Readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on May 17, 2026.
Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart there ascend, and with him continually dwell forever and ever. Amen.
On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, we are in a season within a season. While we are still in the season of Eastertide, we have also entered the season of Ascensiontide. This last Thursday, when the clergy of our diocese gathered in Healdsburg for our annual clergy conference, the church celebrated the major Feast of the Ascension, a feast that commemorates Christ’s ascension into heaven, which is an ancient and poetic way of describing Christ’s transition into a higher dimension of transcendence. Christ represents the new Elijah whose dramatic ascent into heaven resulted in the outpouring of his prophetic spirit upon his protégé Elisha who witnessed the prophet being carried away in a “fiery ordeal.” In our reading this morning from Acts, we learn that the disciples were also gazing up towards the sky as Christ ascended, likely hoping and expecting to receive the promised outpouring of Christ’s prophetic spirit, which is the Holy Spirit of God. But unlike Elisha, these disciples did not receive the spirit of their master instantly. According to Luke, they waited for ten days before the Holy Spirit descended; and these are the ten days of Ascensiontide, the season that began last Thursday and concludes this next Sunday at Pentecost! Throughout church history, Christians have observed Ascensiontide as a time of prayerful longing and anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Similar to Advent, Ascension includes its own “O Antiphon” prayer: O King of glory, Lord of hosts, who did ascend triumphantly above all the heavens, leave us not orphaned, but send upon us the Promise of the Father, the Spirit of Truth, Alleluia. The prayers of Ascensiontide echo themes spoken by Jesus in John chapters 13 – 17, his final words given to his disciples in the intimacy of the Upper Room, which is exactly where the disciples go after witnessing the Ascension. According to our reading from Acts, the eleven disciples and Mary returned to Jerusalem and went to the room upstairs where they had been staying.
During their ten days of prayer, the disciples likely remembered the words of their rabbi, words that comforted and reassured them, words that we are invited to reflect upon and abide in during this season of Ascensiontide or during any season in our lives when the old has gone and the new has not yet arrived. They remembered Jesus saying to them in that same upper room, “Love one another as I have loved you; this is how everyone will know you are my disciples, by your love” (13:34 – 35); “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (14:1); “I will not leave you as orphans” (14:18); “I leave you my peace…do not be afraid” (14:27); “Abide in me and I will abide in you…and you will bear much fruit” (15:4 – 5); “As the Father has loved me so I love you. Now abide in my love” (15:9); “My joy will be in you and your joy will be complete…and no one will take your joy away” (15:11; 16:22, 24); “I no longer call you servants; I now call you my friends” (15:15); “When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (16:13); “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (16:33). These were some of the words Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room before he looked up to heaven and prayed the prayer we just heard read, the prayer known as the high priestly prayer of Jesus in which he asks that we all may be one as he and the Father are one (17:11).
Christ’s prayer for our unity with one another and our unity with him echoes a central image and theme that permeates the Upper Room Discourse, but which is not apparent at all in our English translations. And it is this theme and image that I offer us to prayerfully consider today and throughout the remaining days of Ascensiontide. The Gospel of John invites us to listen to the wind, to taste the water of life, to move from merely looking to a deeper kind of seeing, to engage honestly with our emotions, to touch the Risen Christ, and to get in touch with our sixth sense: the heart sense. In the Upper Room Discourse, where the beloved disciple leans on the bosom of Jesus listening to his heartbeat, Jesus refers to the heart at least five times. In the original Koine Greek, when Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” or “Your hearts will be filled with sorrow” or “Your hearts will rejoice,” he is always speaking to his disciples in the plural (“y’all”) but always referring to the heart as singular. So, he’s saying, “Do not let your collective heart be troubled”; “Your collective heart will be sad, but soon your collective heart will rejoice.” When Jesus looks at us here at Christ Church, he sees us as one collective heart. Our personal heart-to-heart relationship with Christ is important, but if that’s all we have, then we are failing to fulfill the high priestly prayer of Jesus who prayed that we may be one as he and the Father are one, that we may be one heart.
The speaker at our clergy conference was Bishop Rob Wright of the Diocese of Atlanta who reminded us that the Cross has both vertical and horizontal axes. In other words, our relationship with God demands not only the fusing of our hearts with Christ but also the fusing of our hearts with the people of God, so that we become one heart. If we claim to have a personal relationship with Christ but do not attend church on a regular basis, then we are choosing not to prioritize the most important relationship in our lives, our relationship with God. Of course, the converse is also true: if we just go to church on Sundays, but fail to cultivate any personal connection with Christ, we are choosing not to prioritize the most important relationship in our lives. And if that’s what we’re doing, God still loves us, but we should admit that we are choosing not to grow in our spiritual lives, according to the teachings of Christ; according to the teachings of the One who prayed for our unity, who saw our hearts as one collective heart, and who did not pour out his Holy Spirit upon his people until they were all gathered together as one in the same room, in prayer and worship, as we are gathered together here now, as one heart.
Bishop Rob Wright also said that perhaps the most biblically informed musician of the 20th century was Bob Marley, who often transformed his concerts into prayer and worship services and who understood the High Priestly prayer of Christ and the teachings of the Upper Room Discourse when he sang, “One love / One heart / Let’s get together and feel alright / Give thanks and praise to the Lord and we will feel alright.”
As we pray together and as we gather at the altar for Eucharist, may we not only lift our hearts to the Lord, but also lift our collective heart to the Lord so that as we believe Christ to have ascended into heaven, we may also in one heart there ascend, and with him continually dwell forever. Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 