a liberationist sermon forAscension day, May day andinternational workers' day

I love the Church Calendar. The high days and holy days, and especially the seasons of the Church year. They make me feel comfortable and part of something very ancient and which will continue, hopefully, long after I’m gone. Every year the liturgy, attached, as it is, to the calendar of the Church, leads me on a journey which is paradoxically, both, always the same and, if you are open to the Spirit of God, always full of novelty and new experiences.

There was a time, during the Middle Ages, when the Church Calendar dictated the social life of the nation. There were an incredible number of holy days and people regarded them as holidays, days on which they did not work. We tend to think that back then life was just ceaseless toil, but that is not true - we work far harder and for longer hours nowadays than our ancestors did 600 years ago. Unfortunately, Oliver Cromwell and his fellow puritans put a stop to most of these enjoyments and then the nail was finally put in the coffin of civilised working practices during the industrial revolution when working people in our country became little more than slaves.

During the early part of the 20th. Century there was a move in England to give some time back to the working classes. We began to be given bank holidays and some of these holidays were holy days or followed holy days. Unfortunately, that was a short lived era and, as our country becomes more and more unchristianised, the link between bank holidays and religion becomes ever weaker. Even the concept of national holidays is pretty much out the window now. Business would have every commercial enterprise open 365 days of the year if they could and it won’t be long before they achieve that. As usual, it is the poorer people of our land who suffer most - shopworkers, cleaners, call-centre staff, lorry drivers even.

The problem is that nobody wants to stop. Both as a nation and as individuals, we have an overwhelming fear of not being busy and also an overwhelming urge to rush on to the next thing. This is just as apparent in churchy things as it is in the secular world. People start thinking about Christmas as soon as the schools go back in September and even regular churchgoers are guilty of thinking more about Christmas presents and Christmas food during Advent than the four last things. And when does the season of Christmas end. Well, when I was young, it used to end on the first working day of January when the shops reopened and the sales began. Now the shops are open on St. Stephen’s day and people are working all through Christmas night to get the shops ready for the sales. Some Christians might manage to limp through, halfheartedly to Epiphany on the 6th. of January, but it takes a brave vicar, like Chris, to insist that there is, at least, some reference to the birth of Jesus in our liturgy through to the official ending of the Christmas season on Candlemass, the 2nd of February.

Is any of this important? Well,the outside world must make it’s own decisions regarding that. But for people in the Church it should be very important in deed. You see, the seasons did not come about by accident. They evolved over 2000 odd years. The ideas that worked were kept and the ideas that did not work were moved or changed until we came to a point where our calendar was workable, logical and, above all, useful in the personal and communal life pilgrimage of our people.

The first season of the church year to evolve was Easter. The feast days of Easter Sunday, Ascension Day and Pentecost have been celebrated for over 1700 years - we don’t know exactly how long because we don’t have the records to give us exact dates. It seems almost certain that the season of Easter ran from Easter Day to Pentecost before 300 A. D. And that is the period of time we keep to today.

However, as a fixed period of time it is a little unhelpful because, for the faithful Christian, the Easter journey begins on Palm Sunday with Christ entering Jerusalem. There then follows Holy Week and the events of Good Friday before we get to the joy of Christ’s resurrection. The joy of Easter begins on Easter Day, but that joy cannot be fully appreciated or understood if it is not linked in our minds with the pain of Christ’s desolation on the cross. Good Friday and Easter Day belong together.

And the same is true of Ascension Day and Pentecost. In fact, there are many similarities between both sets of days. Good Friday is a day of loss but also a day of triumph. Ascension Day is a day of loss but it is also the day on which Jesus is shown in his full majesty. Easter Day redeems Good Friday and Pentecost equips the people of Jesus Christ so that they can be, forever, proclaimers of that Easter redemption.

Holy Week and Easter Day tell us about the true nature of Jesus Christ and his Father in heaven. Ascension Day and Pentecost tell us about our true nature, the nature that has been given us by God, the inheritance of our faith. You see, at the beginning of Passiontide we were children but by the end of Whitsunday we should be adults.

On Good Friday, Jesus died. It was as if we children had lost our mother. But then, joy he is risen, we have him back, we can go back to being children and for 40 days we are. But then, today, the truth is shown to us. Jesus, who has been such a good parent to us, on whom we relied for everything, cannot stay with us. He has to move on. He has to leave us and he does. Like orphans we are left confused and scared. But then, on the day of Pentecost we discover God the Father’s true sacrificial love for his children. God loves us so much that he gives us our freedom and he puts his trust in us, even though he knows that we will abuse that trust and even though, like a mother watching her child leave home, he knows we will experience much pain in our adult lives.

On Ascension Day, the Church, however you wish to define it, is handed over to us. It is the parting gift of Jesus. With the Church comes adult responsibility but, on the Day of Pentecost we will discover how God will help us take on that responsibility. Easter is not yet over. Hang on in there just a little while longer.

There is another theme in today’s commemoration that I would like to draw your attention to as I finish this sermon, as it is a very important them for us. This year, Ascension Day has fallen on the 1st. of May. That’s purely coincidental but it’s also very useful for our education. It is May Day, an ancient festival on which we look forward to the Summer and hope for clement weather that will bring us a bounteous harvest.

If today wasn’t Ascension Day, in the Roman Catholic Church they would be celebrating the feast of Joseph the Worker and it is, most definitely, the International Day of the Worker on which the working people of the world celebrate the fact that they are people of value and when they hope for fairer wages and for precious time to be returned to them to be enjoyed with their families, friends and, in some cases, with their god.

We Christians should celebrate these festivals as well. We should celebrate May Day and pray for a bounteous harvest, especially at this time when how much we’ve messed up our environment is becoming increasingly apparent. We should celebrate with the working people and share their hopes and burdens because Jesus tells us to. But, as Christians, we also have our own hopes, and on this day when we commemorate Christ ascending to his Father, our hope, our great and certain hope, is that he will return to his people to gather in the harvest at the end of days. And our hope, as always, is that he will come soon.