This week’s N.T. Wright quote is on the point of the ascension and Pentecost:

The question of God’s kingdom in the gospels – the question to which so many parables are the oblique answer – is this: What would it look like if God was in charge here? Supposing, instead of Caesar, or Herod, or the Chief Priests, we had God in charge instead – what would be different, how would things work? We may imagine our schoolchild, grumbling under the harsh rule of a stern teacher, wishing that Dad or Mum could run the school instead; or perhaps, who knows, sometimes the other way round. Israel had dreamed for many generations that her God would come and run the world instead of the horrid tyrants who were presently in charge; and that is what they took Jesus to be talking about, for the good reason that it was what he was talking about. The point of the parables, though, was that it wasn’t going to be like they thought it would be. And the point of Ascension and Pentecost is to show how that plays out: this, it now appears, is what it will look like when God is in charge!

N.T. Wright, “When the Spirit Comes: A Sermon for Pentecost” accessed from here.