To reach such goals would be to have a vision and a foretaste of heaven itself. We would be gathered into the worship of heaven that the writer of the Book of Revelation foresaw: "There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" (Rev 7:9). What doctrine of the Church would allow us to be so universal in our worship of the one God ? What event could give rise to such inclusive worship when strong pressure would have been placed on the first disciples to keep to the strict pattern of worship with which they were familiar—Hebrew in language, culture, and form?

My study of the doctrine of the Ascension threw new light on such questions. Through it I realized that it was the ascension of Christ that freed him from the limitations of particularity—being a human person in a particular place, time, race, gender, and age group. At the same time the Ascension connected Christ to the reality of being human. The ascended Christ was the same person who had died and risen again. The Ascension event declared to the disciples that the Resurrection appearances were over and that they could now have a new relationship with the Spirit of Christ. This would be God's gift to them. With the blessing and command of Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, they were free to travel far and wide to root the gospel in each new generation, place, and culture. The ascended Christ, free from the limitations of being in a particular time and place, would be present with the disciples wherever they worshiped him and whenever they called upon his name. In recent years most theologians have concentrated their studies on the doctrines of Incarnation and the Resurrection. The cause for this may well be the secular agenda which for many years grew out of a scientific dogma that reduced all reality and existence to what could be seen, touched, examined, and established by means of the microscope or the telescope. Such dogmatism has long disappeared among the true scientists, but it still lingers on in the popular mind.

Some theologians have attempted to restate the doctrine of Incarnation using the new understandings of physics. They have emphasized the little we really know of the mystery of the created order. Like many scientists, they call for a new humility about the human knowledge of the universe. Such writings have made clear again the good news that this Jesus can be regarded as both fully human and fully divine, "one person in two natures," to use the language of the members of the Council of Chalcedon.

This restatement of the doctrine of the Christian Church has been necessary to combat the constant temptation toward heresy in the common mind. Too often people think of Jesus as God in human clothing—God one minute and human the next, but never completely one or the other. Often people think of Jesus as a sort of superman. For them he is so much better than any other human being, but yet he is not really God. This is because in their minds God is too remote, powerful, and distant to ever be fully part of this world and human existence.

John Wren-Lewis summed up this view in a sentence quoted in Bishop Robinson's book Honest to God: "The commonest vision of Jesus was not as a human being at all. He was God in human form, full of supernatural knowledge and miraculous power, very much like the Olympian gods were supposed to be when they visited the earth in disguise."

The Incarnation doctrine is vital for the worshiper in today's Church. He or she needs to know that the Jesus whom we worship does understand our human condition because Jesus Christ was born of Mary and in this fashion has fully shared the experiences of being human.

Other theologians have concentrated their study and debate on the Resurrection. They have asked questions about its historicity and its meaning. The debate has been full of passion, for there is no doubt that the Resurrection has been a key element in our Christian faith from the very beginning.

In one understanding of the biblical evidence, the Resurrection confirms that the divine nature was dominant in Christ. In these readings the miraculous takes over, bodies disappear, and strange apparitions do appear. In the light of this, some Christians see the Resurrection as the "ultimate" miracle, where the supernatural supersedes the natural. Other Christian theologians have dismissed the stories of the Resurrection and see it as the attempt of the first disciples to overcome their devastating grief at the loss of their friend and Master. The Resurrection for these theologians becomes simply a faith-event. It counters the profound disappointment the disciples felt as their hopes to see God's reign of peace and justice come to fulfillment through this Messiah were crushed by his death on a cross.

In this debate about the nature of Jesus, some contemporary theologians want to concentrate on the Cross, certain that it is able to be proved historically. In the Cross they find comfort for the agonies and tragedies of life. In such situations they would rather have an historical Christ, who had suffered and died, than one who had escaped suffering and, through a possible resurrection, lived happily ever afterwards with God in heaven. Attempts to explain the Resurrection have emphasized the "spiritual" nature of the risen Christ and have virtually dismissed any debate on the empty tomb or the nature of the Resurrection appearances in any bodily form. The risen Christ becomes the Christ of faith, and awkward questions are avoided. In such a schema the Ascension is both unnecessary and a nuisance. It is unnecessary because the risen Christ has already been freed from the limitations of earth. It is a nuisance because the imagery used in the Ascension events is seen as laughable. A Christ who takes off in the clouds like a space rocket, leaving a slim trail behind him and a bewildered group of disciples gazing upward, is not seen as helpful in the age of evangelism. In today's Church it is very hard for Christians to win credibility among a skeptical audience that has no real affinity with religious symbolism. So such thinkers want to dismiss the Ascension as an invention of Luke in his Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles. Instead they want to follow the apparent position of John's Gospel, where the Resurrection and "Ascension" take place in an immediate sequence. In that way they avoid the difficulties of any bodily resurrection appearances and concentrate on the "spiritual" experiences of the risen Lord.

