Ascension Meditation

For so many reasons, we're really incredibly fortunate to be able to worship here at Canaan Baptist,

and one of the reasons that I frequently give thanks for this space is this great big cross in the front of the sanctuary.

And while I've worshiped in many Protestant denominations over the years,

I have never had the opportunity to worship in an American church blessed with an image as rich and as deep as the one that we have here.

On any given Sunday, almost everything that is said and done up front is relevant to what our eyes are seeing.

Not only can we hear the word, but we are blessed to be able to see the word also.

We can see what is being talked about by our pastors and priests set in its broader context.

At one point in a sermon series past, Tommy spoke eloquently about the heavily trafficked intersection between heaven and earth.

And that's exactly what we have here.

If you have the keys, this whole thing can be read like a book.

As this has become an increasingly personal aid to focus my own worship,

I have increasingly longed for you also to have these keys.

Being in the middle of a series on Revelation, it's a particularly nice time to share this with you,

as you'll see plenty of the imagery that's up here comes from that book.

It's also especially appropriate to talk about this in the Easter season,

as we have been able to witness and participate in both of the sacraments that this talks about,

baptism and the Eucharist.

The first thing to say is that this is a mosaic.

It's not painted on the wall.

It's made up of a lot of little tiles called tessera,

and it's set into the plaster,

so it's part of the integral structure of this physical church building.

In this aspect, it mimics us.

As members of the family of God,

we have become fully incorporated into the physical and spiritual structure of the church as the bride of Christ.

Second, I'm not going to be at all offended if you do not look at me once from now on.

I'm here to be your audio guide to this piece,

because there is a special power to hearing and seeing also.

Occasionally, there will be some slides over on the screen

that will let you have a close-up view of some parts of this that's hard to see.

If you don't have a super comfortable view of this entire thing,

I would say get one, or you're going to be really, really bored.

When I look at this cross, I often think of two things.

The first is the vision of Jacob at Haran.

On his way to take away from his own people,

Jacob rested on the journey.

His head on a rock, he fell into a deep sleep,

where he dreamed of a stairway to heaven.

I remember the thing that I first thought when I heard this story as a child.

If I saw a stairway to heaven, I would run right up it.

Why didn't Jacob get up and do that?

After all, the story does not say there was anything to prevent it.

It does not say there was a gate.

What would stop me from being there among the angels?

And from doing what they do.

Only a little child would perhaps be without guile enough to think such a thing were possible.

Well, we adults must get over whatever stops us from thinking this way.

The second thing I think of when I see this cross is the life of a woman named St. Therese of Lisieux.

Born in 1873, she joined a Descalse Carmelite order at the age of 15 in the village of Lisieux in Normandy, France.

She died of TB at the age of 24.

However, her journey of faith was of such depth and maturity that she was instructed to write her autobiography.

And eventually, she was recognized as a doctor of the Catholic Church.

But this is not how she experienced or saw her own life of faith.

She was a very young woman who yearned to be a great saint.

But at the same time, she knew that she wasn't good enough.

She knew that she was weak and unable.

She had an enormous degree of agony over her weakness and her smallness.

But in her spiritual life, she came to see a parallel between the gospel and one of the new technologies of her time.

She wrote,

We are in an age of inventions.

Now, one does not have to make the effort to climb the stairways in rich people's houses because an elevator does the work much better.

In her seeking of him, Christ made it known to Therese that the way to him is not to be great and mighty and capable, but is indeed to remain small.

She wrote,

Ah, never has such tender and melodious words come to rejoice my soul.

The elevator that would lift me up to heaven is your arms, O Jesus.

This cross is like the stairway of Jacob and like the elevator of St. Therese.

Moving up and down it, in it and upon it, we can begin to absorb great mysteries,

meditating on some of the beautiful means by which Christ not only lifts us up to himself, but comes down to us,

so that he might live forevermore in us and we in him.

Let's take a look.

In order to dive deeply, we must begin to learn a language,

a language of symbol that has long been used in the depiction of Christian subject matter.

The language provides a vocabulary with which big concepts and complex theologies can be really richly expounded upon in compact spaces.

It can also allow us to see, all at once, some of the polarities which are held together in the person of Christ.

This cross can be thought of as consisting of two sections, heaven and earth.

We will move up and down upon it as the angels moved on Jacob's ladder,

but let's begin in heaven at the topmost part,

which could easily be separated into a Greek cross,

that is, a cross having four equal arms.

On the island of Patmos, God met St. John with a series of powerful visions,

providing imagery intended for comfort and worship, for warning, praise, and hope.

