Pause on Ascension for a moment. The Ascension, frustratingly, is often radically misunderstood. The Ascension is not about Jesus going away and encouraging his followers to look forward to the time when they, too, will leave this sad old earth and follow him to heaven. The angels do not say to the watching disciples, \u201d\u02dcThis same Jesus, whom you have seen going into heaven, will look forward to welcoming you when you go to join him there,\u2019 but \u201d\u02dcthis same Jesus, whom you have seen going into heaven, will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven\u2019. And the point of that so-called \u201d\u02dcsecond coming\u2019, or \u201d\u02dcreappearance\u2019 as several New Testament writers put it, is not that he will then scoop us up and take us away from earth to heaven, but that he will celebrate the great party, the great banquet, the marriage of heaven and earth, establishing once and for all his rescuing, ransoming, restoring sovereignty over the whole creation. \u201d\u02dcThe kingdom of this world,\u2019 says John the Seer, \u201d\u02dchas become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he shall reign for ever and ever.\u2019 Amen, we say at the Ascension. This is the real Feast of Christ the King, and the sooner we abolish the fake one that has recently been inserted into our calendar in late November the more likely we shall be to get our political theology sorted out. And, boy, do we need to sort it out right now. If at a time like this we cannot think and speak and act Christianly and wisely and clearly and sharply into the mess and muddle of the rulers of the world we really should be ashamed of ourselves. Jesus is already reigning, is already in charge of this world. \u201d\u02dcAll authority,\u2019 he says at the end of Matthew\u2019s gospel, \u201d\u02dchas been given to me in heaven and on earth.\u2019 When he returns he will complete that work of transformative, restorative justice; but it has already begun, despite the sneers of the sceptics and the scorn of the powerful, and we celebrate it with every Eucharist but especially today at Pentecost.<\/p>\n
Why especially today? Because at Pentecost we discover, as in last week\u2019s Collect, that the Holy Spirit comes to strengthen or comfort us and exalt us to the same place where our saviour Christ has gone before. In other words, the Spirit is the power of heaven come to earth, or to put it the other way the Spirit is the power that enables surprised earthlings to share in the life of heaven. And, to say it once more, the point about heaven is that heaven is the control room for earth. The claim of Pentecost, from Acts 2 and Ephesians 4 and Romans 8 and all those other great Spirit-texts in the New Testament, especially John 13\u201d\u201d16, is precisely that the rule which the ascended Lord Jesus exercises on earth is exercised through his Spirit-filled people. No doubt we do need \u201d\u02dccomforting\u2019 in the modern sense of that word, cheering up when we\u2019re sad. But we need, far more do we need, \u201d\u02dccomforting\u2019 in the older sense of \u201d\u02dcstrengthening\u2019, strengthening-by-coming-alongside. Just as, in human \u201d\u02dccomfort\u2019, a strange thing happens, that the sheer presence, even the silent presence, alongside us of a friend gives us fresh courage and hope, how much more will the presence alongside us and within us of the Spirit of Jesus himself give us courage and hope not simply to cheer up in ourselves but to be strong to witness to his Lordship, his sovereign rule, over the world where human rulers mess it up and ignorant armies clash by night.<\/p>\n
So being \u201d\u02dcexalted to the place where Jesus has gone before\u2019 is precisely not about being snatched away from this wicked world and its concerns. On the contrary, it is to be taken in the power of the Spirit to the place from which the world is run.<\/p>\n