“Christ as Living Presence”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
Ascension Sunday, May 24, 2009
Texts: Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53
This year the Reformed tradition, including the Presbyterian Church USA is celebrating the 500th anniversary of our founder’s birth. John Calvin was born in Northern France in 1509. Originally trained as a lawyer, Calvin--as a young adult--broke from the Roman Catholic Church and fled to Switzerland. There, in 1536, he published his seminal work, THE INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, which quickly became the standard text--second only to the Bible--of the Protestant Reformation.
Now, were our man Calvin to drop in on Edgewood Church today he would be aghast at our Christ window, and shocked to see Christian symbols in our side windows. During the Protestant Reformation he encouraged the removal from churches of all religious images. Calvin, Zwingli and other Reformers rejected all art, insisting that God’s Word alone is sufficient for inspiration.
Our 2nd Helvetic Confession, written in Switzerland back in 1561 reads:
Although Christ assumed human nature, yet he did not on that account assume it in order to provide a model for carvers and painters. He denied that he had come ‘to abolish the law and prophets’(Matt. 5.17). (And) images are forbidden by the law and the prophets (Deut. 4.15, Isa. 44-9).1
But that was then and this is now. Calvin’s fellow Reformer, Martin Luther, at first also rejected all Christian images. But Luther came to see that the arts could be placed in service of the Gospel. Let us hope this is how our windows function--especially our Christ window, not as a “graven image” to be worshipped, but as a painting pointing us to the Jesus made known to us through God’s Word, read and proclaimed.
Looking at this painting it is hard to pinpoint what event in the life of Jesus this window depicts. Jesus is alone here, but his perfectly combed hair and sparkling clean robes argue against this being a scene from his 40 days in the wilderness. Jesus appears to be standing on a rock, perhaps suggesting the Sermon on the Mount--but Matthew says Jesus sat down before he began to speak (5.1). Jesus was on a mountaintop for the Transfiguration--but there Luke says his clothes became “dazzling white”(9.29), nothing about a bright red sash. The Gospels report several post-resurrection appearances but John, in particular, wants us to see the nail-scarred hands from the crucifixion, and here Jesus has no visible wounds.
I want to suggest that this painting could point us to the event described in our scripture readings today--the Ascension of the Lord. Today’s lessons give us two versions of the Ascension story. In the Gospel according to St. Luke, Jesus commissions the disciples as his “witnesses” and promises them “power from on high.” Then, “While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”(v.51). In the Acts of the Apostles the disciples are similarly commissioned, then “as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight”(v.9).
If indeed we can consider this image one of Jesus ascending up to heaven, or even better, looking down on us so lovingly from heaven above, we would be very much in line with our ancestors in the early church. Two highly regarded biblical scholars have recently published a study of early Christian art. As they toured sacred sites in the Mediterranean and in Europe, and as they examined archeological treasures, Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker noted the absence of crucifixes. There were no images of the tortured, dying Jesus nailed to the cross--images that “now haunt the Western imagination. For the first nine centuries, 900 years pictorial representations of Christ focused not on his cruel death but on his living presence.”2
“During the first millennium--the first 1,000 years--Christians filled their sanctuaries with images of Christ as a living presence in a vibrant world. He appears as shepherd, as teacher, as healer, an enthroned god; he is an infant, a youth, and bearded elder. But he is never dead. When he appears with the cross, he stands in front of it, serene, resurrected. The world around him is ablaze with beauty. These are images of paradise--the paradise in this world permeated and blessed by the presence of God.3
This sacred presence of the Risen Christ is beautifully described in our excerpt from Ephesians:
20 God put (divine) power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion . . . . 22 And God has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
According to Brock and Parker, “early Christians sought an earthly paradise, confirmed by the resurrection.” Acts, Chapter 2, reads,
Day by day, as they spent much time together . . . , they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
For the early Church the Eucharist--that is, the Lord’s Supper--was a feast consecrated to invoke the glorified, incarnate, living Christ, not a meal of crucified blood and flesh celebrated to cover human sin. Only the collapse of the Roman Empire and the ensuing violence, war, and plague replaced paradise with an emphasis on sin, suffering, penance, and substitutionary atonement.4
For the crusades, for the building up of nation states, for the enriching of royalty, for churches defending dogma, the powers and principalities of this world needed a crucified Christ--the Holy One of God opening wide the gates of heaven for soldiers being led to the slaughter. In the American Civil War, advancements in weaponry far exceeded developments in strategy. Consequently, wave upon wave of soldiers-- both “Blue” and “Gray” were marched forward into certain death, all made possible by the commonly held vision of a crucified Christ leading the way to paradise.
To be sure, St. Paul does preach “Christ and him crucified” but today in our text from Ephesians, and throughout the first one thousand years of Christianity, the principle focus of the Church was on the glorious reign of Christ: his “glorious inheritance,” his “immeasurable greatness.” This entire passage is overloaded with superlatives: faith, love, saints, glory, wisdom, revelation, knowledge, hope, riches, power and fullness.”5
Says Vanderbilt Divinity school professor Bonnie Miller-McLemore:
“The language practically jumps with the joy of overstatement and
reaches for that which human language can barely express: the
assurance of God’s ultimate salvation in Christ’s reign.”6
For the early church the message was not pie-in-the-sky in the
sweet-bye-and-bye, it was relationship with God in the hear and now.
In our opening hymn today we sang:
“Let every kindred, every tribe, On this terrestrial ball, To Him
all majesty ascribe, And crown him Lord of all!”7
In our time, with evil confronting us on every page of the newspaper, shouting out to us from every news channel on television--war, terrorism, deceit, greed, hatred, envy, abuse, poverty, starvation, racism and sexism--now more than ever the church must proclaim the hope to which God has called us. In this world of despair, the people of God must unite, we must come together to speak with one voice. For . . .
. . . the work of God in Christ is not over. God calls us to hope for more than we have yet seen. The hope God gives us is ultimate confidence that supports us when lesser hopes fail us. In Christ God gives hope for a new heaven and earth, certainty of victory over death, assurance of mercy and judgment beyond death. This hope gives us courage for the present struggle.8
Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever. Amen.
1 BOOK OF CONFESSIONS (PCUSA), 5.020.
2 Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Parker, Rebecca, SAVING
PARADISE: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion
and Empire, Boston: Beacon, 2008.
3 Lakoff, George, Review of SAVING PARADISE, AMAZON.com.
4 Miller-McLemore, Bonnie J., Pastoral Perspective,
Ephesians 1:15-23, Ascension Sunday, FEASTING ON THE WORD, Year B,
vol. 2, p. 518.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” v. 3, PRESBYTERIAN
HYMNAL, #142.
8 “Declaration of Faith,” PCUSA, 1977, 1991, X.2.