in v.7 he says, “I am the gate” (or door), through which the sheep must come.

After two years of letting it lie fallow, this morning we are taking (I hope) a fresh look at what this means through the magnificent art of the 23rd Psalm.  This shows us exactly how the Lord shepherds us into fullness of life, the life of his resurrection.

This morning we are going to take a closer look at one of the most poignant and profound encounters between two people in all of the bible – the one-on-one conversation between Jesus and Peter.

Before we get there though, we need to briefly set the context for this conversation.

Although Jesus had met Peter in a group with other disciples, no gospel records a private one-on-one conversation with the person whom, from the very first calling of the disciples, was to be the rock on which Jesus would build his church.

After the two meetings with all the disciples we read about last week, Jesus had vanished again, and Peter was still tormented by guilt and things unsaid.  So he went back to Galilee, to his hometown, and this is where today’s reading is set.

When we talked about this gospel passage last year, we touched very briefly on the disciple Thomas, but focussed more on the disciples as a whole and their receiving of the Holy Spirit, the very breath of the living God.

There is so much going on in today’s gospel, but every few years its is very much worth our while to look in particular at Thomas; faithful, loyal and courageous disciple.

For many centuries, he has often been referred to as Doubting Thomas.  Is this doubting aspect of Thomas really negative or should we see it as a positive trait?

Perhaps we can see it as evidence of an inquiring mind that needed to see the truth to believe, but was more than willing to believe once he saw the truth.  Perhaps he just had some questions and wanted them answered.

Two days ago, on Good Friday, we asked ourselves the central question: What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us on the cross?  We talked about how Jesus took God’s justice fully onto himself because he was the only one who could, and through his blood shed for us, we can be one with the Father in the same way Jesus is one with the Father, through faith in the same Jesus Christ.  Today let’s move on to part two of this same central question.

When Jesus died the world became a different place.  The first sign of this totally different world is what we are celebrating today.  In this new world, Jesus was raised from the dead.  Nothing short of a revolution had begun.  It wasn’t just a surprising and happy ending to what we thought was a tragedy.  It was the beginning of a new sort of life, a new way of living.  This beginning meant that what we thought was the darkest, most inevitable power in the world, death, had been defeated.

What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us, for me, on the cross?

John's Passion account is its own sermon, extending from betrayal at a place across the valley, Gethsemane, to devotion at the foot of the cross; from Peter's three-fold denial to Pilate's three-fold acquittal.

From the many who call for Jesus' crucifixion to the two who remove him from the cross; from those who bind him by force at his arrest, to those who bind him in love at his burial; from the beginning of the end in one garden to the end of the beginning in another.

On this day, like Pontius Pilot, all we have is questions.

Today we begin what’s called Holy Week, a time for the children of God to faithfully and courageously enter into the Passion of our Saviour Jesus.  Today is also a day that goes by two names.  The one that we’re most familiar with is “Palm Sunday.”

What we are seeking to do today is understand more fully what this Passion is, in order to enter it and experience it more fully in this coming week.  Holy Week and Easter are to be experienced, to be gone through, in order to come out again, filled with new life.

So in that sense, Palm Sunday is I think, the perfect day to do this, as we are in a position to survey what is happening and about to happen.

Last week we heard the story of the Prodigal Son, the great parable of the love God has for us.  God loves us when we don’t even believe in him, when we deny him, even if we are actively against him.

But we can get to know and experience this love, the same love the prodigal son received, if we want to, but just as the parable shows, God does not force himself upon us.

The great desire of God is to show the wonder of his love to you, me and all the world.  So we too turn back to the Father like the prodigal and in the so doing open ourselves up to the avalanche of the love of God.

As prodigals then, what do we do when faced with the full force of this love; this God?

One of the wonderful things about using the Revised Common Lectionary for our three-year cycle of readings is that each week we join in with millions of other Christians all round the world and listen to the same Bible readings!

We truly can say that God speaks the same message to a large group of his children each week and I think it’s also true that nearly every preacher this week will be preaching on this mornings remarkable gospel.

And this is the day, today, for that to happen.  Nothing is random in God’s Kingdom.

This, along with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, are the Great Parables of our Father’s love for us, and our love for our neighbour.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the Jesus’s testing in the wilderness and found that the temptations offered to Jesus are of the of the same type that caused a trap to spring on Adam and Eve, and how we are tempted by these very same things.

