A Sermon preached on May 9, 2024 in St Martin-in-the-Fields by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Ascension Day
Ascension Day is the other half of Christmas. At Christmas Christ comes down; at Ascension, Christ goes up. Christmas centres humankind, because it shows us that this earth is the focus of God’s attention. But Ascension decentres humankind, by showing us that the dwelling place of God, the place we will dwell with Christ forever, is ultimately not here.
I want to tell you about a man whose story illustrates what Ascension is all about. His name was Dick Butson. In July 1947, during a research exploration in the Antarctic, an Englishman and an American were left high on a plateau while their party returned to base for supplies. Bad weather set in, their tent was damaged, and they decided to follow their colleagues back to the base on foot. But suddenly, with a terrible scream, the American, named Peterson, fell 100 feet into a crevasse. His companion marked the spot, before trudging six miles in the dark back to the base to fetch help. At 4am the rescue team found the spot on the glacier where Peterson had fallen. Dick Butson, the 24-year-old medical officer, stepped forward to be lowered into the crevasse. It was so narrow that he couldn’t slide down without removing some of his clothes. He found Peterson upside-down with his pelvis and legs tightly wedged, and his rucksack nearly throttling him. But the American was conscious, albeit exhausted and in shock.
Dick worked upside-down to free Peterson’s legs, and several times got stuck. Then suddenly there was a fearsome sound of cracking, and the ice began to move, narrowing the crevasse by half an inch on either side, making the space even more confined. Undeterred, Dick spent the next hour working to free Peterson. This is how he described it. ‘I pulled his shoulders around so that freed his chest a little. I was then able to get two slings under his thighs. While doing all this there were loud cracks and booming noises from the glacier’s movement, and I felt the pressure on myself of the [huge weight of ice].
‘Those above could not hear me well, so when I asked them to pull a little, I couldn’t stop them when Peterson screamed. He suddenly shot up from the wedged position like a cork out of a champagne bottle. When nearly at the top, it looked like he was falling out of the slings and was going to land back on me! He was, however, pulled out by those at the top.’ Finally the rope descended a second time to haul up Dick, who gave Peterson further medical attention. Within a few weeks Peterson fully recovered. No surprise Dick won the George Cross for his courage, skill and selflessness. He emigrated to Canada five years later, and died in 2015, aged 92.
See how Dick represents Jesus while Peterson represents humankind. Dick’s story is of one who came down, at perilous cost to himself, out of selfless love for Peterson, and who came back up, having faced indescribable terrors, bringing Peterson with him. It’s the story of Christmas and Ascension Day, but in contemporary form. What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul.
But there’s a whole other feature of this adventure. Because this is a story that demands to be told. And if you had the technology to tell a million people at one go, like I have tonight, I imagine you’d seize that opportunity. But first I want to tell you about the other theological companion of Ascension Day. Ascension is the other half of Christmas; but Ascension then becomes part of a new story that stretches to Pentecost. Ascension is when Jesus goes away; Pentecost is when the Holy Spirit comes to be with us. It’s Christmas come full circle. At Ascension Jesus promises, ‘I will be with you always.’ At Pentecost that promise begins to be fulfilled, as the Spirit comes, and it’s through the Spirit that Christ is with us always.
I want to describe something to you that you can’t see. Yet it connects people many miles apart. It brings joy, offers comfort, adds perspective, challenges, enlightens, and warms the heart. It inspires, moves, convicts; stirs reflection, triggers action, evokes surprise. I could be talking about one of two things. One is the Holy Spirit, which does all these things, leading us into all truth, bringing us face to face with the risen Christ in friend and stranger, moving our souls and making our hearts sing. But I could equally well be talking about radio. You can’t see it, yet it informs, educates and entertains. It brings news, injects humour, rouses with music, rattles with debate, and, for a hundred years, as we celebrate tonight, enables us to worship from ten or ten thousand miles away.
In covid a lot of us became accustomed to livestreamed worship. It was new, it took some adjusting to; it had some advantages, although preachers had to get used to getting marks out of ten in the comments section. But we already had an experience of virtual worship – we’ve had radio worship for a hundred years. And what’s special about radio is precisely that you can’t see. You can’t see – but that means instead you imagine. And what we’ve discovered for a hundred years is that the power of the human imagination is stimulated by radio in fabulous, dynamic and satisfying ways. Just as the first disciples thought they couldn’t live without the presence of Jesus, yet found their hearts deeply warmed by the Holy Spirit, so for a hundred years Christians who’ve missed being physically in a place of worship have had their imaginations set on fire by the words and silence and music of broadcasting.
When Dick Butson told his story, he used the word ‘miracle.’ Not about his own astonishing athleticism, resourcefulness and courage. Instead, he said this. ‘The miracle of the rescue was in finding the small hole in the crevasse bridge where Peterson had plummeted down into a glacier six miles by eight miles in the dark of Antarctic night.’ Dick was talking about a miracle of communication: how the tiny marker, made hours earlier, communicated, against all odds, Peterson’s location to the rescue team. Tonight we’re gathered to celebrate another miracle of communication – by which millions of people can hear Dick’s story, and realise how closely it resembles Christ’s story, through the miracle of broadcasting.
We’ve never met Dick Butson; but hearing his story we feel we have. We weren’t around in Jerusalem in the first century; but through the Holy Spirit we can meet Jesus today. Most people worshiping tonight aren’t here in this building; but they’re worshiping all the more with their hearts and souls. The psalm tells us, ‘Their sound has gone out throughout the world.’ Who knew it was talking about broadcasting? Radio ignites, enflames and engulfs the imagination; through radio we discover the imagination as a dynamic force in our lives. At Ascension, Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world.’ At Pentecost, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that’s just what the apostles did. And, through the medium of broadcasting, that’s what we’ve now done together for a hundred years. What radio has taught us is that our imagination can travel faster, more expansively and more dynamically than our physical bodies ever can. Thanks be to God.
