Of all the movements in the Easter story, the Ascension may be the most puzzling. I can come to terms with a god who chooses to die on a cross. That makes a kind of sense to me: it upends traditional god concepts and reveals a non-violent god while simultaneously deconstructing the violent myths that undergird all culture and religion. I can even easily accept that the resurrection is literal: it makes sense that God would not stay dead, that the final word would be of reconciliation and peace. It neatly completes the revelation of a God who will not smite those who oppose Hen, despite what centuries of religious tradition would have us believe. It is the logical conclusion to the life and ministry of Jesus. What I have struggled most with is the Ascension.
We often imagine the Ascension as a kind of cosmic departure, as though Jesus simply returned to some distant heavenly location beyond the visible sky. For earlier generations, that image may have felt natural. For modern readers, it can feel more difficult. We no longer imagine heaven as a physical place somewhere above the clouds, waiting just beyond the atmosphere. And so the story can become awkward, suspended somewhere between literalism and embarrassment.
But maybe this is another opportunity to reflect on Newton’s apple. Could it be that we have been asking the wrong questions again? Perhaps we are missing the point by puzzling over where Jesus went. Perhaps the real question is what became possible because he was no longer present in the way he had been before.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is present to his followers as one person among others. They hear his voice from outside themselves. They watch him move through crowds. They can walk beside him, question him, misunderstand him, even hide behind him. His presence is intimate, but it remains local. However transformative it may be, it is still the presence of one body in one place at one time.
The problem with that kind of presence, beautiful as it is, is that it can still leave people as spectators. We can see it in so much of modern Christianity: it is possible to admire goodness without embodying it. It is possible to follow closely without becoming transformed. So long as God is made visible in the life of a man, rooted in a specific time and a specific place, it is too easy to remain near Jesus while still avoiding the deeper call of his life.
This may be why, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says something that at first sounds almost impossible: “It is to your advantage that I go away.” Those words seem absurd. How could absence be better than presence? How could departure be a gift?
But perhaps what Jesus is describing is not the ending of presence, but its transformation. As long as Jesus remains merely in front of the disciples, he can still be experienced primarily as someone to observe. His departure creates the possibility that his life will no longer simply be witnessed, but shared. The Ascension is not Jesus abandoning the world. It is his refusal to remain only external to it.
And that is where Pentecost begins to make sense. The Spirit in much of modern Christianity has often been reduced to a private experience, a personal indwelling, an interior religious comfort, a spiritual possession that reassures the individual soul. But the New Testament presents something far more communal than that. At Pentecost, the Spirit does not simply descend into isolated individuals. It forms a people.
The Pentecost story matters deeply. I grew up in a Protestant tradition that largely ignored the Spirit. It was too nebulous, too enigmatic, and so it remained on the fringes of our theological thought. I attended youth groups at more Evangelical churches, where the Spirit was more central, but problematically so. The Spirit was reduced to the phenomenal and experiential. It was simply there to facilitate a more profoundly personal encounter with God.
But Jesus never prioritised personal salvation, nor sought to bring his disciples to closer personal encounters with the divine. The focus of his ministry was undeniably relational, not personal. And this is exemplified at Pentecost. The transformative power in the moment is not the expression of individual “gifts”. It is the fact that people who once stood apart suddenly found themselves drawn into a shared life that none of them could generate alone. People with different languages and cultures, male and female, rich and poor, found themselves bound together by a common encounter with the divine.
The Spirit is not merely something each person receives. The Spirit is what happens between people when the life of Christ becomes their common life. This matters because it means that Jesus does not simply leave his followers with memories. He leaves them with an invitation to participation.
The disciples are no longer called merely to remember his compassion. They are called to become it. Jesus doesn’t remind his followers to remember and admire his forgiveness whenever they gather together after his departure. They are called to embody it in their daily relational realities. They are no longer called merely to believe in his peace and to hope for a future kingdom where God will eradicate those who oppress God’s people. They are called to become a community through which that peace can be seen, where God’s kingdom is made visible through their repeated choosing of self-giving love that ultimately transforms oppressive relationships.
In a world such as ours, fractured by suspicion, tribalism, blame and fear, that may be one of the most urgent dimensions of the Easter story. Because our instinct in times of uncertainty is often to seek security through separation. We withdraw into ideological camps. We define ourselves against one another. We protect ourselves by narrowing the boundaries of who belongs.
But Pentecost reveals another possibility. Perhaps unity is not achieved through sameness. Perhaps peace is not won through exclusion. Perhaps belonging is does not need to be framed through opposition.
If we want to be followers of Jesus in a fragmenting world, if we want lives to be transformed through the Spirit, the answer does not lie in seeking acts of power. Pentecost is not about speaking in tongues or prophetic utterances or miraculous healings. It is not about personal holiness or asking Jesus into your heart.
Perhaps that is why Jesus had to go. Because as long as he remained simply someone beside them, the disciples could still imagine that faith meant proximity rather than participation. They could still believe that discipleship consisted in staying close to Jesus while leaving the deeper structures of their own lives untouched. They could admire him without becoming like him. But once his presence was no longer confined to one body in one place, that possibility began to disappear.
The Ascension is not about absence. It is about transformed presence. And the challenge for us is that Jesus’ ministry must continue through ordinary people whose lives begin to take on the shape of his. This is why Pentecost matters so profoundly. It is not merely the moment the church receives power. It is the moment the followers of Jesus begin to understand that they themselves are now called to become the living continuation of the life they once only observed. The Spirit does not simply comfort them. The Spirit reconstitutes them.
What following Jesus offers is not an escape from this world. It offers another way of being within it. That may be the most unsettling implication of the Ascension. Jesus does not leave so that his followers may spend the centuries staring into the sky. He leaves so that they might finally turn toward one another.
And that, I think, is still the challenge of Pentecost now. It is too easy to equate faith with belief. But belief just leaves us staring up at the sky. That is not what Jesus csll us to. The real question is not “Where is Jesus?” or even “When will he return?”. He never left. He is just present differently. And because of that, the real question is whether his presence can still be recognised in the lives of those who bear his name.
Vapors In The Wind 
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