"On Earth As It Is in Heaven"

Heaven. Where in the Sacred Scriptures do we find this beloved name spoken three times in so few words? The atmosphere of the early faith was so thick with Heaven's presence that one felt it might rain angels and Heavenly music at any moment. Our most beloved God is defined in terms of His Heaven. We address Him as

Nearly every word as this prayer opens is a word of power, deserving of a capital letter. It is Heavenly.

God the Father sent the Son into our world, for His people were lost. But this was a very strange kind of "lost." For they were already present where they should be. But they were not able to see it, to recognize it, to love it, and to love Him. This would be the aim and purpose of the Advent of the Son of God: to rouse them from this poisonous trance. "The Kingdom of Heaven is all around you," His Forerunner, His Apostles, and His Own Most Royal Person would announce.

This is no innovation in the ears of those who heard it, no novelty, no invented religion. For this was the state of the world at Creation: an abundance of angels passing easily between earth (called Paradise) and God's marvelous Kingdom. The King of Heaven was a familiar to the first man and first woman. This was the case for Abram and Sarai, too. Abram spoke to God. Angels attended Abram and Sarai in times of crisis as in the rescue of Lot's family from Sodom. And the Orthodox Church teaches that the Holy Trinity visited Abraham and Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre. And we see that on the eve of this Heavenly visitation, the Lord has announced new names — Abraham and Sarah — signifying the fullness of their spiritual maturity. They are becoming more and more heavenly. Abraham is also circumcised marking his departure from worldliness, from the lusts of the world, diminishing the pleasure of sexuality.

We will not recount this morning the long falling away from God which would come much later — following the United Kingdom of David and Solomon, following the destruction of the holy places of the Patriarchs by subsequent kings, following Josiah's ruinous reforms, following the revision of the Sacred Scriptures, and then culminating in the transformation of the Abrahamic lifeworld after the image of Babylon and Persia. It is enough to say that on the eve of Jesus' Nativity, a new religion was being urged upon the people of the Levant: a local religion called Judah-ism.

We know all too well what was added. We know that King Josiah attempted to recast the religion of the Patriarchs into a civil religion to be centralized in Jerusalem, enhancing his power and enriching his swelling coffers. We know that he announced a new book of Torah, called the Second Book of Law (in Greek, Deuteronomy).

You see, he was wandering through the Temple one day and claimed to have stumbled into something. "Oh! Look what we have here! A book of the Torah no one knew about, missing for a thousand years!" Not credible.

We know that he attempted to eradicate the myriad places of worship scattered throughout the Levant, for Abraham, Jacob (and, no doubt, their descendants) had encountered God and His angels nearly everywhere. Finally, we know that these reforms were carried even further during the two-generation exile of the Judean elite to Babylon. These people, we know, returned speaking Babylonian and offering blood sacrifices after the image of Babylonian and Persian altars. And the Ezra tradition describes this pre-eminent returnee as revising all of the Sacred Scriptures.

Now, this arrangement suited the powerful empires under whom Judah had become a client state. It suited the Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Empires. For their furthest aim in Palestine (as they called it) was good order. Moreover, animal sacrifice was well-pleasing to their pagan priests, who carried out this grisly rite at their own altars.

Yes, we have many evidences concerning what was added. But let us ask also the equally important question: what was subtracted? In a word what was taken away, even forbidden, was the Kingdom of Heaven.

You know, this phrase, "the Kingdom of Heaven," appears nowhere before Jesus speaks it.

Indeed, the most popular book discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls (judging by the prevalence of its fragments) was the Book of Enoch. This book set out scenes thickly populated by angels and depictions of Heaven. The governing authorities of the Judah-ist Temple on Mt. Zion, however, forbade talk of angels and rejected the Book of Enoch as they selected materials for their canonical Scriptures.

