Heavenly

Heaven. Where in the Sacred Scriptures do we find this most cherished word 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. From the beginning (Jn 1:51), Jesus had announced and promised the intimacy of God and His angels and the immediacy of His Kingdom — the very things which had been taken from the Hebrew people in Judah with the establishment of the Persian hybrid religion at the Return from Babylon.

With the Advent of Jesus, a restoration is announced: our Sovereign God is defined in terms of His Heaven, and we are to address Him as

Nearly every word here is a word of power, deserving a capital letter — overwhelming to the ears of the disciples.

God the Father sent the Son into our world as spiritual night was falling on the people of Israel (as we discussed last Sunday). The scattered tribes were lost .... "blind," Jesus says. But Jesus' message is plain: "The Kingdom of Heaven is all around you, but you choose not to see it" (Jn 9:39-41).

Here was a kind of revolution, yet no innovation. It was a revolution of the original and the Divine. For this had been the state of the world when man was created: 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 in the cool groves of Eden, as was the case for Abram and Sarai, who, at the Oaks of Mamre, supped with God — that signature act of intimacy with the Divine, promised by the Victorious Lord in the Book of Revelation:

Is this not the true basis of our Eucharist (and not some imagined development of Jewish custom).

And we see that God bestowed new names upon them — Abraham and Sarah — signifying the fullness of their spiritual maturity. Abraham also is circumcised marking his advancement away from carnal pleasure the lust of the world.

We will not recount the falling away from God. It is a grievous tale to tell: the rupture of the United Kingdom of David and Solomon; the destruction of the holy places of the Patriarchs; Josiah's ruinous reforms concentrating power in Jerusalem; the revision of the Scriptures by the Persian governor Nehemiah and his scribe Ezra; and the remaking of the Hebrew lifeworld after the image of Babylon and Persia.

These latter events were mostly confined for centuries to Judah. It would not be until the nationalism promoted by the Hasmoneans, rallying the people against occupying Rome, that Judah-ism exploded across the Levant. That is, the world into which Jesus was born had only recently been galvanized to the cause of this new religion.

The widespread establishment of Judah-ism — a civil religion consisting mostly of laws — suited the powerful empires to whom Judah had been vassal — the Neo-Babylonians, the Persians, the Hellenistic juggernaut of Alexander, the Roman Empire. For their common goal in the Province of Palestine (as they called it) was good order. Moreover, animal sacrifice did not offend their pagan priests. Indeed, inscriptions have been found specifying the orderly worship of Marduk be the foremost duty of the Persian king (and of course worship of the Marduk consisted in daily blood sacrifices as we learned from the annals of Elephantine.

We are told that Ezra had revised the Scriptures (by some accounts had rewritten all of them). And it is not difficult to speculate on what he added. But let us ask the equally important question: what was subtracted? In a word, talk of the Kingdom of Heaven would henceforth be proscribed. 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 abundantly depicted angels and Heaven, but the Temple authorities forbade such talk and rejected the Book of Enoch preferring mostly juridical materials for their canonical Scriptures.

It was the threat posed by Jesus to tear down these alien institutions which struck the powers-that-be like a thunderbolt moving them to action: Jesus of Nazareth must die.

Later, at the death of St. Stephen, which occupies the longest section in the Book of Acts, the reason given for the Protomartyr's death was this:

Jesus had promised that the Law would not be abridged (Mt 5:18), so which customs could they mean? They were the customs the Lord could not abide, the customs He had most vigorously protested (Jn 2:15), the customs of offering bloody animals in exchange for union with God. In a word, relationship with "Our Father Which Art in Heaven," the whole point of Incarnation and indeed the point of life itself, had been replaced by ritual sacrifice, and this could not stand.

At the calling of His Disciples, Jesus had announced the marriage of Heaven and earth:

As St. Stephen dies at the hands of the Temple police, he sees Heaven open:

Angels will ascend and descend upon the Son of Man (Jn 1:51). The Son of Man will be united with God the Father. And Who is the Son of Man? Certainly, He is the founder of our faith (or rather the re-founder), Jesus of Nazareth. But the sons and the daughters of man are also you and me. We have been called as Jesus' disciples. He has named us among His friends in this very personal religion made of living stones. Remember, when Jesus had called Judas (a variant of "Judah") to be a disciple, He was calling all people from Judah. And when He caused Mattathias to be chosen as one of the Twelve, we should bear in mind that this name is close enough to the Greek word for any disciple to make the point. All have been summoned to be the children of God as St. John abundantly affirms in his Epistles. No matter where you go, He is with you (Ps 138/139:7-12). He has given "His angels charge over you,/To keep you in all your ways" (Ps 90/91:11). And He numbers the hairs on your heads (Mt 10:30).

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, Son, and Holy Spirit (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, His announcement of Heaven was a specific reference to the world of the Patriarchs: of Jacob at Peniel who saw a ladder marrying Heaven and earth:

Today, we celebrate His Most Holy Ascension into Heaven ascending as He had descended, modeling the path of the angels he promised and of ourselves. Here are the Promises of Christ: He would tear down the barriers that had walled out the Kingdom of Heaven, and He would annul the customs of bloody sacrifice that had led us astray. It is a fact that He caused the Zion Temple to be torn down, collapsing into rubble, never to be built again, taking away forever the altars of blood sacrifice.

Who might hold back the breaking-in of His Power into our world? Which military force could impede the Almighty Presence of God? For if Jesus paid no mind to the invincible Roman Empire — "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,
and unto God what is God's." — then surely no nation in any era might daunt Him today. 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, seen and unseen.

Many of the Zion Temple's priests would follow Him:

And new Scriptures would be written, but this time not under the direction and close supervision 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 promised at the call of His Disciples.

Yes, God's people had been scattered in a vast darkness. But it was a darkness to which one had to consent:

But He came to restore our sight. To give us eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear.

This is the primary meaning of the Advent of God. Is it not attested in its very form? God-with-us. He is with us even to the end of the age. And this is the meaning of the Risen Christ and of His Ascension — a fluid situation in which boundaries between Heaven and earth vanish.

The Kingdom of Heaven is around us if we choose to see it .... as it was in Eden, the Person of God, the Comforter, and His angels passing 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 no longer lost. And like Jacob, we might say,