Dear friends,
Next week, on Thursday, we will celebrate the Feast of the Ascension. It marks another extraordinary moment in the Risen Life of Jesus. We have chosen to send you some reflections on this event as well as some excerpts from the New Testament that record it. We have highlighted a few phrases in the extracts that it might be worth a moment’s focus. In all these accounts there are hints of what will come at Pentecost. We hope you will find what is here helpful in gaining some grasp of what we can learn from this moment at the end of the risen life. Clearly the apostles were mystified by the experience so it isn’t surprising that we should be as well!
The blessing this week is ‘Go Forth’ by Rutter.
Love to you all
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “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.”
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Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
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After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
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‘’But stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
Where else
could his final tryst be kept,
the culmination of his mission,
save the summit of a mountain
from whose village
Lazarus was summoned from the dead;
a mountain
that overlooked the garden of his agony,
the cry of his passion,
the place of his resurrection;
where else, but
the Mount of Olives?
…….. And the sun seemed to flare,
as if a mist had cleared his face,
lighting the clouds, blinding white,
as white as when he was transfigured.
And was he lifted up?
Or did the very mountain shrink beneath his feet,
humbled by his magnificence?
Open-mouthed we stared
as those dazzling clouds enfolded him
in splendour beyond imagining.
The King of Kings
ascending his throne
with glory dancing in our eyes,
and in our ears silent hallelujahs
harmonizing, mingling with his words –
You
you shall be my witnesses –
my witnesses –
to the end of the earth,
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
An Apostle’s Meditation
You’d think we’d have been dismayed, wouldn’t you –
to lose Jesus again, so soon after he’d come back to us.
After all, we’d been shattered the first time,
left floundering like fish out of water once deprived of his presence.
True, this time was different –
no cross,
no agony, torment and death –
but he was gone nonetheless,
snatched away from us once more.
Only he wasn’t,
that’s the strange thing.
He was with us much more meaningfully,
not in the flesh but in Spirit –
around us,
beside us,
beyond us,
within us,
touching our lives in every part.
I can’t quite explain it,
but suddenly we knew he was closer than we’d ever dreamt –
for he was not just the Messiah,
the risen Lord,
but God himself,
one with him,
one with us,
the divine in human form.
We’d walked and talked with him,
and we finally realised that we’d do so always, to the end of time.
No wonder he blessed us when he took his leave,
for though he’s far away now at the Father’s side,
through his Spirit he couldn’t be more near.
Nick Fawcett