Luke 24: 44-53; Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26

One morning, a couple of weeks ago, as I was walking down the busy main road that leads from my home to the local train station, a large black dog bounded up to me and began to enthusiastically make my acquaintance. He looked like a cross between a black Retriever and a Doberman, and despite his size, I could tell that he was still a pup – a pup astray in the chaos of the morning rush hour traffic.

Fortunately, he had a tag on his collar, which had his name and a phone number. Unfortunately, when I dialled the number, the owner informed me that he was on the other side of the city at work. So I agreed to return the dog to his home which was located nearby.

But as, dog in tow, I approached the house, I could see that it stood in stark contrast to its neighbours. The politest thing I can say was that it was unkempt. Old and seemingly disused cars were parked in the driveway and front yard; what grass there was, was overgrown and choked with weeds; and the house was in a state of considerable disrepair. As I approached the gate to the back yard, I could see that it was in an even worse state: completely overrun with weeds and cluttered with junk. Moreover, the yard was tiny, far too small for a dog of this size and liveliness; and the fences were hopelessly inadequate to the task of preventing him from escaping.

As I lead the dog through the back gate, he began to cry and whimper, clearly distressed at the prospect of being left in this squalid little yard. And when I reached over the gate to snib the lock, he reared up on his hind legs, placed his front paws over my hands, and rested his head on his paws, as though begging me not to leave him.

I can tell you, it was very hard to withdraw my hand and turn away from the pleading clearly evident in his beautiful, intelligent eyes.

But as I turned away, I noticed a woman pull into the driveway of the house next door, so I went across to explain my presence and let her know that I had returned her neighbour’s dog.

“That poor dog!” she sighed, her face softening into an expression of sorrow. “That’s the second time he’s escaped this week!”

I explained that the dog was probably bored.

“Yes,” the woman said, her voice harsh with anger. “Bored and lonely.”

Eventually, I made my way back to the station and caught a train that would take me into the city and my morning lecture at university. But as the carriage rattled along, it seemed to me inevitable that the dog, driven by boredom and frustration, would once again escape; and it seemed to me equally inevitable that in doing so, he would eventually come to a bad end, most likely under the wheels of a car on the busy main road. It did not seem likely that my having to rescue the dog on this occasion would make his owner take his responsibilities any more seriously. There just seemed a terrible certainty that the neglect would continue – with tragic and predictable results.

You’ll understand that the last thing I felt like was someone who had done a good deed.

Sometimes, life seems to have a remorseless, pitiless quality. Even something as apparently trivial as an encounter with a stray dog can make us feel helpless before the forces of the universe or the seemingly random strokes of fate. There are times when it seems that no matter what we do, the best we can hope for is to delay the inevitable; or simply watch in impotent resignation as our best efforts come to nothing. There are times when we feel small and insignificant, abandoned by any power for good; times when you can understand why some people feel there is no God – or that if God exists, then God cares nothing for humanity or for creation. We are on our own.

I wouldn’t mind betting that more than one of the disciples felt this way on the day of the Ascension. It must have felt as though they were being abandoned, as though fate were playing some kind of cruel trick on them. They had been through an emotional roller coaster of unimaginable proportions: first, witnessing Jesus’ brutal death; then, as they were hiding themselves away, terror stricken, the unbelievable news of the Resurrection; then the various appearance events, such as at Emmaus; and, at the last, Jesus himself coming and standing among them. Can you imagine what that was like – to go through the emotional back and forth of despair and euphoria, to struggle with the choice between believing the incredible and giving it all up as a bad joke?

In the passage from Luke’s Gospel immediately before today’s reading, we are told that the disciples were terrified when Jesus stood among them – they thought they were seeing a ghost! And Jesus names their fear: he says, why are you afraid, why do you doubt that I am real? And he invites them to touch his flesh and watch him eat food so that they may understand that he has, indeed, risen and stands among them, solid reality and not an illusion.

But even as joy begins to take hold, doubts linger, fears surface. This seems too good to be true. There has to be a catch, a rider, the cosmic equivalent of the fine print that life always seems to throw up at us and which we never get the chance to read. You can almost hear the disciples thinking: What cruel trick is going to be played, what practical joke that will dash our hopes and make us look stupid?

As it becomes apparent to the disciples that Jesus is taking them to Bethany in order to say goodbye, I’ll bet more than one of them thought: So this is it – this is the end of the great adventure, the great story. This is the bit where you tell us it was good while it lasted, but now you gotta go, leaving us stranded in a cold and hostile world. What point faith they must have wondered: what point discipleship; what point believing?

We’ve all had experiences like this, times when our hopes have been dashed and our expectations have lead only to bitter disappointment. Sometimes our naivety is to blame; sometimes it is because we are deceived by others. But so often it seems that there is no reason at all, no reason whatsoever, why the good thing for which we have hoped is snatched away from us. And it is in these moments of hurt and anguish when the temptation to lapse into despair looms large, when the appeal of cynicism and wallowing in a sense of our own misfortune is hard to resist.

It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not fair! I can quite easily imagine that these words were ringing in more than one disciples’ mind, even as they ring in our own minds when our dreams come to nothing, when our hopes collapse into ashes and heartache.

But it is precisely at this low point, when joy and despair are still battling for possession of the disciples, that Jesus meets them and holds them. Not with pretty words and false promises, but simply by speaking directly into their situation. Jesus explains that his life, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection have all been the fulfilment of prophecy; but that is not the end of the great story, that is not the point at which the Good News falls silent. Because the reason why Jesus is the fulfilment of prophecy is so that the next great story – the story that involves you and I and all humanity – it is so this story can begin.

