What if I told you that one of the best things that ever happened to the church was Jesus leaving? I know that sounds backwards. The disciples certainly didn't see it that way — not at first. They stood on that hillside with their necks craned toward the sky, watching him go, and two angels had to show up just to get them moving again. But here's what I've come to understand: the Ascension of Jesus isn't a story about loss. It's a story about commission, about presence, and about what it actually means that the kingdom of God has come. It's one of those events on the church calendar that tends to get skipped over — squeezed between the joy of Easter and the fire of Pentecost — but it deserves our full attention, because it changes everything about how we understand what the church is supposed to be doing in the world.
After Easter: A Season of Shift
We're spending some time in our Weekly Word series looking at the events that take place after Easter. Not because the resurrection isn't the main event — it absolutely is — but because there are things that happen in the weeks following that first Easter Sunday that are just as theologically rich and just as essential for understanding how God works in the world today. These post-Easter events don't change the theme. The kingdom of God is still the theme. Grace coming to sinners, forgiveness breaking through the darkness, salvation arriving where it was least expected — all of that remains unchanged. But there is a significant shift that happens, and if we miss it, we'll misunderstand what the church is and what we're here for.
Think about the shape of Jesus' ministry during his earthly life. He was the main voice. He was the one driving the proclamation that the kingdom of God had arrived. Yes, he sent out the twelve, and later the seventy-two, but they came back to report to him. He was the center of gravity. Even when the disciples were out doing ministry, it was always in direct relationship to him as the one who commissioned, instructed, and received their reports. That's the pattern for the bulk of his three years of public ministry — and it continued through his resurrection. For forty days after he rose from the dead, he kept appearing to his disciples. He was teaching them, opening the Scriptures to them, reminding them of everything he had said before.
But forty days after the resurrection, something changes. Something decisive happens on a hilltop that reshapes the entire structure of how the kingdom of God moves forward in history.
Forty Days and What They Were For
The forty days between the resurrection and the ascension are sometimes treated as a kind of extended epilogue — Jesus just checking in here and there before he disappears for good. But that misses the point entirely. Luke tells us in Acts 1:3 exactly what those forty days were about:
He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking with them about the kingdom of God.
He appeared to them by many proofs. That word "proofs" matters. Luke, the historian, is telling us this wasn't impressionistic or emotional. These were real appearances, verifiable encounters, not visions in the night. He was there. They saw him, touched him, ate with him. And during that time, he was doing something very specific: he was speaking to them about the kingdom of God. He was preparing them. He was shaping their understanding. He was getting them ready for a role they were about to inherit — the role of being his witnesses to the world.
We also know from 1 Corinthians 15:6 that Jesus appeared not just to the apostles during this period, but to a crowd of more than five hundred people at one time. He was still proclaiming. He was still teaching. But there was something unusual about the pattern — he would appear and then disappear. He'd be present and then he'd be gone. That back-and-forth had its own kind of strangeness to it, and I think it was intentional. It was preparing the disciples for something. The appearances would end. The moment of final departure was coming. And when it came, it needed to be unmistakably clear.
The Ascension: What the Disciples Saw
At the end of those forty days, Jesus gathers his disciples on a hill. He gives them their commission — you'll start in Jerusalem, spread out through Judea, move into Samaria, and from there go to the ends of the earth. And then, as they're standing there listening to him, something happens that Luke describes with remarkable visual precision. Acts 1, starting at verse 9:
And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."
I want you to sit with that visual language for a moment, because Luke piles it up on purpose. They were looking on. A cloud took him out of their sight. They were gazing into heaven. The angels' message promises he will come back in the same way as they saw him go. Seeing. Watching. Witnessing. That language is doing real theological work here, because the apostles are, above all things, witnesses. Their calling, their authority, their entire purpose rests on the fact that they were there. They saw the risen Lord. They watched him ascend. They will testify to what they have seen and heard.
The angels' gentle rebuke — why do you stand looking into heaven? — isn't harsh. It's redirecting. There's a world to reach. The gazing into the sky is understandable; of course they're watching. But the era of watching is over. The era of going has begun.
Why the Ascension Matters: Three Reasons We Need to Take Seriously
1. It Marks a Real and Necessary Transfer of Ministry
One of the most important things the Ascension does is make the transfer of ministry undeniable. During those forty days after the resurrection, when Jesus appeared and disappeared in that irregular pattern, there may have still been some unconscious hope in the disciples' minds that he would just stay. That he'd settle in, keep teaching, keep showing up. The Ascension puts a clear, definitive end to that possibility. He is gone. Not hiding. Not traveling. Gone. And that clarity is actually a gift, because it means the disciples can no longer wait for him to show up and handle things. The work is theirs now.
But here's the important thing: it's still his ministry. That doesn't change. It's still about Jesus — his death, his resurrection, his grace, his name. The content of the message doesn't shift just because the messenger does. What shifts is that his voice will now come through their voices. His presence will be known in the world through the people he has called and sent. The church is not an institution that manages a religious heritage left behind by a teacher who is gone. The church is the living body of Christ, through whom the risen Lord continues to do his work by the power of his Spirit. The Ascension establishes that structure clearly and permanently.
2. It Brings Jesus' Humanity into the Presence of God
We spend a lot of time at Christmas thinking about the Incarnation — the mystery of God becoming flesh, taking on a human body, entering into our experience as one of us. John 1 gives us that breathtaking language about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. But the Ascension is, in a sense, the corollary of that event. When Jesus ascends, he doesn't leave his humanity behind. He brings it with him. He returns to the Father not as the eternal Son alone, but as the God-man — fully divine and fully human, forever.
