We are inclined to think of the Ascension as the event that finally took Jesus away from this earth, our world, to somewhere else, a place we call heaven. But the gospel writers, at the end of their telling of the story of Jesus’s life, were not really focused on his departing. If anything, quite the opposite. Their focus was on Jesus staying, with them, and with us.
This is perhaps clearest at the very end of Matthew’s gospel, which we hear today (Matthew 28:16-20). Matthew doesn’t include anything about an ascension event. He signs off with Jesus saying: “behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” And before that he emphasizes the mission of the disciples which is to go out to the whole world and preach.
Luke in the Acts of the Apostles does mention the Ascension (Acts 1:1-11) – it’s the common event that bridges from his Gospel to Acts. But even for Luke the meat of the story is in what precedes it – that same commission to the disciples to be witnesses to Jesus “to the ends of the earth”. The ascension story itself comes with a very clear warning – looking up to heaven isn’t going to achieve anything.
Separated by so much time from the events of that first Easter it’s hard for us to appreciate the complete 180 turn that occurred for those first followers of Jesus – from thinking him dead, to finding him alive. For us the events get schmeared together. Jesus is dead, no longer on earth, in heaven, and still with us. We may find it easiest to focus on “Jesus is in heaven” because we think we understand what that means (do we?). Maybe it helps us to think about how we will one day be in heaven, and therefore with Jesus, and with everyone else we have loved on earth.
Whether it helps us or not, it’s clear that wasn’t the way that the first disciples experienced it. For them the central fact of Easter was not that Jesus was alive in heaven, but that he was alive with them, here on earth. And that wasn’t changed by his Ascension – that served to emphasize the need for them to continue Jesus’ work of explaining the Father, not just to the local Jews, but to everyone everywhere.
We follow after those first disciples – and the mission hasn’t changed. Neither has the fact that Jesus is with us here and now. And we also need to be careful not to get distracted staring up into the clouds, as though that was the path to heaven.