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Good morning. Rob Burrow and Kevin Sinfield played rugby league together for Leeds Rhinos and England for 15 years. After retirement, their lives went in different directions. Kevin became England rugby league defence coach. Rob developed Motor Neurone Disease. Last Sunday, in the first Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon, among 12,000 participants, the puffing Kevin pushed the ailing Rob in his wheelchair 26 miles through Leeds. A few yards from the finish, Kevin stopped the wheelchair, bent down to lift up his old team-mate in his arms, and carried Rob the last few steps so they crossed the line together. It was an iconic moment. An icon is the opposite of a mirror. A mirror is a glass in which you see yourself. An icon is an image through which you see God. The image of Rob Burrow in Kevin Sinfield’s arms is an icon of solidarity, of companionship, of dignity amidst suffering. But for Christians, it’s fundamentally an image of Christ. That’s because in Jesus, God, like Kevin, comes to inhabit our human condition, represented by Rob, shares our sorrows, and accompanies us through the most demanding exertions of our life till we cross the line together. The icon of these two team-mates and companions is especially poignant on this particular day of the Christian year. Today, 40 days after Easter, is Ascension Day. After a series of appearances to his disciples following his resurrection, Jesus departs from them and ascends to the right hand of the Father. Just as Kevin picks up his friend Rob and carries him over the finish line, we can see Ascension as Jesus picking up each one of us and bringing us with him across the finish line of death, mortality and time to reach the wondrous destination of new life, new companionship and eternity. For Christians, Ascension is saying that, however invested we may be in the fever of life now, our true home is not here but lies in the realm of forever. At Christmas Jesus comes from God’s forever and dwells in our now. At Ascension he leaves our now and returns to God’s forever. What makes moments like Rob and Kevin crossing the line together iconic is that they give us a glimpse today of what eternity is like. Eternity isn’t an abstract, disembodied reverie. It’s a truly interactive, deeply interpersonal and wondrously immersive experience of profound companionship with God, one another and the renewed creation. Jesus’ ascension creates a pathway for us into that forever. Kevin and Rob offer us an image of what that forever will be like. Both are icons of Ascension Day.