Who is Christ?
Live audio file
Ascension/Fathers of the 1st Eccum. Council May 28, 2023 John:17:26
We have finished the Paschal cycle for this year, we do not use the Paschal greeting “Christ is Risen” again until next Pascha, and today we watch in awe with the Apostles, as Christ ascends in His resurrected physical human body and re-takes His rightful place at the right hand of God the Father. This place that has always His from before creation.
Before anything existed, the pre-incarnate Christ brought all that is into existence. “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” He placed the very image of Himself within Adam and Eve and all of us, His human creatures. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness’.” Who is “OUR?” The Church teaches us it is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the Trinity, One in essence and undivided” We mere humans bear the image and likeness of God Himself One of the clearest scriptures of the ever-existing divinity of Christ our God comes from the first few verses of the gospel of John (John 1: 1-3, 14, 17) “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
At His ascension, Christ ascends physically and takes His eternal place at the right hand of the Father. But what a change in the heavenly order from when He first entered our Chronos time and world, taking flesh from the most blessed Theotokos – the mother and birthgiver of God. He ascends in the flesh, our human flesh! He has taken on and sanctified our humanity and raised it up with Him to the highest level of heaven. The angels come and marvel to see our humanity revealed and sitting enthroned in Christ, the Lord of all. How can this be? The mystery of all eternity is revealed. When Christ comes to His disciples after His resurrection He tells them to “Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see.” Then just to further prove that He is resurrected with a real physical human body he asks them for food and eats fish and honeycomb in their astonished presence. Christ God is fully human!
You ask, but what kind of a human body was this, walking through walls? But were you listening last week as we heard Christ tell the Pharisees “I AM” and they took up stones to kill Him and He “passed by through the midst of them.” And then He tells them “I and My Father are One.” And again the scripture simply says that “He escaped their hand” when they again took up stones and tried to seize Him. So this isn’t perhaps such a new manifestation of Christ’s human physicality. And not only Christ in His newly resurrected body, but numerous are the stories throughout the history of the Church of the wonders of God working in His saints, who demonstrated rather improved physical characteristics. We have St. Mary of Egypt, walking across the river Jordan to come to St. Zosimus, and then making the 40-day journey back into the wilderness in a night. We have innumerable stories of saints living and departed, appearing to help and save those who cry out to them, or appearing in two different physical locations at the same time, or not being harmed by fire or other forms of torture. We have the three holy youths thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace and not even having the smell of smoke on their clothes. We have the Deacon Philip being immediately transported to a distant city after baptizing the Ethiopian Eunuch. I could go on and on, but I think the point is made. Christ said that His followers would do greater works than He did because He ascends, bringing His full humanity back to His throne with His Father. Our redeemed humanity is capable of much more than we generally accept, and our union with God makes all things possible – even loving our enemies! As we are transformed into the image of Christ, our small little conception of reality is expanded far beyond our present comprehension.
In today’s gospel we hear Christ pray to his Father, (John 17: 11) “that they may be one as We are.” Here at St. Aidan’s in 2023, we continue to understand our very existence as continuing in this same Apostolic tradition, as we seek to ever more completely understand that our entire life is truly hidden in Christ. This prayer in John Chapter 17 is known as the “High Priestly Prayer” and is worth spending much time reading and meditating upon. It is the last prayer before “He was given up – or rather gave Himself up – for the life of the world”. A few verses later in this prayer we hear, (John 17: 21-23) “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word. That they may be one, as You Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may also be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. ‘And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” He is praying for us!
This is mind blowing stuff! Christ is saying that He will be present and united with us, His followers here at St. Aidan’s– “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word.” – That’s us! As much as we are in Christ, allowing our wills to be united with His, receiving His very body and blood in communion, we are all one with Christ and His Father. As St. Gregory Nazianzus put it in the 4th century, “Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become gods because of Him, since He for us became a man.”
No wonder we are so fascinated by super-heroes and their super-powers these days. But we don’t need to imagine a radio-active spider can grant us super-powers. Buried deep within each of us is knowledge of the power of God, in Whose image we are made, and Who calls us to come and allow Him to transform our lives into the fullness of that image. He is with us always, unto the ages of ages and on the cross has transformed our death into our birth into eternal life!
This explains the courage of the Martyrs. They knew their death in Christ was their true birth. We celebrate their death date as their saint’s day or birthday into true life. All must be seen through the victory of the cross which completed man’s formation. Through the cross, death becomes life! Everything is as usual a paradox. If we find our life and live only for ourselves we lose it. But if we lose our life, laying it down serving Christ, serving others, not living for our own passions but living in Christ, we find true life.
This is the gospel; this is the teaching of the fathers of the 1st ecumenical council, and this is the great mystery of life and death itself as understood in the Church. Christ is Ascended! He is ascended in glory! He has seated our very humanity at the right hand of God the Father, to the astonishment of the angels and all the heavenly hosts! The mystery of all eternity is now revealed! Let go forth in peace, allowing God’s grace to transform our lives that we might radiate His life to those around us! With the Feast!