Ezekiel 36:24-28
Acts 16:19-31
John 17:20-26

So, Jesus is ascended! Whatever else that meant for the disciples - whatever it may mean for us - Jesus was no longer alongside them in the way that he had been. In terms of physical presence, he was gone. And they were alone, alone with their fears and confusions. Jesus had made promises to them, but it seemed as if whatever it was that they had to do was now down to them. To all human appearances they were alone.

Alone, but in some way still committed to following the way along which he called them, to be witnesses of the kingdom inaugurated in him but now - frighteningly - entrusted to them. No longer alongside them, they could not, however, escape the power of his call, his words, his works, his obedience, his passion and death, and more than anything his resurrection. They were still struggling to understand the events that shattered and transformed their lives. Jesus was gone. Seemingly they were alone.

And yet today's readings point us to the possibility of a power at work in human lives, but clearly not of human making, available to Jesus' disciples even when Jesus seems to have been taken up into the clouds of our unknowing and incomprehension. What I'm going to do this morning is look at the three reading's we've just heard, and see what they have to say to us today.

First, Ezekiel's words. Here is a prophet caught up in vision and confusion, in exile and in return from exile. Sitting among those who were struggling with faith in a God who had promised presence but who seemed to have abandoned them. The crisis in which the house of Israel was caught up was of their own making. Ezekiel tells them: I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood that they shed upon the land, and for the idols with which they had defiled it.

They were a people who had profaned the holy name of God. But these were God's covenant people, and now for the sake of the holiness and sanctity of God's own name he offers them restoration, renewal and newness:

I will sanctify my great name…I will gather you from all the countries… I will sprinkle clean water upon you… A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you… And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

And so for this exiled people, estranged, alienated, lost, confused and without hope, a new word of promise is spoken. And the claim is that it is a word from God. God, the God of the covenant promise, will act to restore exiles to their own land, will bring the estranged home, will restore faith in the confused and hope in the despairing. Here is the possibility of restoration and newness.

In a society where the possibility of God is no longer a reality for so many, where God is, in Richard Dawkins' words, no longer necessary, and where so many people feel exiled in their own land and countless others are strangers and aliens, God continues the work of restoring and renewing. This is the promise of Pentecost to disciples baffled by Ascension. It is the promise of restoration and renewal of confidence to 21st century disciples who - like those first disciples - have lost their confidence and nerve. Grasp the possibility of newness, God says, and face the future of God's kingdom with new life and hope. After all, it is not an accident that it is in the next chapter of Ezekiel that the dried up bones are brought to life and hope is restored. Here, then, is the restoring power of God.

Moving on to our next Bible reading, there is an equally powerful promise in the account of Paul and Silas in prison in Acts 16. Here were two apostles, witnessing to the challenge and the promise of the crucified and risen Jesus. They questioned religious conventions and traditions, and challenged those that used religions for their own ends. Like prophets, such as Elijah before them, they were seen as disturbers, rocking the comfortable peace of Philippi. Stripped and beaten they were put in prison, with their feet fastened in stocks. Their disturbing witness to Jesus was silenced and chained.

What happened next may well be beyond rational explanation, but prayer, praise and worship and a violent earthquake rocked the very foundations of the prison. Chains no longer held any power over the word of God. The authorities panicked - not unreasonably! But Paul and Silas remained in the prison and rejected the possibility of escape. Such courage and determination brought the jailer to his knees: What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whatever was intended by the account of these events, one thing is very clear: the jails of earthly empires and the shackles and chains of prison cells cannot, in the end, silence the promise or undermine the power of the Good News of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. There was at work here a power which all the might of empire could not thwart. Disturbing as the witness to the Good News may be in all generations, it can still rock the foundations. It can still set people free, jailers and jailed, oppressors and oppressed. It can still liberate lives and transform people. This too is the power of resurrection, the power that shatters the confines of tombs. It is the power of new life. It is, in other words, the liberating power of God in Jesus Christ.

And finally, in our third reading from John's gospel, we have the prayer Jesus offered with and for his disciples before his passion and crucifixion. It is a prayer for God's gift of unity, reconciliation, and wholeness in Jesus, through the Church's witness. Some would see here a well-worn theme and, perhaps, an over-exposed and over-used passage of Scripture, but what does it have to add to the restoring and liberating power of God?

Some key words stand out from the passage: one, world, in, believe, glory, loved. These are the ingredients for a vision of the church in today's world. There is no longer an over-arching narrative that accounts for our story as peoples, truth is thought by many to be no more than any truth as understood by any one particular person, and words mean what we choose them to mean. To this Jesus prays us into a new vision. It is a vision of a worldwide community loved unconditionally by God, rooted in the love of God, and created for God's glory. It is a calling to the church, the people of God, to live - in all the kaleidoscopic richness of our diversities - in oneness and wholeness, claiming every other person, whatever their differences from us, as sisters and brothers in Christ. Jesus, the Ascended Lord, prays that we may be energized by his love to become a community of wholeness and hopefulness that can bring the world also to wholeness and hope. Here, then, is the uniting power of God.

So Jesus was gone. They were alone, and yet among them, as among us, is the restoring power of God, the liberating power of God, and the uniting power of God.

Jesus, stand among us
In your risen power.