Sermon for Ascension Sunday – 21st May 2023:

Fr Leonard Dolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

I have just had a remarkable experience visiting the Seven Churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation. St. John, thrust into exile on the island of Patmos, has visions – a revelation – part of which are Christ-centred ‘messages’ or letters to the Seven Churches of the area we now would call Asia Minor. Be careful – these are not congregations gathered in a church building, but little fragile groups of people that might just be called a ‘community’ in seven very significant cities in that part of what is now Turkey.

In Smyrna, Izmir, we have two churches – St. John the Evangelist, and a small neo-classical church in the Bornova district that has some superb stained glass windows. I mention this because we have have some members of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers with us this morning. If you visit this church you will be enthusiastic by the superb stained glass window, especially the one with all the imagery of the ‘Christ of the Seven Churches. This window was made Kempe, the great stained glass window expert, influenced by William Morris.

Smyrna, Ephesus, Pergamum, Colossae, Laodicea, Sardis, Philadelphia; all well established cities of the Graeco-Roman Empire with theatres, libraries, Council Chambers, baths, public latrines, houses, and other civic buildings including temples to the pan-theistic Gods.

All these cities have citizens who don’t have a religion as such as we would understand it – they simply worship whoever is the emperor. This is the pagan world. Those who stood out were the Jews – they worshipped a God who was not the Emperor – and they made no recognition of the immense temples erected to the Gods of the pagan Greek or Roman culture.

Ephesus, one of the seven cities, had a temple to the Goddess Artemis. This was one of the wonders of the ancient world. We know about this, not only from the message of the Book of Revelation, but because St. Paul wrote a Letter to the Christian Community there.

What we also know is that many of the little communities of new Christians had emerged from Judaism, the religion of the Jews. This is not unusual – why should it be, as Jesus was a Jew. We were honoured on our visit to Smyrna, or Izmir, to be guided around the three main synagogues of the present day city, all of which are very historic.

‘Hear what the Spirit says to the churches’. The message in each of the Seven missals has a common thread – emphasized by our very able guide, Fr. James, our priest in Izmir – First there is a greeting that speaks of some attribute of Christ; second an acknowledgment that Christ ‘knows’ that church; thirdly that any good things are acknowledged; but then there is a rebuke and a counselling; and finally that there is a victorious Christ.

The church community is encouraged to ‘stand out’ from its pagan context; to refuse conformity to the prevailing pagan spiritual powers. In essence to reject and be distinct – to have a different identity to what has been inherited. This is an important challenge, and is no different to us now as Christians. How are Christians distinct in the world?

On this Ascension Sunday this question can be reoriented towards questions that challenge everything we assume as normal and invariable. Science has helped us in our fixed thinking about this. From the perspective of humanity everything on earth must move downwards – gravity dictates this, and gravity, sadly, dictates our spiritual view.

All the cosmos also has to be dragged downwards by the gravity created by the human perspective. All comes down to our level, nothing can be raised to God’s level. Man makes God in human image. ‘Raise your sights’. This is the new message to the Seven Churches of Revelation – ‘You live in a culture that worships man who has become a God, Christians worship a God who has become a man in Jesus Christ.’

St. John tells us that this is the Divine Word, the Logos, that has come among us and has become flesh. This is the wonderful preface of St. John’s gospel.

We visited a couple of ancient theatres on our Seven Churches visit. As well as the superb seating area, there is the semi-circle that in ancient Greek is called the ‘orchestra’. Then there is the stage, or the pros-skenium, then the backdrop, called the skene.

In the primitive theatre this was a ‘tent-like’ construction. We should note this, because when St. John speak of God ‘dwelling among us’, he uses the word for ‘pitching a tent’. God becomes man, and ‘pitches his tent’ in our midst. John speaks of the wonderful mystery of God becoming man – descending from the divine throne in heaven.

This divine action has been shared with us already in a vision of Daniel (Daniel 7), ‘As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven’. It’s a well known passage in Daniel – well known enough for Jesus himself to quote it, much to the shock of the religious authorities.

It ended – all this human playing field – with a death, a crucifixion. As the human race reflected on this we were drawn to think of what this man did for us by dying in such a way. He took away our sin, some say; he paid a price to pay for our purchase, some say; he was sacrificed to appease the anger that God had against us some say; and so the ideas go on in an endless hypothesis with no real conclusion that is finite, because what we all know is that this man’s death on the cross is a mystery, a mystery that touches each and every one of us deeply as we journey, little step by little step, into that mystery.

He was on our level, you see, so we can think of what he has done but on our own human terms. We have all fallen – thanks to  Adam and Eve  – and of course, we have all fallen ‘downwards.’

No one seems to fall upwards. Everything falls downwards, to a base human level. This is how it is – gravity affects the physical realities, and seemingly it pulls down the spiritual realities as well.

Yet, this is not our Christian reality. Despite death, the most human of certainties, God raised his Son Jesus Christ, and in doing so he called him home – home to be with the Father who sent him. It is to this same home that we are all invited. We call it heaven, but we could equally say that it is home.  Despite our failings and failures, our limits and constraints, our sinful complacency and indifference, we are called to ‘fall upwards’.

The resurrection of Jesus returns us to where we began – home. His rising from the grave creates for us the garden where we first experienced life, that garden we call paradise. In death, resurrection and ascension, Christ places us once again in that garden of delight, and despite everything that indicates the contrary, we each ascend to be with God our Father, sharing his home.

As the pioneer and perfector of our faith, Christ goes before us. He makes life sacred, he makes us sacred, he makes our journey towards God a sacred journey, for everything in heaven and on earth as touched by Christ, is loved and redeemed. Our home is made ready by Christ being born in Mary’s womb. Our home is made ready by Christ in the tomb. Our home is made ready by Christ ascending to the Father. All this is claimed by Christ; all this is our home in Christ.

Christ’s ascension into heaven illustrates that there is more than one gravity in the divine and human experience, for although we may have our feet firmly fixed on the ground, our hearts are summoned to gravitate towards heaven, where Christ has gone before. We so readily accept the principle of gravity, are we so quick to accept the gravitational pull that holds heaven and earth together in Christ, the new creation.

It may be no bad thing, from time to time, when we reflect on the human condition, just to rethink our situation, and imagine what it is for us to ‘fall upwards’.