Making Heaven Holy

Propers: The Ascension of Our Lord, A.D. 2020 A

Homily:

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Ascension Thursday marks the 40th day of the Easter season. According to St Luke, the Risen Christ appeared to the Apostles—to individuals, small gatherings, and even very large crowds—for 40 days after His Resurrection from the dead.

40 is always a symbolically significant number in the Bible; perhaps the most significant, as the ancients well knew that it takes roughly 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. Whenever we read of a period of 40 days, 40 weeks, or 40 years in the biblical narrative, we know that we are reading about a period of difficulty and of growth, even of great pain, which nevertheless leads to new and joyous life.

On this 40th day after the Resurrection, Jesus promised His disciples that they would soon be baptized with the Holy Spirit—the Advocate whom Jesus would send from Heaven—not many days hence, at Pentecost. He was then lifted from the earth atop the Mount of Olives, and taken from their sight into the Shekinah, the biblical cloud of the divine presence.

The Apostles’ Creed affirms each Sunday Christ’s descent to the dead, trampling down death by death in what we call the Harrowing of Hell. Fewer today are familiar with the Harrowing’s mirror counterpart, the Hallowing of Heaven.

The ancient world understood reality to consist of three main levels: the earthly sphere, where humans dwell, including the sky and outer space above us; the land of the dead, known as Hades or Sheol, the Pit, metaphysically below us; and of course the Highest Heaven, the Empyrean beyond space and time, in which the very holiest and mightiest of the choirs of angels dwell in the direct and burning presence of the ineffable Father.

Heaven was no place for humans, mind you. It was too intense, and we too ephemeral to withstand such power and glory. Humans lived on earth, and descended to the dead. Of course Hades developed different neighborhoods in the popular imagination: rewards for the righteous, punishments for the wicked.

There was even an underworld beneath the underworld, known as Tartarus or the Abyss, into which demons and dark gods and the very worst of the damned were cast for eternity. The pagans wrote that it would take nine days for a soul to fall from Hades into Tartarus, into a darkness thrice-wrapped in night. This, of course, we would come to call hell.

But the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus changed all of that. Christ came to earth as King of Kings; He descended to the dead, descended into hell, there to conquer sin, death, and the devil; and He rose again to Heaven as our triumphant High Priest, with all the ransomed dead resplendent in His train.

Throughout the Old Testament, the dominant image of Heaven is that of a great royal court, with God the Father as Judge of the living and the dead, and Satan, the Accuser, as the prosecuting attorney. That is in fact what Satan means: the opponent, the enemy, the prosecutor. Rebellion began in Heaven, not on earth.

But when Christ rises into Heaven—into that Temple not made with hands, of which the earthly Temple is but a sketch and shadow—He hallows the heavenly court, consecrating it in His Blood, casting out Satan from the presence of God and replacing Him with the Holy Spirit, the Advocate; that is, our Defense Attorney.

And so Heaven is now a Temple in which Christ is our High Priest. Heaven is a great and royal court in which there is no accuser and God Himself is both our defense and our judge. The fear, the anxiety, the terror of Heaven is undone! And we are welcomed into the presence of God—Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit—not as fallen, rebellious sinners, but as beloved children, beloved sons and daughters, brought home in Jesus Christ, who is our King, our Priest, our Brother and our Lord.

Hell is broken and Heaven is hallowed and we have nothing more to fear in all of Creation, whether on the earth or beneath it or above it. If we descend into the lowest abyss, Christ is there. If we fly to the highest of heavens, Christ is there. God has shown to us His perfect love in Christ Jesus, and perfect love drives out fear.

In Christ, God has reached down into the deepest, darkest pits of the universe, into the shadows that hide beneath reality, and has dragged them out into the Light. In Christ, God has opened up the highest Heaven to all peoples, all souls, all of Creation, so that at the last Heaven and earth will pass away to become together a new Heaven and a new earth, where God again shall dwell with Man—all in Christ.

The Hallowing of Heaven is the apex of Christ’s triumph, the crown of His victory. It is the splitting open of every division between God and His children. It is the flooding of hell and earth and Heaven itself with the infinite, undying, irrevocable and all-conquering love of God. It is grace inexpressible, grace inconceivable, grace inexorable in its totality. God come down to earth lifts humanity up into Heaven, that God at the last shall be All in All.

Only Jesus Christ could make Heaven even holier. And that might be the greatest Easter wonder of them all.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.