Help us to seek and serve you

Today is Ascension Day. When Jesus died and rose again, for forty days he appeared visibly to his friends, and taught them about the mammoth task he was setting them, of converting the whole world to Christ. Then he withdrew his visible presence from them. They described it as his ascension into heaven, but they knew as well as we do that heaven isn’t a place ‘up there’. It’s a higher level of existence, life lived in full fellowship with our heavenly Father. The point was to make the disciples realize that they were no longer going to be able to see Jesus on earth. But that didn’t mean Jesus would no longer be with them; they’d have to learn to believe in his invisible presence.

Whenever I consider serving, this invisible, Christ in any way, I find my thoughts drawn to a particular passage from St Matthew’s Gospel.

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Matthew 25:35-40 (NRSV)

The window above the St Anne Altar in Godmanchester Church depicts that very passage. It’s a fine example of stained glass by Burlinson & Grylls, a firm set up in 1868 by G F Bodley, perhaps the most scholarly of all Victorian Revival architects. We have some very special stained glass in the Church, but this is one of my favourite windows there; perhaps because many of our smaller services are celebrated at that altar, so over the years I’ve seen it quite frequently.

This passage, the window in Church, and these words from the Collect for Ascension Day, “help us to seek and serve you”, remind me that when we care for others, we can never really know who we might actually be serving. We should always try to serve everyone as if we were serving Christ himself — we just might be!

When we truly seek to serve Christ in everyone we meet, when we truly love others as if they were Christ himself, our human nature just might be raised to the throne of heaven. To my mind that is the true vocation, the true ministry, of each of us; and everything else flows from that.

Risen Christ,
you have raised our human nature to the throne of heaven:
help us to seek and serve you
that we may join you at the Father’s side,
where you reign with the Spirit in glory,
now and for ever.

Additional Collect for Ascension Day
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council