This Thursday was Ascension Day, when we are taken into the heavenly heights to see the world as God sees it, or perhaps, I should say, as God wills it to be. A world without divisions of race and nation, a world of community and peace, made possible by the love of God as we know it in Jesus Christ.

There is nothing like a view from the mountains, and Matthew tells us that Jesus took the disciples to a mountain top to share with them his vision of a world renewed. We don’t have any mountains in the Cotswolds, but we do have Cleeve Hill, just outside Cheltenham. Clare and I have been walking the Cotswold Way, and were able to enjoy the view from Cleeve Hill. You can see Gloucester Cathedral in the distance, and over to the Severn estuary, the Malvern hills, and on a clear day, Wales. It is a delight to see this glorious countryside laid out, and to imagine all the life that it contains.

Along the Cotswold Way is the small town of Broadway, now, I fear, a rather Disneyfied tourist attraction, but back in the day, the home of an Artistic commune of American and British artists. Among the most prominent of them was John Singer Sargent, a renowned portrait artist. I was hoping to find a painting of Cleeve Hill, he did paint it, but I couldn’t find the painting, Instead, I have chosen a painting by Paul Nash, known best for his paintings of the devastation of World War 1 and 11. Maybe he came to the Cotswolds to recover and to paint. I offer you his sketch of Cleeve Hill by moonlight. Was he thinking of a better world, bathed in the silver light of a new moon?

Heavenly horizons: Jesus takes us in this passage to the place where he has ascended and shows us the view, a view of the glory of the world that he has made new by his death, resurrection, and ascension. “Father, I want those you have given me to be where I am and to see my glory” John 17:24. This vision of glory is the place where we can see the completed work of God in Christ, it is the vision that Jesus shares with his disciples so that they can share it with the world.

The vision of the Church: At the centre of the vision is a community of people renewed and redeemed through Christ. It is a vision that the Church itself is to embody by its unity and love, for unless the world can see what renewal and redemption look like, the world will not believe. Just the Artists' commune in Broadway wished to share their vision of the Cotswolds, so the Church is to share its vision of the world. “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe” John 17:24.

Christ the model of mission: The focus on the unity of the Church reminds us that the plan and purpose of God’s mission has always been to bring all things together in His love. Just as at the beginning all things had their origin in His love, so through Christ all things are brought back to Him through his redeeming and renewing love. But this mission is only accomplished at a cost, the costly identification of Christ with sinful humanity, so that he could take us with him into God’s presence. Again, we can see this reflected in the war artist Paul Nash as he brings us face to face with the horror of the trenches. Out of this horror, he says, there must be a better world.

The mission of the Church: WH Auden, famously said, “Poetry changes nothing”; the same could be said of art. I typed this into Google and received this commentary. ‘ The creative power of poetry, not to change the world concretely, but to make something new exist through words.’ So it is, with Christ as our model, the Church lives in the world to share the life of Christ in costly identification with sinful humanity. “All I have is yours and all you have is mine” John 17:10. The love of God for His world is to be lived out by the Church so that the world may “know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” John 17: 23.

Upwards, inwards, and outwards: The life of the Church then has an upwards dimension as we catch a glimpse in worship of the Lord who has brought all things together in his love, inwards as we are united in this love with each other, and outwards as we share this love with the world. Such a mission is only possible because Christ prays for us, that we might see his Glory, that we might be one, and that we might share his love with the world.