Acts 1:1-12
Psalm 47:1-9
Luke 24:36-53

"I Am with You"

What did twentieth-century people see when the first "flying machine" crossed the screens of their local theaters? Did they ask, "Shall we now fly up to Heaven? Shall we soar over Heavenly realms and see Heavenly people (maybe some we know) and look out upon Heavenly landscapes?" After all, if God is in His Heaven looking down on the world, then He is either up there, or He is not. This boundary between earth and sky was impassible for all human history, and now it was to be crossed.

So what did people think when the earth's atmosphere and near interplanetary space had been explored and charted and flown over and over again and Heaven was not to be seen? Shall we now say that there is no God?

Wherever and whenever the world of matter — of quarks and atoms and molecules and cells — meets with the Divine, we have ... mystery. Only mystery. For the real boundary between Heaven and earth is not subject to our control and shall never be crossed by science or technology. You see, the Divine is not subject to quantification, classification, or material analysis. Yet, we cannot say that it is not substantial. Those of us who have met with divine beings have reported substance — seen, heard, yes, and felt and touched substance. Each day we affirm faithfully in the Creeds that the body will be resurrected. Our faith insists on this detail: substantial reality. And St. Paul assures us

The place where Heaven touches the world is an exceedingly thin boundary, unstable, not subject to the laws of physics. The Mount of Transfiguration presented us with a thin boundary: was it divine space into which earthlings had stumbled or was it the earth receiving divine visitors? The tents of Abraham and Sarah became a thin boundary seeking to encircle and enclose the Holy Trinity: was it temporarily Heaven or a fleeting suspension of earth? The tiny manger in which God appeared was a mind-bending boundary: old boards and rusting nails with a floor of straw somehow containing the One Who is larger and greater than the ever-expanding universe. The Divine is a Law unto Itself defying worldly categories, much less definition.

Imagine, then, the task of the true painter of holy icons, whose vocation is to open true and faithful windows between Heaven and earth. We remember that mere humans looked into the face of Jesus of Nazareth and saw, mysteriously, the Living God. Jesus of Nazareth was the icon par excellence — made of material cells yet rendering a true portrait of God. Here, of course, is the thinnest of thin boundaries ... where boundaries vanish. Who could paint the truest icon ... except the Creator God?

This was the task of the Evangelists. We hold the Evangel aloft in procession. We kiss it. We reverence it as the Word of God. Imagine the task of being an inspired instrument who wrote it. Let us, then, meditate on the first icon painter and Evangelist, St. Luke. As St. Andrew, the first called, is the Proto-klete, as St. Stephen, the first martyred, is the Proto-martyr, so St. Luke is the Proto-zographos. For he was the first to render a holy icon. Zographos was the term used by the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council: ζογρα'φος. Literally, the "Life depicter." And they could only mean by this word, "the depicter of eternal life, of immortal life" ... or not bother to use the word at all. It was not as if art were unknown to the world until this moment. The life depicter. Later the term evolved into hagiographos (`αγιογραφος), "the one who depicts the holy."

Through his lively soul and skill, St. Luke rendered the first holy icon. His subject was the Most Holy Theotokos, which he completed with paints. He also rendered the Mother of God in sacred words, which I call proto-operas, for while St. Luke anticipates that elaborately staged and sung artform by about fifteen hundred years, he is divinely inspired to depict a stage that is vast in its scope, presenting great and expansive spectacles, and especially set pieces for the people on this stage which in opera are known as arias. To this day, they are sung, not said. It is not that St. Luke inserted a rubric here or stage direction there. He simply wrote down the words. Yet, today, all of them are sung. The Nunc Dimittis among many others. People have instinctively sung them feeling the inspired spirit of St. Luke.

Consider his depiction of the Visitation. Upon seeing her cousin, Elizabeth says first,

Consider his depiction of the Annunciation. The teenage Mary's reply to the Archangel Gabriel is nothing less than the Magnificat, moving Monteverdi, Vivaldi, C.P.E. Bach, Bruckner, and Rachmaninoff to compose operatic and other settings for voice. These words in Scripture were not marked off for music. They demanded music, for they are themselves alive with the inspiration of St. Luke's spirit.

