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Ascension is one of the unsung days in the church calendar. It's not a day that many of us celebrate from year to year, although we should.
The Ascension was a mystery to the Disciples. It completely shook their expectations. They ask Jesus, "is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" They might as well have asked 'are you going to do what we expected you to do now?'
But Jesus, once again, defies expectation. He instead is lifted up and away from sight.
You can almost imagine the dumbfound look on the Disciples' faces. It takes "two men in white robes" to basically tell them, 'why are you standing around here for? Get to work!'
The Ascension, with our modern scientific outlook, is a mystery for us. As I once heard a scholar opine: why does Jesus leave to prepare a place for the Disciples this way? Heaven isn't up. It doesn't have a spatial position. We might also ask: why does Jesus not say, 'by the way, guys, I'm about to ascend into Heaven.' What is going on?
The Ascension is a moment that defies the Disciples' expectations as well as our own. Yet we are given a very specific day for it, 40 days after The Resurrection. It's a reminder to us that God doesn't act in the ways in which we would expect. It reminds us that there is still mystery in our faith.
Sometimes what we need is a little more realization of the need of mystery in our Faith. Otherwise it would not be 'faith', but 'sight'. Sometimes we need to realize that God doesn't fit inside the box we make for Him in our minds. God is beyond anything we could possibly imagine.
This day is about the glory of Jesus, ascending into Heaven. (This is something Enoch and Elijah also did in the Tanakh, albeit in their own ways.) Today is about Jesus going to prepare a place for us in the Heaven Kingdom. Today is even a reminder that Jesus "will come in the same way as you saw Him go into Heaven."
This day is also a reminder that Jesus, though gone, still remains, as we show through the light of the Paschal Candle remaining with us throughout the rest of the Easter time. It's a reminder that soon, the Holy Spirit will come to dwell with the Disciples, as foreshadowed in John's Last Discourse passage before the Crucifixion.
Really, though, today is a reminder that there are many things we still don't know, and that's okay. There's some comfort knowing that God is beyond our very imagining. It means we are not the 'end-all-be-all', and thank God for that!