Below is the full text of his sermon at the service. Its a great piece to read through.

SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION

There are certain seasons in the Liturgical Year which endear themselves to the worshipper for various reasons. Without suggesting that some are more important than others – for the seasons lead us in the footsteps of Christ, Ascension comes as one of those memorable ones. Both the fact and the celebration by hymn writers make it a happy aftertaste and transition from Easter to Pentecost.

The Primate started this Synod on Ascension day – almost makes us envious. We already sang some of those hymns at the Opening service: Hail the day that sees Him rise…; Lord enthroned in heavenly splendour.

Other ascension hymns rush into our minds:

The head that once was crowned with thorns/ Is crowned with glory now…

We sang more this morning. These hymn writers make spiritual truths timeless by the words and tunes they engage. One that is irresistible for me this morning is:

Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious

See the Man of sorrows now

From the fight returned victorious

Every knee to Him shall bow

Crown Him! Crown Him!

Crown Him! Crown Him!

Crown becomes the Victors brow

One could almost visualise the scene in Heaven as we sing this stanza:

Hark, those bursts of acclamation!

Hark, those loud, triumphant chords!

Jesus takes the highest station;

Oh, what joy the sight affords!

Crown Him! Crown Him!

Crown Him! Crown Him!

King of kings and Lord of lords!

Ascension leads us to a new dispensation in God’s salvation agenda, and the Lord Jesus returns to Heaven in endless triumph over sin, satan and the world! He is our Man in Glory. And as our prayer in the Collect for today, we pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where Christ has gone ahead.

THEME: SYNODALITY: THE TRANSFORMING JOURNEY WITH JESUS CHRIST (Luke 24:13–16, 32–35)

The beauty of Synods is that there is a blend of perspectives that we can’t miss the point (Opening service, Bible Study, other sessions). The crowning exposition is the Bishop’s Charge. And the Charge was vintage Primate Ndukuba! It is like what some call “acres of diamond”. It is indeed synodality in practice: – journeying together as the People of God. It indicates a way of listening to each individual person as a member of the Church to understand how God might be speaking to all of us.

CHRIST AS BOTH TRAVELLER AND DESTINATION

The theme passage for this Synod is: Luke 24:13–16, 32–35. Our concept of journey must begin with the Lord Jesus Himself. When, in our Communion service, the Celebrant says,

Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith,

the response of the worshippers is:

Christ has died

Christ is risen

Christ will come again

That response draws attention to the divine journey in the Incarnation, the Resurrection/Ascension, and the Second Coming. One of our contemporary songs captures the idea of this journey:

Lord I lift Your name on high
Lord I love to sing Your praises
I’m so glad You’re in my life
I’m so glad You came to save us

You came from heaven to earth to show the way
From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay
From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky
Lord I lift Your name on high

The idea of journeying fills the salvation story: the Exodus and the wilderness journey, the Journey of the Magi as T.S. Elliot titles his poem about the Wise men in the Nativity story which we celebrate at Epiphany. Christ’s own ministry was filled with many journeys. And this Synod passage brings us to what we might call His final earthly journey. Not the journey to the Cross, but the journey back to Heaven.

As we read the words, in Luke 24:13–15 (ESV)

¹³ That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles (11 kilometres) from Jerusalem, ¹⁴ and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

Verse 15 is particularly striking:

 ¹⁵ While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

This is a beautiful picture of the God who travels with His people. We’ve seen Him in the Garden of Eden coming to fellowship with Adam; we’ve seen Him in the wilderness as the Presence in the Pillar of cloud by day and the Pillar of fire by night as as the Ark of the Covenant. It tells us that the Christian God is not a distant God who watches only from a distance. He is the Immanuel: GOD WITH US.

The Psalmist had said, in Psalm 23:4 (ESV)

  ⁴     Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Psalm 121:8 (ESV)

  ⁸     The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

He is the God who travels with us through thick and thin.

¹⁵ While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

In this journey, He is both the Way and the Destination. He is our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come; Our shelter from the stormy blast; and our eternal home.

