I went to a card shop yesterday as I wanted to get something to help us understand why Jesus ascended into heaven and why it’s important for our shared faith. And I came away with this long ribbon.
As he prepares to return to be with God in heaven, as we heard, Jesus prays that his followers would be united, would be as one.
A quick look or listen to the news should remind us that that is a prayer that has not yet been answered. There is much disunity that we know about across neighbourhoods and nations - and i’m sure there’s much that doesn’t make the news.
How can we be united, one, together as Jesus prayed and yet not as we seen and hear and know,
Because in Jesus, God’s love has come into the world in a unique way - in a way that changes and transforms each life it comes into contact with - healing, welcoming, accepting, including, forgiving, all whoever we are. But it wasn’t just the people who lived in Jesus’s day, but that love in Jesus continues to reach across the world and across time and space to people everywhere.
And the beautiful thing about God’s love show to us in Jesus is that those of us who receive it, who experience it, who’s lives are transformed by it find ourselves brought together as a new group, a new family, but one that covers a huge variety of people and across the ages.
When Jesus ascended - when He returned to be with God, that same love that has transformed our lives and our world retuned to be with God, but it didnt stop being here with us. In fact as Jesus returned, he took with him all that it means to be human - what it means to smile, to laugh, to dance to sing, to cry, to hurt, to rage - but also left with us what it means to love like God - to be compassionate, to be kind, to welcome, to accept, to serve all.
Jesus ascended so heaven was bound to people like us on earth and earth bound to the heart of heaven, and so that what it means to be us - could be with God forever, and what it means to be God could be lived and loved by each of us.
Jesus ascension means that Jesus’ work on earth is over but it also reminds us that our work is just beginning.
Jesus’ prayer for us to be one, to be united, is answered one life, one heart at a time when we show another person, love’ when we put someone’s needs before our own.
Jesus’ ascension reminds us that as we love, and serve, and welcome we do so with the love of Jesus - a love that shapes our lives, but also calls to us, and assures us that our hope and our home now is forever with him.
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