Bible Reading: Ezekiel 36:24-28;

This sermon was preached on Sunday 1st June 2025.

On Thursday, it was Ascension Day. It is the day, forty days after Easter, when Jesus said goodbye to his disciples and ascended into heaven. He has returned to heaven, but that is not the end of his story. Jesus gives his disciples a special mission to go out and tell the world about him.

It sounds like a big deal, doesn’t it? It’s a huge job. How can this small group of people spread the good news about Jesus across the world? How were the disciples to do this? Even if the task felt impossible, this is the mission that Jesus gave to his disciples.

It is important to clarify that when I say that Jesus gave this mission to his disciples, it was not just for the original twelve disciples, but it is the mission for every disciple and follower of Jesus that has ever been, including you. Jesus asks you to go and be his witness to all the world. Jesus asks you to tell all those around you about him, and for your life to reflect his presence in your life.

It sounds like a big ask of us from Jesus. There will be a mixture of feelings we have about this. Some of us will feel pumped and ready for it. But I imagine that there are many of us who feel like we can’t do it. You say to Jesus, ‘I don’t know if I can do it. I’m not good at talking to others about my faith. I’m too shy, I’m not very good at explaining things, I’ve not read the whole Bible, and I’ve got more questions than answers. Jesus, if you knew what I was really like, you would know that I’m not good enough, I’ve done too many wrong things, I keep messing things up again and again, I’m too unclean. How can people look at me and see you in me? I’m not spiritual enough.’

We can go on and on listing out to Jesus the many reasons we believe that we can’t carry out his mission, why we are not good enough for the mission. And to be honest, you’re right. We aren’t good enough to reflect Christ in our lives, and the mission is too big for any of us to do.

As a vicar, I have the privilege of leading churches, and I thoroughly enjoy it. It’s a great honour. But with the role comes this great weight and responsibility to lead the local church, care for it, and enable it to grow. As a vicar, people are looking to me to grow the church in numbers, spiritual maturity, and stability. And so often this terrifies me because I know that I don’t have all the answers, and that there is no magic formula that I can follow that leads to all the church growth that I want to see, or perhaps need to see, so that I feel good enough as a vicar. When it comes to it, I know that I am completely out of my depth. I think every Christian is when it comes to the mission of being a disciple and witness of Jesus.

But the good news is that we do not undertake the mission on our own but through God’s power at work within us. On our own, of course, it will feel like mission impossible. However, this mission does not require us to do it alone. It does not matter who we are or what we feel able to do, because it is about who God transforms and empowers us to become.  

Just look at our Old Testament reading from Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a Jewish prophet writing during the time of the Exile when the Babylonian empire had invaded Israel, destroyed the Jewish Temple, and taken thousands of Israelites back to Babylon in captivity. If there was ever a time for Israel to feel not good enough, or not worthy enough of God, it would be at this point, when it appeared as though God had abandoned them and left them to waste away at the hands of the Babylonians. Yet in all this, God makes an amazing promise to the Israelites, which he tells Ezekiel to pass on. 

God says:

I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and will see to it that you follow my laws and keep all the commands I have given you. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people, and I will be your God.[1]

I absolutely love this promise from God. What’s great is that it is not only speaking to the Israelites now, but it speaks to all of us here today. It doesn’t matter how you feel about yourself, know that God makes you clean and new. He takes all that is dead in you and makes you alive. He will give you a new heart and mind, and he will put his Spirit in you to help you do all that God asks of you.

When Jesus’ mission for us feels too great, remember that God promised thousands of years ago that he would put his Spirit in us to help us do all that he asks of us. He renews us as his Spirit-filled people who can carry out his mission to tell the world about Jesus. This coming week, we are leading up to Pentecost, when we remember how God sent his Spirit to live in us. At Pentecost, the first disciples were filled with God’s Holy Spirit to enable and equip them to do the impossible mission of telling the whole world about Jesus, just as God said to Ezekiel hundreds of years before. 

On our own, Jesus’ mission is too great, but with God’s Spirit in us, we can carry out God’s mission to tell the world about Jesus.

Even with God’s Spirit in us, it is easy for us to have doubts about how all this will work. We ask, ‘How is God’s Spirit going to help me talk about my faith, or live it out in a way that shares the good news of Jesus with others?’ Does the Spirit give us courage? Does it give us wisdom and insight, and articulation? Yes, God’s Spirit can and does do all these things. But before any of that, we are sharing the good news of Jesus simply by His Spirit present in us.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is praying for his disciples before he is arrested and taken to be crucified. Jesus prays that God will be in them, and that through his love for us and in us, the world will come to know the love of God. Just by God’s Spirit dwelling in you, you will see God’s power at work in you even when you feel like you are messing up all the time.

Have you ever had that, when someone says that they saw God in you, when you look at yourself and think you are as far away from God as possible? It’s the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. It’s not about what we do, but about what God is doing in our lives.

I rejoice in this because it takes the pressure off what I can do. I get up in the pulpit and preach each week, and each week I worry about whether I can give a powerful, eloquent teaching that helps people discover something new about God and transforms their lives. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter what I say. I write the best sermon in the world, better than any TED talk, but if God’s not in it, it doesn’t matter. In fact, what speaks to people is God at work in me. I’ve had so many Sundays when I feel like I have written an awful sermon, and the reaction from those in the congregation only affirms my feelings, but then, after the service, someone comes and tells me that something in the sermon really spoke to them. That’s not me doing anything. That’s God at work. I don’t need to worry about what impact my sermon will have, because that is not my responsibility, but it is God’s. It’s God doing, not mine.

When we feel that Jesus’ mission to spread the good news across the world seems impossible, let us remember that it is not about what we can do; it’s about what God can and will do through us. 

So what do we need to do? Like the first disciples, as they waited between Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost, we must wait and pray for God’s Spirit to come into us and do his work. ‘Holy Spirit, come and do your work in me, for the sake of Jesus’ mission to tell the world the good news. Holy Spirit, come.’

Amen.

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[1] Ezekiel 36:24-28 [GNB].