The Primate’s address dwelt considerably on the Way. In our walking and talking,  in the wanderings in our earthly deserts, He is the One who draws near; He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  Any journey of life that continues without Jesus will surely lead to a dead end.

John 15:5 (ESV)

⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

George MacDonald quote: “In whatever man does without God, he must either fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.” 

SYNODALITY AS FELLOWSHIP AND PARTNERSHIP

It involves companionship and godly collaboration. In God’s wisdom, we are made to travel together. Beginning with the family setting, God said, in Genesis 2:18 (ESV)¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

These people were travelling together. Their identity has been a subject of much debate: was Luke the other partner? Were they a couple? We do not know, and it is not critical. However, they shared the same sense of frustration about their religious leaders and the travesty of justice; they shared a sense of despondency about what looked like a failed messianic mission.

We can easily see from vv18-24 that they were not front-liners or active participants among the disciples. They were well informed but not active participants. We can see this in the third person references:  “some women of our company;. . . some of those who were with us.” These did many noble things: went to the tomb, told them the doubtful news of a vision of angels, and of Jesus rising,…

Some people prefer to be passive members: keep a safe distance; some things about Christianity don’t make much sense to the intelligent and respectable; don’t make a fool of yourself… There is much abuse of Scripture these days.

Christian fellowship gives us reason to grow together. In the Early Church, we read in Acts 2:42 (ESV)

⁴² And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And in Hebrews 10:24–25 (ESV)

²⁴ And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Fellowship features a lot in this encounter and in Christian history. Jesus walked with them on the way, broke bread with them, and revealed Himself to the disciples later that night in Jerusalem. Jesus dwells among His people by the Holy Spirit.

Even after we have encountered Christ, there are still gaps in our lives for other children of God to fill. No one person knows it all; no one person has it all: we need each other. We were reminded yesterday by the Primate that the Anglican Church is episcopally led and synodically governed. But as He further pointed out, when we attempt to do this while travelling apart from Jesus, then we cannot walk together. All the historic Church councils have brainstormed under the Spirit of truth to come up with edifying statements of belief.

193. Richard Niebuhr once offered a line that applies well to theological liberalism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Kingdom of God in America (1937), p. 193.

The Church has had many disagreements, sometimes very bitter. But someone said something that we can learn from. During the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), a bloody time in European history in which religious tensions played a significant role,  a German theologian, Rupertus Meldenius  wrote a tract on Christian unity written (circa 1627) in which he said, “In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty,  In all things, Charity”.  It has come to be called “the watchword of Christian peacemakers.”

They were well-informed but needed their faith to be transformed. We too can be well informed but not transformed.

HOW GOD TRANSFORMS US

Which brings us to the aspect of TRANSFORMATION in our theme.

Vv25. The risen Christ responded with a rebuke: they were slow of heart to believe all the prophets had spoken (cf Matt 22:29-30).

The Word of God is both to inform and transform us. If we are informed only, then we are like the foolish builder who built his house on the sand, or the one who merely looks at his face in the mirror. It amounts to self deception.

The Word features prominently in this encounter: The risen Christ took them back to Scripture:

Matthew’s gospel shows that virtually everything Jesus did was to fulfil Scripture. What He did here is a fulfilment of what God told His people, “Deuteronomy 6:7–9 (ESV): You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

 8  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

 9  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

At the Synagogue in Nazareth He told them the Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing. But they took offence.

Matthew 15:3–9 (ESV): He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

 4  For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’

 5  But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,”

 6  he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.

 7  You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:  8  “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;  9  in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

He called them foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. They were foolish because their perspectives were man-based, not informed by the “loving wisdom of our God when all was sin and shame…“ Peter made the same mistake in Matt 16 when Jesus began to tell them about His purpose and the messianic agenda. The Lord Jesus rebuked him, as here. Disciples MUST be wise and believe what God has said out not what we prefer.

Slow of heart to believe ALL that the prophets… Half believe is not glorifying to God. We cannot pick and choose. To remedy that Jesus BEGAN with Moses and all the prophets…What does this mean? All Scripture must be taken together because all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and profitable…2 Tim 3:16. This is why our worship structure includes reading ALL the Scripture Jesus came to fulfil not to abrogate the OT Law. They all point to Him. From the Fall. Gen 3:15.

