Audio From Harbour Harbour Faith Community

“I’m suggesting that maybe the outpouring or coming of the Holy Spirit available to ALL people is the central point of the New Testament.”

When it comes to the Christ Event, the end is just as important as the beginning. Jesus proceeds from God, he exemplifies God, and he returns to God.

Incarnation.
Exemplification.
Ascension.

It’s not that God was only with us for the duration of Jesus' life on earth. It’s more that God has always been present to us, and Jesus helps us come awake to that truth.

The ascension brings this profound moment to a necessary end, so that we can pick up the story in the realisation that WE are the body of Christ, and always have been.

Like Dumbo the elephant releasing the feather in mid air, we have to let go of the earthly Jesus if we are ever to fully realise that we could fly all along. The symbolism of the feather is important, but it only really works when we let go of it.

And we must have that profound realisation, because there is another one coming. The realisation that since WE are and always have been the body of Christ, we are also and always have been vessels for the presence of the Holy Spirit.

If the incarnation is about God coming to earth, then the ascension is about God leaving the earth.

But was God really only with us for the duration of Jesus’ earthly life? Was our Emmanuel, our “God with us”, really that short lived?

In calling people out “to the other side of the Jordan” (beyond the borders
of Israel) and then baptising them back into their own faith, John the
Baptist was doing something highly controversial with profound implication
for us as people of faith today.

If the whole thing about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins doesn’t
chime for you any longer, then you’re really not alone. It doesn’t have to
end there though, and if you’d like to think again, jump right into this
fourth and final episode of “The bells that still can ring”.

Brian’s farewell message 12/12/2021