This has enormous implications for our lives before God. Think about what Job longed for in the middle of his suffering — someone who could put a hand on them both, someone who stood between God and man and could speak for the one to the other. Jesus is that mediator. He is God, so he can truly intercede with the Father. And he is human — genuinely, permanently human — so he understands our situation from the inside. He knows what it is to be tired. He knows what it is to grieve. He knows what it is to be tempted. And when we come before God in prayer, we come through One who is sympathetic, who knows, who stands with us as both our Savior and our brother. That ongoing intercession is only possible because he ascended with his humanity intact.
3. It Makes His Presence Available to Everyone, Everywhere
Here is the thing about Jesus being physically present in one location: only the people in that location can be with him. Think about what it would mean if Jesus were still walking around somewhere in Judea or Galilee. Think about how impossible it would be to get an appointment. The line of people who needed something from him would stretch for miles. Most of us would never get near him. His presence would be effectively limited to whoever happened to be geographically close at the right moment in history.
But because Jesus ascended — because he returned to the full exercise of his divine nature, including his omnipresence — he is no longer bound by the limitations of a body in a place. He promised in Matthew 28:20 that he would be with us always, even to the very end of the age. That promise is only fulfillable because of the Ascension. He is with you in Hudson, Ohio. He is with believers in places you've never heard of. He is present across every century of the church's history simultaneously, because he is not confined by time or geography any longer.
He still has a body — the resurrection and ascension make that clear, and it matters for all the reasons we just talked about regarding his ongoing humanity. But that glorified human nature has been taken up into the fullness of his divine nature in a way that allows him to be truly and personally present with each one of his people, wherever they are, whenever they live. That is not a step down from the Incarnation. That is the Incarnation arriving at its intended destination.
The Holy Spirit and the Work That Follows
Jesus himself told his disciples that it was necessary for him to go. That was a hard thing to hear. If you had been sitting with the disciples, you might have wanted to argue about it. But Jesus was clear: it is to your advantage that I go away, because if I don't go, the Helper won't come. The gift of the Holy Spirit — the full, permanent indwelling of the Spirit that the church has lived in ever since — was contingent on the Ascension.
And the work of the Holy Spirit is not a minor footnote. It is absolutely central to everything the church is and does. Luther put it well in his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed: the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. The Spirit is the one who creates faith where there was none. He is the one who takes the word that the church proclaims — that word about Jesus, his death and resurrection, his grace and forgiveness — and makes it land in a human heart with the power to change that person forever. We don't generate that. We can't manufacture it. The Spirit does it, and the Ascension is what made the Spirit's coming possible.
We'll dig into this more when we get to Pentecost in a couple of weeks, because what happens on that day is the direct fulfillment of the promise Jesus made at his Ascension. But even here, even on Ascension Day, we need to hold those two events together. The Ascension is not just about Jesus going away. It is about the Spirit coming, and through the Spirit, Jesus being present in his church in a way that is more powerful and more universal than his physical presence ever could have been.
Thy Kingdom Come
We pray it every week, most of us. Some of us pray it every day. Thy kingdom come. But what are we asking for when we say those words? It's worth being honest that the disciples themselves had confused ideas about this right up until the Ascension. They were asking Jesus, just before he ascended, whether he was about to restore the kingdom to Israel — meaning a political, national, earthly kingdom of power. That was still in their heads even after forty days of teaching about the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not a kingdom of power in that sense. It's not about territorial control or political dominance. When we pray thy kingdom come, we are praying for God's grace to come to people. We are praying for his mercy to break into lives that are dark and broken. We are praying for sinners to be saved — including ourselves. The kingdom of God is wherever God is doing his work of redemption, wherever the Holy Spirit is creating faith, wherever the gospel is being heard and believed and lived.
And here is what Ascension Day makes clear about how that kingdom advances today: it advances through us. Not because we are impressive, or capable, or especially holy. But because he has redeemed us and filled us with his Spirit and sent us out as his witnesses. The way the kingdom of God comes to the world right now, in this moment in history, is through the people in whom the King already lives. That is staggering when you sit with it. The message of grace that has changed your life — Jesus wants to send that message through you to people who haven't heard it yet. Not because you're a professional, not because you have a theology degree, but because you are a witness. You have seen what he has done. You know what he is like. You carry within you the hope that the world is desperately looking for.
We Are Not Alone in This
If all of that sounds like a heavy responsibility, I want to make sure we don't walk away from Ascension Day carrying a burden instead of a commission. Because the whole point of everything we've talked about — the ongoing intercession of Jesus at the right hand of the Father, the omnipresence he recovered through his Ascension, the gift of the Holy Spirit — all of it is saying the same thing: you are not doing this alone.
Jesus is not an absent Lord who left a to-do list and went on vacation. He is the one who is actually doing the work, in us and through us. He is with us always. He intercedes for us when we don't know what to pray. He sends his Spirit to do what we cannot do — to open eyes, to soften hearts, to create faith where there was none. Our job is to be faithful witnesses: to go where he sends us, to speak the word he has given us, to live in a way that matches the hope we carry. The outcome is in his hands, because it always was.
Ascension Day is worth celebrating. It's worth pausing for. In many Lutheran churches around the world, Ascension Thursday is still observed as a feast day, and there's good reason for that. Because what happened on that hillside forty days after Easter is not a footnote. It is the hinge on which the entire mission of the church swings. On that day, Jesus made it clear that the church is his plan. Not plan B — his plan. His voice in the world. His hands extended toward people who need him. His witnesses, sent to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth — which, as it turns out, includes wherever you will find yourself this week.
So as you move through your days, carrying this word and this hope, here's the question worth sitting with: Who in your life is still standing at a distance from the grace you've already received? Because Jesus is still sending. He's still commissioning. And he is very much still present — in you, with you, and ahead of you wherever you go.
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