We see this same, distinctive art when the Holy Spirit is given. We reflected on this last year at Pentecost ("The Beloved Disciple & the Holy Painter"). In St. John's version of the same scene, Jesus breathes on the Disciples saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit" and emplants within them the sacraments. The Church is born.

In St. Luke's rendering, the birth of the Church is depicted in words that move us to imagine the soaring, expansive music of a symphonic orchestra playing Beethoven, presented on a gorgeous stage set, with a cast of thousands. A thunderous wind, descending tongues of fire, all the language groups of the known world speak and are understood in their own language — an epic depiction, to be sure ... to the point that most Christians can scarcely believe that St. John's version of this same scene could have happened at all.

Was St. Luke lying? Was he a reporter on the scene inventing his own facts? Fake news? Well, there were no journalists in the first century. No newspapers. And the notion of what was, or was not, a fact was very different from our world, our post-scientific, post-industrial world. Shall we say that the Christmas hymn, "Silent Night," is not holy because the song's writer was not present? Is it not true in the deepest sense of that word? Shall we say that those who stumble across the thin boundary separating Heaven and earth did not see the Divine? St. Luke rendered holy icons, and in that same inspired, expansive spirit he rendered two Gospels: the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.

To grasp our lessons this morning, depicting the Ascension according to St. Luke, let us again go back to St. John. In the Holy Gospel according to St. John ... there is no Ascension, only a relationship of love remembered and cherished: in particular, the night the Beloved Disciple lay his cheek upon the Lord's breast and then a looking ahead to the time when the Lord should return. These are the last things said in the Holy Gospel according to St. John.

In St. Matthew's Holy Gospel, we find much the same spirit and depiction: the Disciples are sent hearing the Lord as they go,

It is St. Luke alone who conceives of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and the Ascension of the Lord as operatic set pieces. He alone is moved to present a rich spectacle of sight and sound, and he alone depicts Jesus surrounded by clouds and being uplifted to Heaven against the expansive backdrop of all the heavenly skies.

We read His Ascension not once, but twice, in both His Gospel and His Acts. From his Gospel:

St. Luke is an inspired painter of holy icons. Even today, an icon cannot be an instance of representational art. You know, representational art (especially of the eighteenth and nineteenth century) which we see in our museums? For if an icon should succeed at this, then it will have failed. Representational art is devoted to depicting earth faithfully. An icon must in the self-same moment depict Heaven. It must include within it, not only the main subject of the icon, but also the essence of that subject, we might say the holy essence. We suppose that St. John, who lived perhaps a hundred years or more, only had the poisoned chalice in his hands for a few fleeting moments. And yet that image is forever enshrined in his icons. For this is a divine essence of St. John: is his deathless character, to be the Lord's holy instrument on earth, who could not be killed. That chalice with a dragon arising from it is a divine essence of his character.

Heaven is present in Jesus' character as in no other thing on earth. He is simultaneously creature and Creator, gift and Giver, sacrifice and High Priest. He is in his person the thinnest of boundaries between the clay and the Divine. And St. Luke depicts His return to lighter-than-air regions far above our heavy, soiled clay. His Kingdom is not to be founded in this gritty, treacherous, and dying world ... though so many of us cling to it. which helps us to understand why Jesus refused the crown at the Mount of the Multiplication of Loaves or at the gates of Jerusalem, when people cried, "Hosanna!" "My Kingship," He says, "is not of this world" (Jn 18:36). When Pilate presses Him further on the subject, He replies that His Kingdom is defined by truth: "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice" (Jn 18:37).

For the Kingdom of Heaven is neither here nor there, neither up nor down. We will not find it with airplanes or rocket ships. It is a separate reality. And as there can be one truth, the Kingdom of Heaven is the only reality, the only lasting and unchanging dimension of time-space. Everything else will die and pass away leaving behind the withered and the hideous ... except the Kingdom of God. By the icon painter's report,

It is apt to open suddenly and without announcement in the solitude of the Holy of Holies, as Zechariah discovered or in the remote quiet of a cave surprising the teenage Mary or in the private quarters of your own bedroom in the middle of the night. It is nowhere in particular and everywhere, flooding in through the cracks of the world where we pray in secret (Mt 6:6). The Kingdom of God is the only truth Who promises,