Have you ever been ticked off by an angel? Indeed, have you even met an angel? It seems highly unlikely, doesn’t it – although we must remember that the Bible tells us that people can encounter them without recognising them for what they are. However, the eleven disciples who’d witnessed Jesus ascending to heaven from the Mount of Olives definitely did receive an angelic rebuke! For, once Jesus had vanished into a cloud, they stayed rooted to the spot, gazing skywards and no doubt hoping fervently that their Master would soon reappear. According to the author Luke, what happened next was strange. For he tells us that two white-robed men appeared as if from nowhere, and “had a go” (as we might say) at the distraught disciples: “There’s no point in looking for him to come back, you know. He will return, as it happens, in clouds of glory and power – but that’s not going to happen today. What you need to do is remember his final words, and act upon them. So don’t just stand there: Move!”

I appreciate that this story contains several elements which we might struggle with or question. Did Jesus really ascend to heaven in bodily form or did the disciples dream it or experience an “altered state of consciousness”? And, if he did rise up physically, does that mean that heaven is literally “somewhere above us in the sky”? Were the two men in white actually angels (and here we might think of the Easter Sunday story) or were they merely interested passers-by? People in times past might have had no difficulty in accepting this story at face value – as Luke clearly does and expects his readers to do. But we live in a more informed but also more sceptical age; this account sounds to us like a bit of a fairy-tale. Can we really believe that it is true?

Well, I trust Luke – who of course wasn’t present that day; in fact he didn’t become a Christian until quite a few years later. For he tells us at the start of his Gospel that he wants to give us a complete and accurate of all Jesus’ doings, while there is still time to gather the evidence from the eye-witnesses. In other words Luke isn’t relying on fanciful stories but is carefully checking his facts before writing them down. Who are we do doubt him? – especially if Jesus really is God’s Son, the Messiah. For wth him, the impossible can actually happen.

But let’s get back to those disciples, who must have been feeling numb, bereft, confused and emotionally drained by Jesus’ departure, not to mention rather irritated by the angels’ unexpected reprimand. They’d been on an emotional roller-coaster for the previous six weeks or so (or they would have been if roller-coasters had been invented). They’d been thrilled by the enthusiastic crowds on Palm Sunday, then astonished, even frightened, by Jesus’ fury at the Temple traders. They’d anxiously eaten their last meal with Jesus in the Upper Room, shrunk into the shadows as he was arrested, melted into the crowd as he carried his Cross to Calvary, and were distraught to see him die. They’d been first confused and then delighted by Jesus’ resurrection, becoming convinced that the time for him to set up his new Kingdom in Israel had finally arrived, with them poised to take leading roles in Government. But now they seemed to have come to the end of the road, in fact to a turning-point where they could make one of two choices. One – which they’d already sampled when they weren’t too sure if Jesus had risen or not – was to risk the jeers and criticism of friends and family and go back to their old lives of fishing, tax collecting or whatever; in other words, put the past three years down to experience and pick up the pieces of normality. The other option was the riskier one of heeding the angels, going to Jerusalem as Jesus had said, and waiting for whatever was going to happen next. The one thing they definitely could not do was keep standing around on that hilltop!

Well, we know what happened: that the Eleven (and the rest of Jesus’ followers) did go back to Jerusalem to await the Holy Spirit’s arrival; what happened after that is, as they say, “history” which has taken us to where we are today. Now we know that the first days of the Church, after Pentecost, were exciting (although not without problems); we get the impression that the “inner band” of Apostles were incredibly busy and hardly had a moment to think! But I do wonder (and this is pure speculation) if, when there was a lull in activity, the Apostles still felt that Jesus had abandoned or deserted them, that they looked back fondly to the “good old days” and would have bitten God’s hand off if he’d offered to send Jesus back to them? That, of course, was never going to happen: they had to move forward in faith rather than hark back to a past which they could remember but was behind them.

But I wonder if another recollection came to the Apostles during those halcyon days? – the memory of Jesus saying not only that he would send his Spirit to them (which he clearly had done) but also that they would do even greater works or deeds than their Master? Perhaps they did remember, for the early chapters of Acts are studded with Jesus-like miracles of exorcism, healing and even raising people from death, although I can’t think of any food miracles like Feeding the 5000 or Changing Water into Wine. What I think is significant is that these miraculous works are carried out by a number of people over a wide area. We can understand why the Apostles might have wanted Jesus still to be with them; but he could only be present in one place at a time. In contrast, by the end of Acts the Church, though not yet large, is able to serve him right across the Mediterranean region.

You see, Jesus had said, right at the start of his ministry, that he would “bring good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to the captives, offer sight to the blind, set free the oppressed£ and proclaim God’s coming among his people. Now we might think that, by returning to heaven, Jesus had abdicated his responsibility and terminated his ministry. But that’s not the case at all: in fact, through the Church, he was able to infinitely multiply his ministry in a way that would never have happened if he’d remained on earth. For the hands of Christians serve as Jesus’ hands, the feet of Christians move as Jesus’ feet, the voices of Christians speak Jesus’ words to the world. No wonder Jesus had said that it was ‘necessary’ for him to depart.

Earlier in the service we were thinking about Christian Aid. You might have felt that it’s a theme that doesn’t sit well with “Ascension” – after all, Ascension is all about Jesus leaving the world and returning to heaven while the work of Christian Aid is definitely done at “ground level”! Yet I hope I’ve proved that there is a connection between them, one which goes back to the angels’ “prod” I talked about at the start of this message. For, rather like in the story of the Transfiguration when Peter, James and John who had been with Jesus on the mountain were immediately confronted by human demands as they came back down, the disciples who witnessed Jesus going into heaven could not stay gawping on the hill top but had to descend and – a few days later – get stuck into the serious work of working for Jesus in their city with, we read, he Holy Spirit explicitly sent by him to empower them.

I’m sure that there are times when it’s appropriate for us to “gaze into the heavenlies” – not necessarily from a hilltop! – contemplating or trying to puzzle out who God is and how he acts. Equally there are times when it’s good to step into church, shut the doors to the world outside, and lose ourselves in worship. But dare I suggest that these times can easily become self-indulgent or even an excuse for laziness, and that Christians sometimes need a bit of a nudge or a nag about “getting stuck in” to the practical demands of serving the world? Of course there are many wonderful Christians who give themselves selflessly to serving others, possibly in the most demanding, the most stressful, the most filthy conditions, doing so with a self-deprecating smile. But it’s also true that we can be shamed by the service carried out by people of other faiths, or who profess no faith at all. Their commitment to humanity can appear greater than our supposed dedication to God and the people he has created and asks us to love.                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Today we aren’t standing on a hilltop looking upwards; indeed we’re inside a building and can’t even see the sky above us! Equally there aren’t any angels in church, ready to give us a gentle telling-off – at least, I don’t think there are! But we do believe that Jesus has ascended into heaven, that he has called us to serve him in practical ways, that he has sent his Spirit to be our Enabler or Helper. All we have to do is identify the tasks that Jesus is asking to do – and to get started.