If we don’t believe what the Bible says, we will believe what Satan says, what superstition says, what culture says, what fashion says, every human opinion except the Bible. Jesus glen asked, WHAT DOES THE SCRIPTURE SAY?

Jesus opened the Scriptures about Himself. He INTERPRETED to them. This is called hermeneutics. SCRIPTURE (when correctly interpreted) POINTS TO JESUS. This is why typical Anglican liturgy reads OT, Psalms, NT, Epistles.

Vv28. Jesus puts their faith to test.  So He went in to stay with them (cf Rev 3:20).

The breaking of bread has been associated with our sacrament of the Eucharist. They were no longer just ordinary travellers. Their going to Jerusalem had a reason stronger than the fear of danger. That is what conviction does. It holds you. He was known by the breaking of the bread. Reminiscent of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Here O my Lord I see Thee face to face; Break Thou the Bread of Life…

The Most Rev Emmanuel A.S. Egbunu is the Bishop of Lokoja Diocese in the Church of Nigeria, Anglcan Communion.

He made the call in a sermon at the commencement service of the first session of the 12th synod of the Diocese of Abuja on Thursday 18th May, 2023.

The 4-day synod which is the gathering of the Bishop, Clergy and Laity delegates (both male and female) of the diocese is titled “Synodalty: The Transforming Journey with Jesus Christ” started on Thursday 18th May at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church Maitama, Abuja under the leadership of the Synod president and bishop of Abuja diocese, The Most Rev’d Henry C. Ndukuba.

Synod is an annual highest decision making gathering in every Anglican Diocese.

Bishop Ekpenisi who took the text of his sermon from Psalm 24 v3-4 with the title “Who Shall Ascend to the Hill of the Lord”, said that bearing religious titles and belonging to faith groups without showing love was not good enough.

Right Reverend Geoffrey Ekpenisi expressed regret that some leaders see themselves above the church thereby affecting their relationship with members.

He said full participation of leaders in church programs and activities encourages members to be more committed for their spiritual growth.

He further stressed the need to be baptized, be born again and live a life of righteousness in the society for a better country.

The cleric said that it is important to consider and be empathic with the plight of fellow citizens in day-to-day dealings.

“There is a need for purity, a total departure from sin, this is a condition to access God and to ascend to heaven at the end of time,” he said.

The cleric urged Christians to hold on to the Word of God and be prayerful saying that effective and fervent prayers avail much.

He also emphasized the need for church leaders to always care and show love to members for peace to reign both in the church and the society at large.

In his opening remark, Primate Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion and the president of the Synod, The Most Reverend Henry Ndukuba said the church would continue to compliment efforts at making life easier for every member of the society irrespective of religious affiliation.

Watch The Message Here: “Who Shall Ascend to the Hill of the Lord”

Keynotes of Bishop Ekpenisi’s Sermon. 

Today, in this opening service of the synod we are looking at, how prepared and connected we are I’ll be looking at 7 aspect of our Christian lives common and known to us that connects us to God and prepare us for the coming of our lord Jesus Christ and eventually joining him in the Heavenly places.

1. New Bad Connection – John 3: 3-6

The foundation of walking through the transforming power of Jesus is to be born again. It’s very important that we ensure that we have this encounter with our lord Jesus Christ. The appearance of Jesus to Saul changed his life (Paul earlier called Saul became born again). We all need this same divine encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ and the question is not just whether we’re in the Church as members of the Church but whether we’ve had such encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ like we always say ‘it is possible to be baptized and confirmed but yet not having a definite encounter with Him’. As we go through this synod journey, consider this in your heart not the messages beginning now to consider the kind of life that you live today.

We must take a decision to live a new life and standing to be with Him is not a function of being in the church or your position in the church you can be a synod delegate and still go to hell.

2. The Purity Connection – 1Timothy 2:19 & 21

Purity is a condition that we must fulfill before we can work with God. It is pivotal, it is a gateway to accessing God’s presence and ascending to him. So, as we go through the synod and particularly today the ascension day we must also remember in our text he who has clean hands and a pure heart will ascend into the hill of the Lord.