These things were written down in the book of Revelation,

and the image here at the top is rooted in Revelation 5.

Perhaps this depiction strikes you as odd.

If you are thinking, this lamb looks quite well, you are correct.

This lamb is very much alive, standing in the traditional posture,

representing the triumphant and resurrected Christ.

Surrounding its head is a special kind of halo.

If you look closely, you can see the form of a cross interrupted by the head of the lamb.

This is called a cruciform nimbus, and it is a kind of halo which is worn only by Christ.

And it proclaims that he has passed through the passion and experienced the resurrection.

It implies that if his head were transparent, the fullness of the cross would be revealed.

Well, the cruciform nimbus amplifies an aspect of Christ that readily makes sense to us here in the context of heaven.

Again, the use of this symbol in Christian art is not limited to this context.

Consider, for example, the implications of the cruciform nimbus when worn by the infant Christ.

Now, this is not an art history lecture, so I didn't bring a lot of supplemental examples of what I'm talking about in other works.

But this whole gospel Jesus, this inside of time, outside of time God,

is so powerfully expressed in this symbol that I did bring an example of this.

This is Fra Angelico.

And here, Christ as an infant is held in the arms of the Virgin as they flee into Egypt.

At every point in his life, Jesus held together the realities of life, birth, death, crucifixion, and resurrection.

What is the mystery of our faith?

Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

Let's explore other aspects of the Lamb.

In the crook of his foreleg, he studies a banner.

This is common in images of the resurrection.

Christ emerges and stands victorious over the tomb,

unfurling a flag of battle and of victory,

and blasphemed with the sign of the conquering cross.

While we're on the subject of victory banners, let's look further down.

All the way near the bottom of the cross, in a space carved out like an almond,

there is an inscription. It looks like an I-H-E.

These are the first three letters of Jesus in Greek.

Iota, Eta, Sigma.

If you've hung around Christendom for very long,

you've probably seen this inscription before.

It can be thought of as one of the many monograms of Christ.

This is a dual symbol.

Not only is this the first three letters of Jesus in Greek,

I-H-S, the Latin transliteration of the same,

is associated with the vision of Constantine at the start of his conversion to Christianity.

Interestingly enough, out in the lobby of this church, in a glass case,

there's a gold cross that I suspect very much was made for this altar.

And it's on the wall, and it bears that very inscription.

On the eve of battle, in A.D. 312,

depending on which account you read,

Constantine experienced a waking vision, had a dream, or both.

However it happened, it was a vision or a dream with a message.

In hoc signo.

The whole message, in hoc signo vinces,

which translates out of the Latin,

as in this sign, you will conquer.

He was also instructed to mark the shields of his armies with the sign of Christ.

Now, whether or not things unfolded for Constantine exactly in this way is not important.

What matters to us is that the Iota etta sigma, the I-H-S,

has come to represent not only Christ,

but the sign of Christ through which victory is obtained.

Propped up in the H here is the sign of Christ's victory, the cross.

There is more to consider here,

but let's return to the top and finish the heaven section.

At the center of the throne of God, there is a burning sun.

God himself is the light in the new Jerusalem of Revelation 22.

And the Lamb stands before a star of David.

All the prophecies of the lineage of Christ are alluded to here.

This is not only the Lamb, this is the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Of the house and line of David, Christ was a descendant of Abraham.

Salvation is from the Jews.

From the little rise near the base of the star,

four rivers flow out from the throne of God and from the Lamb,

clear as crystal.

These are the four rivers of Paradise, or Eden,

the Pisan, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.

Here, they become the river of the water of life,

from Revelation 22.

The first and last books of Scripture are tied together in Christ.

Down near the bottom center of the section of the cross,

we can find a similar set of bookends.

There's an Alpha and an Omega.

The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet,

these refer to Christ as the first and the last,

the beginning and the end.

Back up at the top, moving out from the center of heaven,

we come to a symbol of the Passion,

that is the death of Jesus.

The crown of thorns is woven around the ring,

which connects the four arms of the cross.

Each of these arms bears a symbol of one of the four evangelists.

These men, who wrote the gospel accounts of Christ,

each focused on a different aspect of him.

Matthew, whose gospel focuses on Christ's humanity,

is represented by a man.

Mark, whose book reflects Christ's divinity and kingship,

takes the form of a winged lion.

Luke, represented by an ox,

wrote much about the sacrificial aspects of Jesus.

John, whose writing is more philosophical,

and who concentrates on the immortality of Christ,

is the eagle.

If you forget who is who sometime,

letters provide a clue.

These are men who walked with Christ.

They are the ones to whom it was said,

If you have seen me,

you have seen the Father.

