Sarx

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

EFINE heaven on earth. What is it for you? (I admit it will be different for others. It’s very subjective.) While there are moments of ineffable transcendence that I can imagine such as watching the sunrise on a cliff face in the Blue Ridge mountains or blissed out love-making, when I think of heaven (in the Christian, theological sense) the only image is the Messianic Banquet.

When I think of heaven on earth, the only image is of the congregation standing around the Altar at St Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco: all of us standing around the altar singing and making present the Body of Christ in the world.

It may seem strange to my Orthodox readers (or it may explain a few things) but when I read Frederica Matthewes-Green’s books, speaking of the Orthodox teaching that “heaven strikes earth” in the liturgy, I knew already what was meant. Every synaxis, every liturgical gathering that I’m at – Orthodox, Anglican, Emergent, Roman, etc, is evaluated by the joy, peace and love of those gatherings at St Gregory’s. And as we stood and prayed, ate and loved, sang and danced around that altar, there were saints dancing above and around us, in image and reality: the Dancing Saints Icon, including everyone from St Seraphim to Gandhi, Queen Elizabeth I, Eleanor Roosevelt and Malcolm X, showed us heaven dancing with us, present at the Eucharist. (Deacon Mark Dukes, the artist, has posted online an entire gallery of pictures.) I learned there what I took with me: the Eucharist, here, present in this world, is that world there present with us. For a brief moment, we see Heaven ripped open and descending on us.

In the Eastern Rite, the first Sunday of Lent commemorates the Restoration of the Icons. The icons had been used for centuries by Christians to show present their departed loved ones and holy ones. Icons are called “windows on heaven” and not so that we can look in, but rather so the saints can look out, on us. I say “Show present” the holy ones because they were used liturgically: your saints and family, present with you in the Church at the Eucharist. When the so-called “Iconoclasts”, the first uberfrum Puritans, were raping church buildings, destroying the Holy Images, and leaving bare altars, they were, essentially, cutting the church off from Heaven. They were bricking up the windows and leaving the church boring, isolated and demoralised here, below. No light coming through.

You can feel the difference now: there are Roman and Orthodox and Anglican temples decked out with the Holy Images and there are Roman, Anglican and Protestant communities without them. You can experience the disconnect, the difference in focus. It’s not just the rite or the music or the sacraments that make a church. The Church is always present in time and space, in eternity and now. Icons show us that. And we humans – only present in the here and now, or else dreaming in fantasy – need reminding of that eternity. We need reminding of the fullness of the Church.

Icons, the Holy Images, are needed to incarnate the holy in our worship lest we get too focused on the physical, the earthly, the mundane (as is our all-to-human wont). Icons hold up to us the reality that we need to embody in the world.

Each icon is heaven ripped open and descending on us.

On the First Sunday of Lent, in the Eastern Rite, the Synodikon of Orthodoxy is read. This document, from the Seventh Ecumenical Council, is the official pronouncement of the Church about the veneration of Icons. (Side note: although there had been schisms in the church already, I think it’s interesting to note that those bodies that broke away never had an iconoclast problem, and always have venerated the Holy Images.) Although many more-modern fundamentlist folks like to condemn some odd things like “ecumenism” and “modernism”, for centuries the only heresy condemned on this day has been the refusal to see icons as holy. If God took human flesh, the argument goes, then all things physical can embody the Holy. To refuse Icons is to refuse the Incarnation: it’s as simple as that.

In the Greek Church, the following passage from the Synodikon is read by the congregation:

As the Prophets beheld,
As the Apostles taught,
As the Church received,
As the Teachers dogmatized,
As the Universe agreed,
As Grace illumined,
As the Truth revealed,
As falsehood passed away,
As Wisdom presented,
As Christ awarded,

Thus we declare,
Thus we assert,
Thus we proclaim Christ our true God
and honor His saints,

In words,
In writings,
In thoughts,
In sacrifices,
In churches,
In holy icons.

On the one hand, worshipping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord.
And on the other hand, honoring and venerating His Saints as true servants of the same Lord.

This is the Faith of the Apostles.
This is the Faith of the Fathers.
This is the Faith of the Orthodox.
This is the Faith which has established the Universe.

Jesus saw heaven ripped open. We no longer need to see heaven as closed to us: it is present, right here with us when we gather around the Holy Table. What we need to do is to hold our minds exactly there and make it present in the world around us. The kingdom of God is within you. Manifest it. This is the faith which has established the universe: the incarnation of God, in the flesh, present, holy and living with us. Amen.