“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.  And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy…” (NRSV, Luke 24:51,52)

On Ascension Day the Risen Christ appeared to his Apostles in Jerusalem and then led them out of the city, past the Garden of Gethsemane and up the slopes of the Mount of Olives.

There he briefly gave them their final commission to preach the Gospel to all nations and then he lifted up his hands and blessed them.  And as he did so he went up from them towards the sky and as they watched him a cloud of divine light hid him from their sight.  And when the cloud had gone, he was no longer to be seen.  Then they retraced their steps and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

When Jesus had first appeared to them on Easter Day in the Upper Room, they had been filled with a strange terror, but all that was now a thing of the past.  During the 40 days which followed, they had looked forward to each meeting with him, but now those meetings had fulfilled their purpose.

Jesus had used them to give to his Apostles the sure conviction that he was indeed risen from the dead and alive for evermore.  And he had also set before them their worldwide mission of building the Kingdom of God on earth, that is, of extending the Sovereign rule of God over the hearts and minds of men, women and children.

Now it was almost time for them to go out into the world in his Name, and so it was necessary to tell them in an unmistakeable manner that from now on they could expect no more Resurrection appearances of the kind to which they had become accustomed.  No more would he appear in their midst as in the Upper Room, and it was for that reason that this leave-taking on the Mount of Olives had so dramatic an air of finality.

But more than that, the manner of his leave-taking also taught them that he was at last returning to the glory of Heaven.  Because we think of Heaven, that is, the visible Presence of God, as being something far, far better than this earthly life, so by a natural metaphor we picture it as being above.

And so Our Blessed Lord ascended towards the sky, not because Heaven is “above the bright blue sky”, as the hymn would wrongly have us believe, but because it was a simple and effective way of teaching us that he was returning to a higher kind of life.

Thus the Ascension marked the end of Christ’s earthly pilgrimage which had begun over 30 years before when as God the Son he had laid aside his Divine majesty and glory, which had been his from all eternity, and came from Heaven to this world and was made man.

So now he returns to the glory of Heaven and reassumes his rightful majesty – it is the homecoming of the King of Kings.  Rightly do we metaphorically speak of him as seated at his Father’s right hand and enthroned in Kingly State, and receiving from the holy angels and the blessed Saints the homage of their joyful adoration.

The Ascension, however, also brings Our Lord very close to us, because he entered into his glory as God the Son made man, wearing our human nature and with all the experience of human life and human suffering behind him.  The Mount of the Ascension is significantly the Mount of the Agony in Gethsemane; the hands he lifted in final blessing bore the imprint of the nails.  He and we are truly kin indeed.

But not only is he made close to us in understanding and sympathy through having shared our earthly life, he is now present with us wherever we may be, for Ascension Day marked not only the end of the old kind of relationship, but the beginning of a new.  Previously, whether he was with the Apostles had depended on his physical presence, and often they had found that without him they were unsure and ineffective.

What a dispirited and craven band of men they were on Holy Saturday, hiding away in the Upper Room and starting at every footfall on the stairs.  “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), he had warned them and they had proved it by bitter experience.  But now they had the assurance of his parting words, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

For on Ascension Day he returned to that supernatural life of God which forms the background not only of our human life but of the Universe itself.  And 10 days later, at Pentecost (Whitsunday), with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Ascended Christ came to his own to be not only with them but within them.  And life for them was now transformed.

When the Apostles were flogged by the same powerful and ruthless men who had crucified their Lord and could crucify them too, they now went out rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for his Name, and they boldly proceeded to defy their enemies by continuing to teach and preach in their midst in the very Temple itself.  As St Paul was to say later, “I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 4:13).

We can understand, therefore, why on Ascension Day they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.  Not only had their Master, despised and rejected by men, been highly exalted by God, but they knew that from now on he and they would go forward into the future together, never again to be separated from one another.

So it was in the power and presence of the Ascended Christ that they went out into the world to preach the Gospel in every land, and to make him King on earth as he is in Heaven by drawing men, women and children into the full life of his Church which is his Kingdom on earth.

And that is also our task today among those of our own circle – by word if possible, by our example to them and our prayers for them.  The privilege of belonging to Christ and to his Kingdom carries with it the responsibility of doing our best to commend his Sovereign rule to others.  For each of us is one of the channels on whom Our Lord relies and through whom his Kingdom should be advancing from its Centre, where he is set down enthroned at his Father’s right hand.