I am coming to you, Holy Father!” Jesus dwelt in God and his heavenly Father dwelt in him. He was constantly coming to his heavenly Father in prayer, so this prayer seems strange.

Jesus was entering a significant time of transition, looking forward to the time soon when he would return to his Father in heaven.

His ministry on earth was coming to an end. He was going home to a place of more love, joy, truth, and power.

He is leaving behind those who he has cared for so he tenderly entrusts them to his Father’s love, asking his heavenly Father to protect them when he is gone.

Times of parting from those we love are painful. Handing over power and responsibility to those we have nurtured and cared for hurts.

When a child goes to school, university or leaves home to get married or better work parents can feel bereft and lost, having to rethink their roles.

Parents know it is for the best! The children will have fresh opportunities, become more independent and more fruitful than if they stayed. They may have successful careers and children of their own.

Parting is painful for both those leaving and those staying behind. It is an end and a beginning of a different kind of relationship.

Dying is another time of transitions. Sometimes we wait to the end of our lives to say what needs to be said to enable our loved ones to know how much they are valued and live on without us.

We let go of loved ones hoping they will develop and grow in character, move closer to God and become more useful in the work they have been given to do.

There needs to be an end to the way life was to enable the better life to come.

Jesus was moving on. His ascension into heaven was ultimately going to be better for him and us. It was an end and a beginning.

We cannot explain what happened. In some ways it is funny. Jesus had convinced his disciples of the reality of the resurrection. He was flesh and bones and not a ghost, someone who could be hugged, held and would eat with his friends like any normal bloke. He was real, not a hallucination, dream or vision. Jesus who had died and risen from the dead drifted away from them, slowly ascending into heaven on a cloud.

It was an end to Jesus being seen in the flesh on earth, a final end in victory to his suffering; the tiredness, and normal aches and pains humans suffer and barbaric horror of crucifixion was over. Jesus could no longer be captured and killed by those who hated him. All that had been written about him dying and rising from the dead in Moses and the prophets had been fulfilled.

When he said, “It is finished” on the cross he was signifying he had completed the work God had sent him to do. He had loved his disciples till the end, teaching them to love one another as he loved them.

He had told crowds about God’s kingdom of justice and peace, healed the sick, cast out evil and raised the dead and taught his followers to do the same, sending them out on mission trips.

What Jesus did in his three years of ministry on earth was limited in time and space. The next part of the Father’s mission of love could only be completed by Jesus going away.

Repentance in Jesus name and forgiveness of sins would only be preached throughout the world, starting in Jerusalem, if the disciples received power from on high. The world was not going to learn about Jesus through heavenly pyrotechnics but through ordinary men and women like you and me being empowered by the Holy Spirit to share Jesus with everyone we meet.

It was important that Jesus went up and his friends weren’t left wondering where he had gone. Ascension was symbolic of him going to a higher realm, of his Kingship, far above all principalities and powers, of going to the place of power at his Father’s right hand where he could pour out his Spirit on all flesh and give gifts to all who followed him.

In our gospel Jesus prayed as he released those he loved into the hands of his heavenly Father. His relationship with them wasn’t coming to an end because he was going home but it would be different.

Jesus highlighted three ways in which his disciples could have more of him. We are enabled to become more Christ, like, have a deeper relationship with him, and see Christ moving across the world.

Jesus prayed, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.”

The name of God in the Old Testament showed the character of God. When God revealed his name he was revealing himself. That’s why we pray and act in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus had shown his followers, by his very nature what the Father was like. When they had seen him, they had seen the Father. They had seen God’s heart of love and compassion, seen him in action, healing the sick, setting the bound free and suffering for those he loved.

The name of God for Jewish people was considered to be so holy that it was never pronounced except by the High Priest once a year when he entered the Holy of Holies. Ordinary people were not expected to know, far less speak the name of God. God was remote, invisible and scary.

Jesus had shown those who followed him how to have a deep relationship with God. They had lived in community, followed him around, seen Jesus pray, shared food and learnt how Jesus’ close relationship with his Father enabled him to do what he did. Jesus brought God so close to his followers so that each one could know God and have a personal relationship with him. Like Jesus, we can call him Father, tell him what is on our hearts and know his loving embrace

Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” He recognised that when he had gone to heaven things were going to be tough for those he loved. They would be hated, persecuted and some killed as he was about to be but however tough life got, they belonged to Jesus. His stamp was on their lives.

We belong to a different realm where we are in fellowship with God, our Father, Jesus who died for us and the Holy Spirit. We are part of the fellowship of heaven, living as one, not only with our fellow church members but with the company of those who have gone before us.

When Jesus prays that we may be one even as he is one with the Father he is praying that we might have the deepest possible intimacy with him, a relationship of tenderness and delight in which our joy too might be complete.

Jesus continued, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

As God sent Jesus into the world so he sends us into human society which organizes itself without God to make him known. We share by our words and actions the life and love of God in tough places where we live and work.

The passage says that Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified or set apart to do his work. We have been set apart for a particular task which only we can do, one in which we show Christ’s character in us, a task in which we do what Jesus would do in that situation because we have a deep relationship and are one with him.

Our times of intimacy and prayer are times of equipping for this work.

Jesus ascended into heaven so that we might be the people he intended us to be sharing his love and his ways in our places of work and homes.