Elevating the gospel writers to positions

surrounding Christ in heaven

alludes to the perfection of the word of God

and the picture of him that it supplies to us.

The symbols of the four evangelists,

in this context,

became conflated with the four living creatures,

which encircled the throne in Revelation 5.

It's hard to talk about this image

without bouncing back and forth

between the heaven and the earth parts of it.

In this cross,

heaven and earth are so very connected.

While I talked about the heaven section as a Greek cross,

this is not a Greek cross.

This is a Latin cross.

Taken as a whole,

the bottom arm stretches down toward earth.

Here, inside this form,

is illustrated the abiding connection

made in the person of Christ

between things above and things below.

At the end of the Eucharist,

we proclaim this connection every Sunday.

We celebrate this covenant with joy

and await the glorious appearing of our Savior,

Jesus Christ,

who will unite all things

in heaven and on earth,

raising us from death

and making all things new.

In him,

and with him,

and in him,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

all honor and glory is yours,

Almighty Father,

now and forever.

In keeping with the meaning

of the special halo worn by the Lamb,

the cruciform Nimbus,

this connection is not only for later,

after death.

It is for the present.

The one who is outside of time

meets we who are inside of time

as we participate in holy mysteries now.

Let's turn our focus

to the section of the cross

which appears first to deal primarily

with earthbound things.

And down here,

where things can be seen more easily,

there won't be as many slides on the screen.

Here,

the gracious form of a grapevine

makes it easy for the eye

to travel up the cross,

as easy as it is

for the eye to travel down.

This is fitting,

for just as Christ came down to us,

he means to lift us up,

drawing us all to himself.

He does so,

in part,

through the means illustrated here.

One of the main themes

of the iconography

we're looking at

is the sacraments of the Church.

Will Catholics accept seven sacraments,

Anglicans accept baptism,

and the Eucharist?

And it is these two

that are expounded upon here

in some detail.

But let's look first at the water.

We saw it down at the bottom,

but water plays a strong role

in tying this whole cross together

both compositionally

and symbolically.

The theme of water

from the four rivers

flowing out at the top

continues through the main body

of the cross,

providing a rich

and a varied blue background.

At the bottom,

it pours out

in an allusion to baptism

over a mandorla,

that almond shape

within which sits

that monogram of Christ.

We are baptized

because Christ was baptized.

That is where

his identity was declared.

The Holy Spirit

came to rest on him

like a dove.

The heavens opened

and a voice announced,

This is my Son

in whom I am well pleased.

Through baptism,

we also enter formally

into life with him.

This is the bottom

of the stairway.

It's the gateway sacrament

to all the rest,

where our identity in him

and life as part

of his family begins.

As the priest says

in the right,

as he marks

the candidate's forehead

with the sign of the cross,

You are sealed

with the Holy Spirit

in baptism

and marked

as Christ's own forever.

If the militaristic

in hoc signo vincus bit

that I made such a big deal

about earlier

seems less than relevant

to modern times,

it becomes relevant now,

for the priest goes on

to say,

Let us welcome

the newly baptized.

We receive you

into the congregation

of Christ's flock,

having been signed

with the sign of the cross,

and that hereafter

you will not be ashamed

to confess the faith

of Christ crucified

and boldly fight

under his banner

against the world,

the flesh,

and the devil,

and to continue

as Christ's faithful soldier

and servant

until your life's end.

We emerge from baptism,

newly minted conquerors.

But before long,

one way or the other,

we become aware

of the condition

St. Therese of Lisieux

wrote so eloquently about

and struggled with

in her own life.

We are small and weak.

How will we obtain heaven?

As the water of baptism

flows down,

a robust vine springs up.

The vine has been pruned,

and you can see

where it's been snipped off,

and now it's bearing fruit.

Who is the vine?

It's fruit,

willfully crushed,

will be consumed

by the faithful

in the blood of the Eucharist.

Grapes,

in Christian iconography,

represent the blood of Christ.

Among the rich green leaves,

little tendrils

curl delicately away

from the thick stalk

of the vine

as it bends

and climbs toward heaven.

At the bottom here,

the root is curiously divided.

We may be at the earthly

end of the cross,

but we're also back

in Revelation 22.

This particular vine

is also the tree

which is for the healing

of the nations

and which grows

on both sides

of the river

of the water of life.

Christ is the vine,

we are the branches.

He abides in us

and we in him.

How?

Well, let's see.

From among the grapes,

this particular vine

produces additional fruit,

illustrated in three emblems.

Let's look from the top down.

First, we come to the dove

of the Holy Spirit.

