Husband, father, and Anglican priest living in the North Georgia Mountains. Sermons, reflections, and articles promoting the "Ancient Faith for Modern Times". Subscribe below to get the latest posts in your inbox.
The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation, who breathed life into dry bones, who fell like wind and fire in Jerusalem — has been given to us. Not as a memory. As a present reality. Pentecost is not history. It is where we live.
Pentecost is not a spiritual experience that can be kept private. The Spirit comes with wind and fire and immediately produces proclamation. To receive the Spirit is to be sent. Every generation of the Church stands in the same need: pour out this gift anew.
Jesus doesn't pray for his people to be taken out of the world. He prays for them to be kept in his name and sent into it. The new creation is underway and we are part of it through kingdom work — and he is still praying for us at the right hand of the Father.
The last thing the disciples saw of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel was his hands raised over them in blessing. He was carried up in the middle of it. The blessing did not stop when he disappeared. It is still in progress. Ascension Day is the feast of a presence, not an absence.
The Feast of the Ascension celebrates not the disappearance of Jesus, but his exaltation — and not his distance from us, but the new and greater intimacy of his priestly presence before the Father on our behalf. The Feast Day still presses its claims on us today.
Jesus says abide in me — not a dramatic command, just stay connected. The branch doesn't produce fruit by trying harder. It produces fruit by staying on the vine. Apart from him we can do nothing. But abide in him, and the fruit comes. And at the end of it all: our joy will be full.