The Ascension of the Lord (Seventh Sunday of Easter)

Why are you standing there looking at the sky? The two men in white ask this of the disciples who are watching Jesus disappear into a cloud. It is not a rebuke - it is a redirection. The looking-up is natural. It is also, at some point, the wrong direction. He has gone. He will return the same way. In the meantime, there is a world to go into, a Gospel to proclaim, a power coming that will make the going possible.

The going was necessary. Jesus said so in the Upper Room: it is better for you that I go. The Advocate does not come unless he goes. And now Paul prays for the Ephesians that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened - that they would know the surpassing greatness of the power at work in those who believe, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at the right hand, far above every principality and authority and power and dominion, and put all things under his feet. That power belongs to the Church. The one who ascended is the head; the community of believers on earth is his body.

Your household is a part of that body. The risen and ascended Christ is the head of a body that includes your family - your table, your routines, your imperfect daily faithfulness. The Ascension is not the departure of the Lord from the world. It is his enthronement over it, with his body still here, bearing him into the places the cloud could not go.

• For our family, that we would stop looking at the sky and go into the world that needs the Gospel - our neighborhood, our schools, our workplaces - with the power the Spirit brings, we pray to the Lord.
• For the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened, as Paul prays for the Ephesians, so that we know the hope of his call and the surpassing greatness of his power at work in us, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who feel the Ascension as loss - who stand looking at the empty sky - that the redirection of the two in white would reach them: he will return, and in the meantime there is a mission, we pray to the Lord.
• In this month of Mary, for the intercession of the woman who was in the Upper Room waiting for the Spirit alongside the disciples, for all families awaiting the power that is coming, we pray to the Lord.

Go into the whole world. Your world is specific: your street, your workplace, your children's school, your parish neighborhood. This week, go somewhere in your world with the explicit intention of bearing the Gospel there - not with a script, but with the awareness that you are part of the body whose head is enthroned above every power. You are not going alone. The Lord works with those who go, confirming the word.

The disciples were told to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father before they went anywhere. The waiting and the going belong together. Teach your children to wait in prayer before they act - to receive the power before they attempt the mission. The Ascension is not a starting gun. It is the beginning of a ten-day waiting that produces Pentecost.