By Rev’d Phil Wales
Hail the day that sees him rise, Alleluia!
to his throne beyond the skies. Alleluia!
Christ, the Lamb for sinners given, Alleluia!
enters now the highest heaven. Alleluia!
– Charles Wesley
Ascension Day, which we celebrated yesterday, occurs 40 days after Easter and ten days before Pentecost. It celebrates the moment when the risen Jesus, having completed His earthly ministry, returns to the Father. Just before He ascended, Jesus told His disciples to stay in Jerusalem for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which He promised would come “not many days from now.” St Luke documents this at the start of the Acts of the Apostles (1.1–11). Occasionally, Ascension Day services are held outdoors, sometimes on a hillside and/or with some pyrotechnic flourishes involving fireworks. In sacred art, the Ascension has often been vividly portrayed in paintings, ceiling bosses or sculptures of Christ’s feet, the only remaining part of him visible, beneath a heavenly cloud.
These depictions are more than simply decorative; they are acts of devotion beckoning us to enter imaginatively into this moment of profound mystery. If we focus on the exterior, visible elements of this incredible event alone, however, we may overlook the deeper inner drama and truth of what has unfolded. That is, how we, and the world, have been changed through Jesus’ fulfilment of His promise to us.
Like those first Apostles, we are waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Yet, unlike them, we know that this is to happen. How, then, might those first believers and eyewitnesses, unlike us, have responded to Christ being taken out of sight? Some people have suggested that their Easter joy may have given way to feelings of loss, perhaps reawakening their grief and desolation at His death before His resurrection.
But that would be to misunderstand Jesus’ Ascension as an act of separation when, in fact, it is an act of supreme completion: the union of heaven and earth in the person of Christ. His return to the Father opens fully the way for our communion with God. Christ ascends not to leave us, but to be present with us through His Spirit, no longer limited to a specific place or time in history, but alive in the heart of every believer.
As those first disciples gazed upwards, two angels appeared and asked: “Why do you stand looking up towards heaven?” Whatever it was that they may have been feeling, the question prompted them into action. The angels brought the disciples ‘back to earth’, as it were, to get ready to tell the world what happened. But their world, and so ours, is now one, which has been irreversibly and eternally transformed through a new relationship with God through Christ’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension. As we wait for Pentecost, may we be attentive to Christ’s risen presence among us.
A Sonnet for Ascension Day
We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place,
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted,
He took us with him to the heart of things,
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.
– Malcolm Guite