“Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11
According to the church calendar, today is the fortieth day after Easter, the day when Jesus ascended into heaven. Jesus spent the weeks between Easter and his arrival in heaven appearing to his disciples, eating with them, talking with them, and inviting them to touch his side and to see his hands and feet. Why? Because the resurrection was real. As the Apostle’s Creed states, “He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell and on the third day he rose again and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
These things really happened, and Jesus wanted his disciples to grasp the meaning and the power of the resurrection. He calls them to be witnesses of all they have seen and everything they have experienced.
But more was still to come. The disciples must stay in Jerusalem until Jesus sent what the Father had promised (Luke 24:49). Acts 1:5 tells us this promise was the Holy Spirit. The disciples would get baptized with it, empowering them to preach the gospel and spread the transforming news of repentance and forgiveness of sin.
What does the ascension of Christ mean for us today? We are people who live half-way across the world from Bethany, the place where Jesus left earth. Maybe those angels didn’t know what they were talking about. “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you . . . will come back in the same way . . .” Two thousand years have passed and we are still waiting and watching.
We can trust in the fact that Jesus ascended to a certain place. He didn’t perform a magic trick and disappear or disintegrate making people wonder if he still exists. Jesus went to a place, and that place is heaven, the home of God, a sovereign King who sits on an eternal throne.
Going to this place, Jesus broke the trail for us so that we have a path in which to follow. Because of his redemptive work, we will someday rise and join him in heaven. Paul writes in I Thessalonians 4:17, we who are still alive will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. John 14:2-3 also picks up this theme with Jesus’ words. He goes to prepare a place for us and will come back and take us to be with him so that we may also be where he is.
Because of Christ’s ascension, we share with him in his power. Not a political power such as the disciples asked about in Acts 1:6 when they still held out hope that Jesus would restore the kingdom of Israel. This is a spiritual power that sets people free and grows in them the likeness of Christ. Jesus has authority over creation, sickness, evil, and death. We share in that authority as we live in relationship with him, offering prayers to him and trusting his power.
Are you standing with the disciples today, staring intently into the sky wondering, confused, and maybe even a little mystified? The season of celebration isn’t over yet. Eastertide, the season following Easter Sunday, still has ten days to go. The disciples spent these ten last days waiting for God’s promise to arrive. I wonder if heaven needed that long to attend the grand coronation of the Prince of Peace as he took his place at the right hand of the Father.
When there are delays in our lives and we are waiting around in the city for God to deliver his promises to us, maybe the wait is because something must happen in heaven (the spiritual realm) first before the promise can arrive. These are the times to follow the disciples’ example and continually praise God as they did following Jesus’ ascension. “Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple praising God” (Luke 24:52-53).
This is the note on which the book of Luke ends. In times of waiting for a promise from God, we praise him. In response to his ascension into heaven and his preparation of a place for us there, we live with the mystery. We wait for God’s promises. We receive his power.
