This week our township of Pomonal was devastated by a bushfire, arising in Grampians National Park. Our church building was saved, but many houses and sheds were destroyed. We were unable to meet in our church, and so met as a group in Stawell.

Matthew 28:20b; Mark 16:8b; Luke 24:46-49

We read in Psalm 121:1-2 the words I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where does my help come? My help comes from The LORD who made heaven and earth. I have spoken on this passage before, and of how the main point is that it’s not the hills that brings our help, or anything within or upon those hills, but The LORD Godself, the maker and creator of hills and the natural things within and upon them. As Australians we know that fire brings life to our continent, and that fire has been part of the natural cycle for the many thousands of years that this land has been above the oceans’ surface. Even so, fire also bring devastation in the short and long term, and it has an inordinate impact upon settled human life. Any help we need must indeed come from The Holy Spirit of The Great Southland, and not from this continent’s high grass plains or its summits crowned by oil-filled eucalypts As residents of the bush we hope in The LORD, even as we live in grey-green and shade most of the time.

Several of the books that I have in my minister’s library have titles to do with finality. “God’s Final Word to Man” says one, a commentary on Revelation. “The Last Word; and The Word after That” says another, a conversation around Eschatology as the fulfilment rather than the destruction of the world. As I pondered on the role of fire at the end of days and the close of the things of this world when the New Heaven and the New Earth descend, I was reminded that fire is not the last thing, but the herald of the new thing. Like the pillar of fire and cloud (we might say smoke) which lead the Hebrews into a new promise and new way of living, so fire is not an end in itself but a pathway and a re-setting, a visible and physical sign of God’s movement amongst and upon God’s people for God’s activity and God’s glory. Wonderous and encouraging for Christians; fire is not the end of things but the opportunity for God to begin afresh, just like a gumnut popping open to release fresh seed. Wonderous and encouraging for Christians; but people lost homes and livelihoods on Tuesday afternoon, houses and sheds full of memories and equipment, and gardens, and animals, and fences, and who-know-what-else because they are still picking through the ashes, and those people are our friends and our neighbours. What can we say to them, what can God say to them, what is God’s word if this really is not final at all?

So, freed from the lectionary this week yet conscious that we would have been noting the beginning of Lent and, guh, “Ash Wednesday”, I went to see what Jesus’ final words to his disciples were. And yes, we heard those in the gospel reading earlier:

From Matthew 28:20 we heard Jesus say [a]nd surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
From Mark 16:8 we heard not from Jesus but from Mark, who wrote that [t]rembling and bewildered the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.
From Luke 24:49, which is not the final verse of that gospel but is the last place when Jesus speaks, we read [y]ou are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

So, what do we find that might speak to us today? I think three things:

Wherever we go from here, we do not go alone. Jesus goes before us, and Holy Spirit goes with us. In Mark 16:7 the women are told by the angel at the empty tomb tell his disciples and Peter “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you”. In the Sunday of Resurrection stories he is not there, he is risen, but on this Sunday of Confusion we are told that he is here, because we need help to rise. In Luke 24:49 Jesus reminds them of the Father’s promise of the Spirit as companion.
It’s okay to be afraid. Even if you do hold to Mark 16:8 being the true final verse of the gospel, and most Bibles add Mark 8:9-20 as an appendix, but even if the gospel does end with the women running away and saying nothing on Sunday morning it is obvious that they did eventually say something, or no-one would have known what they had seen (and not seen). It is okay to be shocked and awed in the aftermath, God’s great plan is not ruined by our tears and weak knees.
Our ministry is local. Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 28:20 is assurance to the very end of the age, which is a time and not a place: it’s not specifically “to the far edge of the world”. Jesus’ instruction in Luke 24:49 is a call to stay in the city. We do have a wider mission, but all of that mission for now is in Pomonal, to the very end of the age which for us is not the Rapture or the fulfilment of the New Jerusalem, but the time when what Pomonal needs from its church in the then-Present is something different to what Pomonal needsfrom its church in the current-Present. We do pastoral care in our place, clothed with power from on high until God directs us to the next thing, and with power for that.

Depending upon the direction in which you look out from Pomonal, if you lift up…eyes to the hills what you might see is blackness and scarring. But wherever we are, and whatever we see, we know that My help comes from The LORD who made heaven and earth and that is the assurance we carry to our neighbours and to each other in this age. So let’s go home with the God who goes with us; the God who was there last Sunday as you worshipped unaware of the coming week, the God who was there last Tuesday as fire came through our village and destroyed so much stuff and hope, the God who was there last Thursday as  we were allowed in once more to survey the wreckage and the rescue, and the God who is there today, and here as well, as we lament and mourn, and worship, and fellowship.

People of Pomonal go with God, with the God who stays with you. Amen.