It is possible to be in the church but yet with dirty hands. Purity connects us to God we need to consider this.

3. The Word Connection – Hebrews 11:3

By faith we understand that the words were framed in Hebrews 11:3 by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of the things that are visible. Things which are made were created out of the word of God. If we’re able to hold firm upon the word of God then we also are able to prepare ourself to ascend to Him. You remember when Jesus was tempted that the devil severally wanted to bring him down and stop him from being lifted up along side and walking with the father for each of them Jesus replied him “it is written” and again “it is written” and the Bible said the devil left Him.

Joshua 1:8 this book of the lord shall not depart out of your mouth.

The word of God connects us to God through study and meditation on the word of God. We become eternally connected to Him sometimes when we rise to the level that we’re made synod delegates even as bishops and clergymen, we get to a point where we don’t have need to attend even Sunday school on a Sunday morning when the Sunday school is going on we use the Sunday school opportunity to do various other things because we feel that we have come to a level. We calculate when Sunday school will end and then we step inside the church. I want to ask us again from January to today how many times have you gone for Bible study in your local congregation? And be able to access how much you have been connecting to the word of God. It is difficult for you to ascend and meet God himself who you have not taken time to study about.

4. The Faith and Power Connection – Mark 16:17.

You look at yourself and prepared to ascend with Him when He returns. You’re prepared to go through this transforming power through this period of synod, one thing I ask you, how much faith do you think you have in God even today it’s possible to have people who have been in the church for several years but for very little thing you lose your faith in God.

A lot of us for the course of our lives abandon God and seek powers where there are no powers. We need to consider our lives today, where we place our trust and our faith in when on earth we’re able to celebrate the faith that we have in God and the power there in then we’re prepared to go on to heaven. The power of God makes all the difference. I say to us let’s trust God in power and in all circumstances and God will continue to prove Himself in our lives.

5. The Spirit Connection – Romans 8:11 & 16

How much of the Holy Spirit do you have in you?. When last did you have to wait upon God in prayers asking that God sends His Holy Spirit to fill you to overflow?.

We need all of Him in our lives and I call upon us this evening as we go through this journey to look up to God and ask for the infinite of the Holy spirit rise in our lives.

6. The Love Connection. John 3:16.

Love is very important force in connecting to God. It was love that brought Jesus to dwell among men in the flesh. Once you succeed in walking in love, you have endured yourself to God, you have won His heart and cannot but be connected to Him. Many Christians even got to the extent of showing in us that we’re Christians by the way we tie our head, by the way we dress and by the way we do several other things but in us is filled with the spirit of wickedness and of evil.

We find many are Christians in offices and even those who work under them look at them and refer to them as being wicked not minding the Christianity that they carry in them. How much love do you share with people around you? With all your Christianity how much love do you have?.

No man will ascend with Him except you have love in you.

7. Prayer and Praise Connection -James 5:16, Acts 12:5

It’s essential that we know that prayer connects us to God and through being steadfast in prayer we will indeed ascend when He will return. That’s very very important James (5:16). Prayer is indeed a communion with God, the disciples continued on prayer and the study of the word of God on the day of Pentecost they were together in one accord praying.

Prayer bring God’s glory and presence down. Acts 12:5, the church kept praying until Peter came out of the prison, Acts 16:25, Paul and Silas they were not just beaten but locked up in prison with chains all around them but they prayed and they sang praises to God and the Bible said suddenly there was a great earthquake and immediately the prison doors open and everyone chained were loosed.

When you live a life of prayer, it makes a difference in our lives. When you live a life of prayer and praise, you prepare yourself for to ascend unto the Lord. It is Gods desire that we fellowship with Him and remain connected to Him.

In this synod we seek to draw closer to God, speak words that connects in discussions, in deliberations through this synod before you have to raise your hand and speak please speak words that connects rather than words that disconnects. Share views and criticize in such a way that the diocese will be lifted up to greater heights, that is the right way to go. Let the word of God dwell in you richly. Pray and praise Him in faith.  Love is still the key as we make a decision to live a life of purity and power.