READING:
Acts 1:1–11
 

Sunday After Ascension

No Land in Sight – Kept on Sailing

‘No land in sight. Kept on sailing.’ This is an entry from the ship’s log of Christopher Columbus as he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new lands. I wonder how his fellow sailors on the three ships in the fleet were feeling as they headed into the unknown, to places no one had sailed before. All contact with home left behind, surrounded by nothing but sea, there must have been a sense of loneliness and a deep uncertainty about what might lie ahead.

Ascension Day feelings 

Such feelings resonate with this Sunday after Ascension. Jesus has left his friends, and now there is a kind of pause before Pentecost. On 51 Sundays of the year, we celebrate God being with us – but on this Sunday, it feels as though God is absent.

The conventional view sees the Ascension of Jesus as the completion of the work he came to do. Jesus departs, having finished everything. But this doesn’t quite hold. When we look around at the world and witness ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, we might wonder: if Jesus came to set everything right, has it worked?

It is sometimes said that Easter and Ascension are like the decisive battle of the D-Day landings before the final victory of VE Day. But the amount of fighting, suffering, and sadness in today’s world makes that analogy feel unconvincing.

There is a poignancy to Ascension Day – Jesus is gone, and the disciples are still waiting for the Spirit to come. Perhaps this speaks deeply to our human condition. We live with increasing isolation and loneliness, widespread in many of our communities. We hear news of catastrophic weather events in France and Australia, clearly linked to climate change, and we witness the suffering of displaced people in places like Sudan.

R. S. Thomas, an Anglican priest who served parishes in North Wales, was also a poet. In one of his poems, The Empty Church, he depicts a solitary figure kneeling in a quiet church, seeking comfort and guidance. But what he finds is silence – the wind’s song and the whispering of unseen creatures. This silence suggests separation from the divine. In much of his poetry, Thomas portrays God not as absent, but as hidden – always one step ahead, always just out of reach.

I wonder if that’s ever been part of your spiritual journey – if you’ve sat in silence, in prayer or stillness, and felt a sense of God’s absence that, strangely, over time became an experience of presence?

The Salt path walk 

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn tells the true story of walking the South West Coast Path with her husband, Moth. Diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration and rendered homeless after a failed investment, they set out on the path with little more than a tent and each other. Almost penniless, receiving a small amount of tax credit, they made the desperate decision to keep walking, hoping that in nature they would find peace and purpose.

Despite having very little, Moth shares his meagre rations with other hungry wanderers. The story is about the coast path and the people they meet – but more deeply, it’s about the courage, love, and determination that sustain them. It is a journey that is exhilarating, challenging, and liberating in equal measure.

The story has recently been adapted into a film. At the beginning, the couple feel utterly alone – isolated and desperate. By the end, Moth reflects that he used to think ‘home’ meant a house and possessions. But now he sees that home is the love and deep connection that grew between them through hardship and perseverance.

This new understanding of home – how it can be lost and rediscovered in unexpected ways – feels like revelation. And that brings us back to Ascension. For the first followers of Jesus, the Ascension is also a revelation – a glimpse of where they are going. It’s an echo of Jesus’ Baptism and 

Transfiguration. In all three, the veil between heaven and earth is pulled back, and we see the Love at the Heart of God.

Becoming part of the very heart of all things.

Sam Wells writes:

“There are two kinds of things: those that abide forever, and those that last for a limited period. The things that abide forever we call essence; the things that last for a limited period we call existence.

We human beings are in the second category – we exist. But we tend to forget that existence isn’t all there is. We’re missing something vital. Existence is subject to change, decay – and death. Essence isn’t.

From the beginning, essence – or God, as we usually say – always intended to be our companion, to be with us. That’s what the word ‘Jesus’ represents: God’s eternal purpose was, and is, to be with us. Jesus is the reason we exist.”

But even more wonderfully, God’s final purpose has always been to bring us into essence – into eternal truth. In Jesus, God invites us to become part of the very heart of all things.

An unimaginable gift

What an unimaginable gift. What an inexpressible hope. In Jesus’ Ascension, we are offered a glimpse of essence and existence joined together – a vision of our true home in the eternal Love of God.