This Is What Everything Is About

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”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.”- Acts 1:6-11Thursday was Ascension Day. We’ve forgotten what it means, and we mostly pass it by without a second thought. But it belongs alongside Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Because the Ascension isn't just the moment Jesus left - it's the moment he became King.Imagine a coronation in the ancient world. Imagine and struggle against enemies and threats. Imagine the king overcoming his enemies and then riding victorious into his capital city. Imagine the declaration of the victory - the euangelion going out across the country. That's exactly what we see in the Creed we recite together: he descended, he rose, he ascended. These aren't three separate events. It’s a single act of cosmic conquest. Jesus walked deliberately into death's stronghold and walked back out. And then he was seated at the right hand of the Father. That's seated - not standing, and not waiting. That's the posture of a king whose rule has been established.We live in a world that often feels as though the wrong forces are in charge — chaos more real than order, death stronger than life. The Ascension doesn't pretend that the chaos isn't real, but it does declare that chaos does not have the last word. The King is on his throne. The decisive battle has already been fought and won. In the book of Revelation, the ascended Jesus says: "I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever - and I hold the keys of death and Hades."It is true, in Churchill's famous words, that “It is not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning”. Jesus told his disciples: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses... to the ends of the earth." The Kingdom now advances - and is declared - through his people, empowered by his Spirit. In our places, in our times, that's us.As Paul puts it in Romans 8, creation itself is groaning, waiting for the people of God to live in line with the victory King Jesus won.