Until Good Friday had come and gone the Apostles had thought of Jesus, not as their Saviour but only as their King – and even then only as an earthly King who would drive the Romans into the sea.  But as soon as they knew that he was their Saviour too, so they began to see that he was King of men and of angels and that his Kingdom was an everlasting Kingdom.  That grander vision, of a King over the hearts and minds of human beings, stretching to the uttermost parts of the earth and embracing the world to come, that grander vision was revealed by him to the Apostles during the forty days after Easter when he spoke to them “about the kingdom of God” (NRSV, Acts 1:3).

And on Ascension Day he described to them his eternal Kingship itself, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (NRSV, Matthew 28:18) – a truth which was dramatically illustrated at the moment of the Ascension itself when, surrounded by the glory of God and clothed in Divine splendour, he was for the second time poised between heaven and earth, but majestically now as King of both.