In the final session of Judge For Yourself, our Eastertide exploration of the meaning of our Lord’s Crucifixion, Resurrection and ascension, Marjorie posed this question as one which we might profitably discuss:

Is it important that we are convinced about Jesus' Ascension – as we say in the Creed?

As Christians we might think that to be a strange question to discuss but it is always good to look afresh at the things about our faith that we take for granted, not least because thinking things through can usually deepen our understanding.

I happen to think that the ascension is rather important for our faith and I want to give three reasons for this.

The first reason is captured in the Hymn by Christopher Wordsworth that we shall sing later in this service – See, The Conqueror mounts in triumph.

I am a great devotee of Wordsworth’s hymns because they are of the highest theological quality.

A nephew of the poet William Wordsworth, from whom, perhaps he got his poetic skills, he was also a scholar, a Doctor of Divinity who became Bishop of Lincoln.

He had decided opinions about hymns and profoundly regretted that many hymns of his day were too self-centred, concentrating too much on personal feelings and not enough on God and His glory.

Wordsworth’s hymns did much to redress this and, amongst his greatest, was his Ascension day hymn.

In verse 3 he gives us the reason why the Ascension of our Lord was not only important but vital. In stirring and beautifully crafted words, he gives us theology in poetic form:

Thou has raised our human nature
In the clouds to God’s right hand,
there we sit in heavenly places,
there with thee in glory stand;
Jesus reigns, adored by angels;
Man with God is on the throne;
Mighty Lord, in thine ascension
We by faith behold our own.

The Ascension completes our Lord’s journey, begun in Bethlehem not simply as a personal journey but much more importantly, as the journey of humanity back to God.

Jesus became man – human in order to save us from within.  So, the quote I made on Sunday morning of St Irenaeus -

God became what we are in order, in the end, to make us what he is,

is the process of Salvation which was the Divine plan from the beginning.

That plan could only reach fruition when Jesus returned to His Father, taking our redeemed humanity with him.  Truly, then, Man with God is on the Throne.  Jesus, true God and true human, returns to God and in so doing, opens the gate of glory so that all of us, who believe in His Name and live according to the Gospel, have access to eternal life.

This is beautifully expressed in my favourite Collect – that for the Sunday after Christmas:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity.

Our human nature, acted upon by Grace, is transformed by Christ and is taken up into heaven. That is essentially why the Ascension is important for us.

But it is important for a second reason and for that we need to go to tonight’s Gospel.  After explaining the meaning of the Scriptures to the disciples Jesus reminded them that they were his witnesses and that he was sending upon them what my Father promised.

From his earlier discussions with the disciples before his Crucifixion, recorded chiefly by St. John, we know this gift to be the Holy Spirit.  And, as Jesus told them in John’s Gospel, he had to leave them in order for the Spirit to come upon them.  The ascension of Christ therefore opens the way for the Spirit to come into the world and for us, therefore to live in the Spirit’s power and under the Spirit’s guidance.

If Jesus took our humanity up to God then the Spirit returns with God’s gift of Divinity – and by that, I mean that the Spirit ignites the divine spark within us.  We are Christians because we both believe in and follow Jesus Christ but we are made Christians by the Holy Spirit working within us.  In each of us, there is the image of God. The strength of that image depends on how much we allow the Holy Spirit to set our hearts on fire with God’s love. 

This being set on fire is beautifully expressed in the life of John Wesley who, went, he says, unwillingly to Aldgate Chapel and heard a sermon on Luther’s interpretation of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In the midst of this he said:

About a quarter before nine, while he [the preacher] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

This warming of the heart is the action of the Holy Spirit and it turned a lukewarm Christian into one of the world’s most fervent preachers of the Gospel.  The Divine spark had ignited his Soul.

The Divinity of God – in whose image we are made – becomes for all of us a possibility to grasp and share in – and therein lies the meaning of Holiness.  And for that Spirit to work in our lives, Jesus needed to return to His Father.  It was all part of the same Divine Plan to win us for the Kingdom.  There is a third reason why the Ascension of our Lord is important for us and it is bound up with our Vision of God.

Kenneth Kirk, a former Bishop of Oxford, When asked to give the famous Brampton Lectures in 1928, chose as his subject, The Vision of God, and at the beginning of his first lecture he said this:

Christianity [came] into the world with a double purpose – to offer men the vision of God and to call them to the pursuit of that Vision.

So often, we have a Vision of the Church and that is too small a vision. The Church is merely the vehicle for the message and when it becomes the all-consuming self-centred vision of itself, it is in danger of both losing the vision of its purpose and, worse, of failing to bring that vision into the reach of others.

Nowhere is this more true than our own age. The forthcoming Lambeth Conference will worry and fret how it might keep a diverse and fragmented Communion together and will focus on its own internal concerns – whilst in the world there is a deep need to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a far more broken and fragmented world which is rapidly losing all vision of anything but its own decline and self-destruction, as we destroy the planet and play with the delicate balance of nature, human and otherwise until it will be beyond salvation.

What message is the Church giving when all it can talk about is itself and its petty concerns?  – petty, that is when measured against the eternal love and salvation of God.  If we are not proclaiming God we have no right to exist and far too often, at a local as well as national and international level, we are wrapt up in ourselves. We have forgotten our mission so clearly stated by Kenneth Kirk.

I remember my first day at King’s College Hostel in Vincent Square London when I began training for ordination.  I had barely unpacked when the door was flung open and a young man, clad only in a towel and dripping water all over the floor said:

Remember, where there is no vision, the people perish.

With that he closed the door and disappeared.  It was a quotation from Proverbs 29 and maybe it was the circumstance of its delivery but I have never forgotten it. Those were wise words to say to anyone contemplating any ministry in the Church. 

We must have a High Vision of God and in the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ we are given it.  Jesus goes to His Father and earth is united with heaven. Our destiny is bound up with the eternal promises of One who can deliver. We must proclaim that fact and that Vision is everything we do.  And if that seems like a tall order, let me end with a little story from the Jewish tradition. 

A congregation was intrigued to see their rabbi disappear each week on the eve of the Sabbath. They suspected he was secretly meeting the Almighty, so they deputed one of their number to follow him.

This is what the man saw: the rabbi disguised himself in peasants clothing and served a paralysed Gentile woman in her cottage, cleaning out the room and preparing a Sabbath meal for her.

When the spy got back, the congregation asked, “Where did the rabbi go? Did he ascend to heaven?”

“No”, replied the man, “he went even higher.”

We express the highest Vision of God in doing Him honour in those who need to know that their life is bigger and better than they dare imagine – when we server Christ in others.  You are witnesses of these things said Jesus I today’s Gospel.

Rise up, then, with our Risen and Ascended Lord, and take His Vision of God to others – You will then know how High you can go if you go with God in your hearts. You will also know what it means to be with God on His throne.