That story is the story of salvation. And it is a story with a simple and powerful and dramatic plot: repentance and the forgiveness of sin, for all the nations.

And we get a glimpse of this story in action in today’s reading from Acts, concerning as it does the selection of a new disciple to replace Judas. For this passage tells us something interesting about Jesus’ ministry: that beyond the disciple group who followed Jesus from place to place, there existed a wider group of believers, people who lived in Galilee or Jerusalem or other places – people who had heard Jesus’ teachings or witnessed his miracles and recognised him as the Messiah. And it is from this wider group of believers that the new disciple is chosen. So even during his lifetime, even while he is bringing the old story of prophecy to its conclusion – and laying the foundations for the new story of salvation – Jesus gives us a glimpse of what that new story will look like. It’s a bit like the Prologue in The Lord of the Rings, in which JRR Tolkien gives us a quick look at the hobbits; so the presence of this wider group of believers gives us an idea about the shape of the story of salvation.

And the word to describe that shape is inclusion. Even during his own lifetime, Jesus has been drawing people into the Kingdom. But the task of the disciples, the great story established by Jesus that draws in the whole of humanity, is to extend the Kingdom throughout the earth – beginning with Jerusalem, then all of Israel, and finally, the whole world. Because the great story that Jesus creates is not just about the fulfilment of prophecy; it is about hope, it is about the possibility of being drawn into the orbit of God’s grace – it is about us.

It comes as a surprise to many people to discover that we are the story which Jesus creates. We’re very good at reminding ourselves that we are not worthy of God’s love and redemption, that by our own efforts we cannot hope to be saved. But we’re not so good at remembering that, in Christ, God has declared that, our unworthiness aside, we are nonetheless acceptable to God – that God desires us and our salvation, and accordingly invites us into relationship with God through the experience of faith. You are the witnesses Jesus says to the disciples, a group of people who have denied him, who have deserted him, who have failed to understand him; you are the witnesses – not because you are perfect, but precisely the opposite. Because you are imperfect, and it is in your imperfection that you are acceptable to God – because the whole of the sacred history of Israel, reflected in the Old Testament, is the record of God working through humanity’s imperfection, making us greater than our limitations, making us more than merely human.

You are the witnesses. This is the title of the story of salvation. And like all great stories, it covers the whole spectrum of human experience, from the joyous to the tragic. And like all great stories, it does not end with a neat conclusion, with a happily ever after; its conclusion is ambiguous, and open. It is a story that continues beyond the words on the page.

Earlier, by way of introducing you to today’s readings, I read to you from the closing passages of The Return of the King, the final part of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But I didn’t read you the final passage of all, which reads as follows:

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went. But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.

This is a story in which there is no neat, happily-ever-after ending. Because after his great adventure, Sam has to go back and resume the business of life, with all its uncertainties and unpredictability. But what we are not told is that all the words that make up the story of The Lord of the Rings is simply a prelude to Sam coming home; the real story begins when he says Well, I’m back. And that is the meaning of the story which Jesus creates; it can only begin once he has left us, when, like Gandalf and Frodo, he has departed the shores of this earth. Not because we are being abandoned, but simply because it is we who must tell the tale. You are the witnesses, Jesus says to his disciples and to every one of us; you – we – are the ones who must proclaim, who must take up the tale where the Gospel writers leave off.

And we do not tell that story unaided, for in both of today’s readings we are told that the Spirit will be – and has been – sent: to guide us, to council us, to be our friend and companion on the road. And just as Merry and Pippin stood with Sam by the shores of Middle-Earth and in their ministry of presence provided him with both comfort and strength, so the Spirit, in its ministry is present in our lives, holds us in the compassion in which Jesus held the disciples as he blessed them and said farewell. Go in peace! Gandalf says; I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. And even as the disciples returned to Jerusalem in great joy, do not imagine for a moment that they were not also weeping; for as Tolkien’s great friend C S Lewis reminds us, joy is not about euphoria or ecstasy – it is about holding together the great sorrow and the great delight that are the truth of all existence.

Jesus knew this; and so he did not lie to the disciples. There are no false hopes, no easy promises, no guarantees that faith will shield them from suffering or make them immune to tragedy. Jesus tells his disciples Peace be with you and reminds them of the promise of the Spirit as he commissions them in their ministry of witness. But he does not promise them that their lives will be easy, or that their days will end in comfort and veneration. Because what Jesus is offering them is something richer, and fuller, and greater: it is life in all its abundance – the good, the bad, the indifferent -, met through the experience of faith.

And it is what Jesus offers us today. Even as we look around and seemingly behold nothing more than a Church which is withering away under the impact of diminishing congregations and increased hostility to faith within society, we are reminded again that the great story of which we are a part is greater than its participants. The Church will – and is – changing, is becoming something other than what it was; but whatever form it takes, it will still be the Church, and You are the witnesses is still the great story which Jesus created and which we proclaim.

There are, of course, some things that are inevitable, which we cannot change. Like stray dogs who go astray because of their owners neglect, there are some hurts which we cannot avoid. But, just as the disciples after the Ascension did not succumb to despair, neither should we: for all that faith requires is that we surrender ourselves to the possibility of hope. Hope that is to be found, not in empty promises or in easy answers; rather, it is the hope that is the covenant of Christ, the ministry of the Spirit, and the undying love of God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.