It was the threat posed by Jesus to tear down these novel additions and revisions and even the Zion Temple itself which struck the powers-that-be like a thunderbolt, galvanizing them to action: Jesus of Nazareth must die. And at the first Christian martyrdom, occupying the longest section of the Book of Acts, the reason given for St. Stephen's death was this:

As Jesus had said that the Law would not be abridged (Mt 5:18), which customs could they mean? Well, the false customs must go, the customs that were not part of the original law, the customs that Jesus protested, and vigorously protested (Jn 2:15), and chiefly the vain attempt to exchange the blood of an animal for union with God the Father.

Is that plausible? To come into a sacred space with the blood of animal to attain union with God?! Not through the prism of the Holy Gospels. Remember, Jesus had scoffed at this idea in His Parable of the Good Samaritan as being a preposterous idea.

At the calling of His Disciples, Jesus had announced something new which was ancient: marriage of Heaven and earth:

As St. Stephen dies at the hands of Zion Temple zealots, he sees Heaven open

Angels will ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. The Son of Man will be united with God the Father. And who is the Son of Man? Certainly, it is the pioneer of our faith, Jesus of Nazareth. But the sons and daughters of man are also all of you. You are the sons and daughters of man. I am a son of man. Remember, Jesus had called Judas, meaning "any Judean." And He caused Mattathias (replacing Judas) to be chosen. (Mattathias is close enough to the Greek word for any disciple to make the point.) So we also might nurse a hope that we will be included in this happy band of men and women. All have been summoned to be the children of God as St. John abundantly affirms in his Epistles — as surely as each one of us stands even now under Heaven. Look above you! No matter where you go, He is with you (Ps 139:7-12). He has given "His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways" (Ps 91:11).

As Jesus had entered our world at His Nativity, Heaven had opened with choirs of angels descending. At His Baptism, Heaven had opened revealing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, alighting upon Him as a dove (Mk 1:10). The Heavens had opened over St. Stephen revealing that same Trinity. And the Lord promised His Disciples that they would become the familiars of angels even as the Patriarchs had been. Indeed, this announcement was a specific reference to the Patriarchs and to their angelic world: of Jacob at Peniel who saw a ladder marrying Heaven to earth:

Today we celebrate His Most Holy Ascension into Heaven ascending as He had descended, as the angels would ascend and descend, He promised. These are among the greatest promises of Christ. These are the great principles of His Incarnation. He would tear down the barriers men had vainly erected striving to wall out the Kingdom of Heaven. And who might stop the Kingdom of Heaven? To borrow from a memorable poem by E. E. Cummings, "my dear, nothing can stop it, not all the policemen in the world." Who might hold back the breaking-in of Divine power into our world, into your life? No secular government might impede or turn back God even as it tries to in our own time.

For if Jesus paid no mind to the vast Roman Empire — "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," he said indifferently. — then surely no nation today might impress him. And Jesus' fiat continues to be announced to the ends of the earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Angels ascend and descend upon the sons and daughters of man — upon Abraham, upon Sarah, upon Jacob, upon everyone everywhere. Heaven has opened. And we shall be surrounded by angels, unseen and seen.

The Zion Temple would indeed come crashing down. And many, many of its priests would follow the Son of God into His Kingdom:

A new Scripture would indeed be written, but this time not at the behest of a pagan empire but inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself.

Understanding all of this, we see that Jesus' Ascension could take only one form: Heaven must open as it had opened at His Nativity, at His Baptism, and the calling of the Disciples.

Yes, God's people had been lost. But it was a strange kind of lost. For they were already present where they should be. Their lostness was not an external reality but rather a state of heart and soul. They had looked, but they could not see. They had listened, but they could not hear. Heaven was at hand, but they did not know it. So the Father sent His Only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

This is the primary meaning of the Advent of God. Is it not announced in its very form? God is among us. He has prepared a place for us. He is with us even to the end of the age. And this is the meaning of the Risen Christ among us and of His Ascension — a fluid situation in which boundaries between Heavenly and earthly things vanish .... for those who have hearts to live the Heavenly life.

As it was in Eden, the Person of God, the Comforter, and multitudes of His angels pass easily between Heaven and earth. So that we "are no longer strangers .... but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Eph 2:19). We are not longer lost. But like Jacob, we might say,