Last week in a terrific Archbishop’s sermon, Jeremy spoke of the notion that Lent is the time of waiting for the new creation t be raised – yet we, as Jesus himself did, need to live for a time in Good Friday – we cannot rush the work of God.

The Apostle Paul wrote about this often. Paul vowed to not preach anything but Christ crucified. Lent is a time when we sit with the truth of Christ walking to Jerusalem to die for the sins of the world.

Lent is a time, for sure, to recognise our need for God, but it is also a time to rejoice in the faithfulness of God, who will not let us go.  A time to recognise the very nearness of God.  

Psalm 27 speaks into that feeling because it is primarily a reflection on the nearness of God to us as we journey through life.  It’s a reflection on how God protects us and guards us even in the most difficult times of life, and how we can practically seek God out when life is tough for us.  Lent is not only about sackcloth and ashes.

Psalm 27 reminds us of closeness and intimacy that we share with God.  This sounds great when things are going well, but what about when we are struggling.

There is a saying that the very worst lie has a kernel of truth.  Now a lie is something that is completely untrue; so the most deceptive form of this has at its core a truth that has been manipulated to mean the opposite.

This is how the devil lied to Jesus and how we too, are lied to.

As we read Luke’s version, I think a helpful way to do so is to view this passage as two competing narratives.  The first story line is the story that Jesus draws on in order to resist the devil and successfully navigate the lies told to him.

The second story line is the narrative the devil presents.  From the text, we see that he is bold, cunning, clever, and powerful.  It is the devil who tempts, not God.

Our Old Testament, New Testament and gospel readings for today all have something to do with our faces.  Moses and Jesus on the mountain of Transfiguration.

And, according to Paul, all believers who, when with unveiled faces we see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into that same, yet ever intensifying glory.  For this comes from the Holy Spirit.  

As I say quite often, I have the great privilege of seeing your faces when we worship together and as I have also mentioned, they are different at the end of the service than the beginning.

They are softer, more peaceful, and yes, more radiant.  This is not my imagination.  So if this is evident after a worship service; imagine what they would look like after a direct, one-on-one meeting this God.

Over the last couple of weeks the readings have filled us with the glorious truth that when we are blessed by God, flowing in his full current and allowing our souls to magnify the Lord, all we do for the Lord will also be blessed and bear fruit for the world to eat.

In order that they may taste and see that the Lord is good.

Today we are looking at the second half of Luke’s record of Jesus’ ‘sermon on the mount’. (except in Luke, Jesus has led the people to a level place, so in Luke it is the ‘sermon on the plain.’)

All of today’s readings are similar in that they make the stark comparison between trusting and follow the Lord God Almighty, or trusting and following mere mortals.

All our readings show that living a faithful, trusting life in Christ, God the Son, attracts blessings, and living a life trusting and hoping in fleshly mortal strength attracts what Jesus calls ‘Woe’ (Luke 6:24-25), and Jeremiah more bluntly, ‘Curses’ (Jer 17:5).

If we are blessed, we are fulfilled in some way, and live a fortunate life, knowing in a very present sense that God is with us personally, helping us, and that he loves us very much and is always faithful.

This is the blessed life and everyone wants this, I think.  Happiness and a fortunate life by being fulfilled in some way.

What wonderful readings to have in this season of Epiphany!  The season we celebrate God revealing himself as the Saviour of all the World.  Our God reveals himself to us.

Our readings from Isaiah and Luke this morning have quite a bit in common.  The most obvious is that they are both a commissioning:  of Isaiah and the disciples.  Last week we heard the commissioning of the prophet Jeremiah as a boy.

The wonderful OT reading from Isaiah is transcendent and truly intimate at the same time.  It is well-known and loved by many people, especially clergy.

They speak of it as the passage that God revealed himself to them and asked, “who will go for me?” and they have answered from the very core of their spirit and soul, “here am I, send me.”

Paul – the only thing that matters is faith worked out as love.

Today our reading from Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians continues directly on from last week, and is a particularly well-loved and popular passage of Scripture.  It speaks about love, and does so beautifully.

Because it is so spiritually powerful, it demands much from us and is a hard reading in many ways because we can struggle to understand the breath-taking beauty of the great love of God revealed here.

But it is also one of the most faith-affirming passages in Scripture and brings as very close to God indeed.