I mentioned earlier

this is associated

with baptism

and with the confirmation

of Christian identity.

Moving down,

we have the cup

and the wafer

which represent

the sacrament

of the Eucharist.

Fittingly,

it sits halfway

between heaven and earth.

And maybe over your time

of looking at this,

you've noticed

that is a mighty fancy wafer.

Like the mandorla

on the bottom,

it contains

that iota,

etta, sigma.

This also contains

a Christogram.

While the IHE

is a straight-up abbreviation,

this symbol

is a picture

made with letters,

specifically the Greek letter

tau,

which looks like a T,

and the Greek letter rho,

which looks like a P.

This typographic picture

of Jesus on the cross

is called a starogram.

It functioned

in early manuscripts

as an abbreviation

for the Greek word cross.

But it also represented

the crucified Christ.

And here,

it marks the wafer

as his body.

Lastly,

we come to the most curious

of these three symbols.

It's a cute little boat.

Why a boat?

The association began

with the Ark of Noah

in that warm,

heaving wooden hull,

creaking and groaning

and full to neerboasting

with all of creation.

A family abided

in the only solid thing

in the world.

while all the rains

poured down outside.

We still live

in that family

and we still abide

in that place.

The family of the church

is hidden with God

and Christ.

Just as Jacob

went on a journey

to take a bride

from his own people,

Christ came for the same.

He took a bride

from a people

he made his own.

That's us.

It's the church.

Indwelt by the Holy Spirit,

abiding in him,

and acting as his bride

through the taking

of the sacraments,

we exist

as part of the fruit

of the tree

that is meant

for the healing

of all the nations.

This cross

not only offers us

an image of God

in heaven,

but of the church

fully alive.

Let's tie this up

by considering

for a moment

the place of this cross

in the actual

physical church building.

It's not illustrating

theoretical mysteries,

it's illustrating

holy mysteries

that we participate

in weekly.

At the base

of the cross,

this ladder

between heaven

and earth

is the altar.

On that altar,

the priests

prepare the Eucharist,

which we believe

to be the very real

presence of Christ.

Thus,

the imagery

of the cross

comes alive

every week

as we both proclaim

and participate

in this mystery

of heaven.

Now,

if you have ever

watched the priest

prepare the sacrament,

the bread of heaven

is exposed

and laid bare.

At the right time,

it is broken

in an allusion

to the broken body

of Christ

on the cross.

In further preparation,

perhaps you have noticed

an interesting thing,

how the priest

pours water

in the chalice

to mix with the wine.

What's happening here

is not a watering down

of the booze,

but a bringing together

of the two sacraments

illustrated here

in Christ,

and a proclamation

of the healing

that only Christ himself

can bring about.

Before Christ

was removed

from the cross,

a Roman soldier

pierced his side,

and from the wound,

blood and water

flowed.

That was blood

separated into

its component parts,

the heavy water,

the heavy red material

separated from the water.

That's what happens

when we die,

separation.

In the case of Jesus,

the separation

of these earthly elements

was the verification

that the soldier

needed to declare

Christ dead

and to authorize

his removal

for burial.

But in the Eucharist,

just as in the resurrection,

Christ brings back together

what death

has separated,

not only with the water

and the blood,

but him and us.

He died for sinners,

and thus,

at our own deaths,

we can look forward

not to separation,

but to reunion.

Looking back

at the cross

on the wall,

in and up and up,

the vine of Christ,

we climb

and are lifted.

We do not make our way

to heaven apart from him,

but in him

and by his aid.

But as we reach the top,

the vine bends over,

stops short

at the boundary

between heaven and earth.

A thick band

separates things above

from things below,

and the topmost tendril

hits a golden ceiling.

How will we leap the gap?

As Matthew emphasizes

in his gospel,

the chasm was crossed

by God

who became man.

It is he

who will reach across

to lift us up

into the heavenly places,

just as he has been doing

all of our earthly lives

in him

by the means of the cross

and through the graces

poured out

in these sacraments.

Though death

looks like

the last great barrier,

we need not fear.

We who have died

in Christ

are also raised with him

in Huxigno,

in this sign,

we too will conquer.

The arms of Jesus

are the elevator

which will lift us

to heaven as well.

Any Sunday,

let your eye

wander up and down

this staircase freely.

It

and the things

that it illustrates

are for you.

And so we say

each week,

all of our problems

we send

to the cross of Christ.

All of our difficulties

we send

to the cross of Christ.

All the works

of the devil

we send

to the cross

of Christ

and all of our hopes

we set

on the risen Christ.

to the cross to that

and that from the rock

and the river

you

are even

going to

pray as

And so we