Why, then, do I risk the dismissal of my conviction about the Ascension by both groups of theologians and raise again the issues of the event and the doctrine? Why do I go against the grain and tackle such a difficult subject in this short book? The answer is that unless we connect the Christ of history with the Christ of worship, we shall fail to hold together the two essential poles of the Christian faith. Christ must be both in time and beyond time. He must have been in history and been more than just a historical figure. He must be both fully human and fully God. Only then can Christ be the object of our faith and our worship.

To achieve this objective, I have undertaken in this book a full review of the biblical material associated with the doctrine of the Ascension. This includes not only the description of the "event" in the Gospel of Luke and the opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles but also the departure scene that includes the Gospel of Matthew and the references to Christ as King, as Intercessor, and as "exalted in glory" in other parts of the New Testament.

From this review of Scripture comes a theological reflection on the meaning and the significance of the doctrine of the Ascension for Today's Church. I felt that it was important to reexamine the statements about the ascended Christ in the Creeds and, in the light of my comments above on the absorption of some aspects of the Ascension into the Resurrection, to look at the relation between those two key doctrines. Any concept of Christ's current state of existence will incorporate new thinking about "heaven" and "humanity." These are examined in Chapter 4, which then goes on to draw out the relationship between the Ascension and the Parousia. We can then face the question:

It is important, therefore, to consider the implications of the Ascension for the worship of God that we offer in today's Church. I share my findings in Chapter 5 under the heading "The Liturgical Implications of the Doctrine of the Ascension." I was greatly helped in forming these conclusions during my sabbatical leave in 1996. This allowed me to participate in worship in many places around the world, where it is offered with faith, skill, and excellence by those of many languages and cultures. I spent Good Friday and Easter at Soweto, the African townships on the edge of Johannesburg; part of the summer term at Christ Church, Oxford; the feast of the Ascension itself with the Taizé community in France; Pentecost at Assisi; a week in the autumn in various centers in Israel; and a short time in Toronto, Washington, and Los Angeles. This gave me many insights into the helpful trends in liturgy today and the importance of the doctrine of the Ascension in giving us principles on which such trends can be developed.

There are also vital implications of the doctrine for our personal prayers as well as the prayers of the corporate Church. In particular, in the work of intercession we must learn to pray "with the ascended Christ" rather than as sole pleaders to a seemingly reluctant God. Chapter 6, "The Implications of the Ascension for our Personal Prayers," first began as a memorial lecture given in Wellington, New Zealand, in May 1998, and later was published as an article in the November 1998 edition of the journal Worship, with the title "Praying with the Ascended Christ." I am glad to have the opportunity in this book to extend my thinking with the extra space available.

Ever since my first interest in the Ascension during the preparation for a lecture tour of Canada and England in 1990 on inclusive worship, ministry, and baptism, I have been invited to give the sermon in various locations on Ascension Day. I have included my understanding of the implications of the Ascension doctrine for preaching in Chapter 7. This attempts to help preachers disperse the wrong clouds associated with the Ascension and provides two examples of the type of sermon that shows the implications of the Ascension for today's Church. In Chapter 8 I take a look at some practical implications for worship as we begin the new millennium, and from my experience draw out the "signs" of today for the development of our worship tomorrow.

In my Conclusion I have tried to summarize some practical implications of the Ascension for our personal relationships with God and with our brothers and sisters who share the name of human beings. Unless our theology influences our daily practice, it remains the subject only of remote thought. The Ascension has given me not only new insights into the doctrine of the Church but also new ways of living my life with Christ in community.

The Appendix contains an important examination of one of the problems I encountered while doing the biblical research into the texts of the Gospel of Luke when compared with those of the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. This is a short article first published in the Expository Times in April 1998. After the research my mind was satisfied that Luke is not describing two different events or versions of events, but one event by the use of two different sets of geographical signposts