Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter Day is the start of the Easter season where exclamation marks abound. Here is great joy - and surprise at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The God of all life and power has raised the crucified Christ to new life. Death and sin are defeated and we share in new life with Christ.

It is interesting how the delight of Easter’s good news is not fully expressed in the lives of Jesus’ disciples. They are still in shock, having to come to terms with an entirely new situation. The Gospels record them behind locked doors for fear of the authorities, or back fishing where they had been before Jesus had called them. They are joyful, but also confused. This is not a simple happy ending to a story. There is clearly more to come…

Easter is a moveable feast, linked to the timing of the Jewish Passover, based on the lunar calendar. That’s why in some years Easter is ‘early’ or ‘late’. Many people see the Last Supper as a Passover meal and value the layers of meaning (e.g. Christ as the Lamb of God) that this juxtaposition offers. The Easter season lasts for seven weeks until Pentecost and includes the festival of the Ascension.

If Easter celebrates God raising Jesus from death*, then the Ascension sees a continuation of that process in the exaltation of Jesus to God’s right hand. Here, Jesus the human who is Christ the Son of God is in glory where he intercedes on behalf of humanity.

The account of the Ascension in Acts 1:6-10 describes the exaltation as a ‘lifting up’ heavenward, with Jesus disappearing from the disciples’ view in a cloud. This picture has an affinity with another picture – a grand vision of hope and security described in Daniel 7:13-14 where ‘one like a son of man’ comes on clouds of heaven to be given dominion, glory and kingship for ever. This is part of what the Church celebrates at Advent. The scene is set and Christ is ready to come again.

*The ‘if’ implies that Easter should be a celebration of God raising Jesus from death. It also implies that it is all too easy to dwell on the good news of Good Friday and to miss emphasising the good news of the resurrection. Equally, the good news of the Ascension can also be underplayed. Perhaps it’s not just the first disciples who were confused…