Ascension Day
Sermon Preached by Rev’d Tracey Gracey on Sunday, 17 May 2026
We can picture the manger at Christmas.
We can picture the cross on Good Friday.
We can picture the empty tomb at Easter.
But Ascension?
What are we meant to make of this strange story of Jesus being taken into the clouds while the disciples stand staring into the sky?
Are we meant to view this simply as a literal account of where Jesus went?
Or are we being invited to look more deeply at what the Ascension reveals?
That the risen Christ is no longer confined to one place, one moment, or one small group of followers, but is present among us in a new way that reaches beyond physical boundaries.
For in the Ascension, Jesus does not leave human life behind in order to return to God.
The wounded, risen, embodied Christ enters fully into the life of the Father.
The humanity revealed in Jesus’ birth, suffering, love, death, and resurrection is not discarded or left behind.
And that is profound for us.
For humanity, in all its frailty, is welcomed into the very life and presence of God because of Christ.
And that changes how we understand both God and ourselves.
The disciples are only beginning to grasp all of this.
They have experienced resurrection.
They have encountered the risen Jesus.
But now they stand at a threshold moment.
Between physical presence and Spirit-filled mission.
Saint Augustine once said that Christ “departed in body so that faith might grow.”
The disciples must now learn a deeper kind of faith.
A faith that does not depend entirely upon certainty or visible reassurance.
A faith that learns to recognise the presence of Christ even when he cannot be physically seen.
A faith that also begins to trust that the Spirit of Christ is at work within them, leading them into the continuing life of God within the world.
And this is not only the experience of the disciples.
It is also part of our own human experience.
Because much of life is lived in the “in-between” — what Richard Rohr describes as “liminal space” — those places of transition, uncertainty, waiting and becoming.
Between what has been and what is still unfolding.
Between prayer and fulfilment.
Between grief and hope.
Between uncertainty and trust.
Between the life we imagined and the life unfolding before us.
Between what has been promised and what has not yet been fully seen.
And often it is within these in-between places that our faith begins to deepen.
Not when everything is certain.
Not when every question is answered.
Not when God feels obvious or immediate.
But when we continue learning to trust the presence of God within the uncertainties of human life.
The disciples stand in this very place after the Ascension.
Jesus is no longer physically beside them as he once was.
And yet they are not abandoned.
They are learning that the presence of Christ cannot always be reduced to physical sight or certainty.
And this understanding begins to reshape the way they live within the world.
Because the Ascension is not an invitation to escape human life.
It is an invitation to enter it more deeply.
To recognise that ordinary human life can become a place where the presence of God is encountered.
In acts of compassion.
In forgiveness.
In reconciliation.
In communities that continue to love even through uncertainty and change.
This is where the Ascension speaks into our own lives.
For we too are called, like the disciples, to trust that the risen Christ remains present among us.
And to live faithfully within the uncertainties of life.
For Ascension Day is not ultimately about leaving the world behind.
It is about learning how to live more deeply within it.
Amen.