Jesus' last recorded act on earth is a blessing. He leads his disciples out as far as Bethany, and 50"lifting up his hands he blessed them." The gesture belongs to a priest. When Aaron first served at the altar he lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them (Leviticus 9:22). Luke uses the verb for bless three times in four verses: Jesus blessed them, he is still blessing them when he goes, and at the end the disciples are continually in the temple blessing God. The blessing runs from Christ to his people and back to God, and no one interrupts it. 51"While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven." The ascension happens in the middle of the benediction, as though the blessing continues after he is out of sight.
The verb for the ascent is passive, was carried up, and the one doing the carrying is the Father. Luke told us where this road was headed at the turn of the whole Gospel: when the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). Earlier that day Jesus had called it entering his glory (Luke 24:26). What the disciples watch is a coronation, which explains the mood of what follows better than loss could. The man who goes up is their representative, carrying their humanity into the presence of the Father.
The disciples respond the way grief does not. 52"they worshiped him." The Greek verb for worship appears only three times in Luke's Gospel. The first two come in the wilderness, where the devil asks for worship and Jesus answers that you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve (Luke 4:7-8). The third comes here, at the last line of the story, and its object is Jesus. Luke reports no rebuke. The man who told the devil that worship belongs to God alone receives it from his friends, and the Gospel lets that stand. They return to Jerusalem with great joy. The city that crucified their teacher is the city they walk back into rejoicing, because everything that happened there has been sealed by this last visible sign: their Lord has gone up to the Father.
The last line carries more weight than it first seems. They were continually in the temple blessing God. Luke began this account inside that same temple, with a priest named Zechariah who came out from the sanctuary unable to speak (Luke 1:22), silenced for his unbelief while the crowd waited for a blessing. His first restored words were themselves a blessing of God (Luke 1:64). Now, at the close of the story, the disciples do what Zechariah once could not, standing in the temple blessing God without pause, with mouths that doubt no longer holds shut.
Luke's telling can read like a single Easter Sunday, though he will say in Acts that forty days passed between the resurrection and this hillside (Acts 1:3). His Gospel ends in worship, joy, and unceasing blessing, with a promise still waiting to be kept. For now it closes where it needs to, on the shape of a life lived in the light of a risen and ascended Lord.
Bless God aloud today for one thing, and bless one person by name.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Son whose last act among us was a blessing, a benediction that has never stopped being spoken over your people. Thank you that he went up as our representative and that we are carried with him. Where doubt has closed our mouths as it closed Zechariah's, restore us as you restored him. Send us out worshiping and rejoicing. In Jesus' name, amen.