This month of June, the Orthodox Church celebrates two of the most important feasts in the Christian year -- Ascension and Pentecost.
Pentecost depends upon Ascension. And it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the whole reason why Jesus was born, and suffered the Cross, and rose from the dead, was just so He could then ascend to heaven and ask the Father to send down the Holy Spirit.
Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after the Resurrection. He did not go “anywhere,” like somewhere in outer space. Instead, He entered into heaven which is, dogmatically speaking, the communion of the Holy Trinity itself.
It is the humanity of Jesus that ascended. His divinity was never separated from the Trinity. This is hugely important because the human nature that Jesus took upon Himself at the Incarnation (“He clothed Himself in me,” as we sing frequently in Vespers) was brought into the very midst of the Godhead. “When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle (not made with hands, that is, not of creation), He entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9.11-12).
The “tabernacle” is the divine heaven itself, and the sacrificial blood Jesus our high priest brings is His human nature: “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until His enemies should be made a footstool” (Hebrews 10.12-13).
The ascending into heaven, the bringing of the sacrificial blood into the Holy of Holies (heaven), and the sitting at the right hand of God the Father are all unified in one great mystical moment. It is the passage of the High Priestly Ministry of Christ into His Royal Ministry.
From that point onward, Jesus Is now King of King and Lord of Lords: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2.9-11).
This majestic scene is also witnessed in John’s Apocalypse: “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for Thou didst create all things, and by Thy will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4.11). The book of Revelation is all about the Royal Ministry of Christ. It is an ongoing unveiling (i.e., “apocalypse”) of His Reign in the world: it is about the present, not about the distant and disconnected future.
“Sit at My right hand,” God the Father said to God the Son at the Ascension, “until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX). Jesus is King right now, not later -- from the Ascension to the moment that He returns in the same manner (Acts 1.11) at the final achievement at the “parousia,” Jesus is now being enthroned upon the earth just as He is fully enthroned and glorified in heaven.
We are already familiar with this beautiful truth: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray this, we pray -- prompted by the Holy Spirit -- for the ongoing and increasing enthronement of the King.
So if Jesus is King now and not later, what or where is His Kingdom? We already know that His kingdom must be different: “My Kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said to Pilate (John 18.36). But it is steadily and mysteriously emerging, more and more, into this world, growing mysteriously like a mustard seed into an enormous tree (Luke 13.19).
Where is the Kingdom? This was asked specifically of Jesus in Luke 17.20-21: “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, Lo, here it is! or There! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’”
What is the Kingdom? The Kingdom that was announced by Jesus and the Forerunner is nothing -- or no one -- other than the Holy Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth is the One Who realizes (i.e., “brings into real life”) the reign of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit develops, through time and through the cooperative work of the Body of Christ, the enthronement of Jesus as the obvious King of all Creation.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends upon all of humanity. In a beautiful way, this descent follows the descent of the Son of God when He was born of the Virgin Mary. This moment could have only happened if the Son of God came to the Father not only as divine but also as human. Jesus presented to the Father the offering of His humanity, and thus established the “way” of the Spirit to descend upon, as the Prophet Joel says, “all flesh” (Joel 2.28, quoted by the Apostle Peter in the very first Christian homily, at Pentecost in Acts 2.17).
This High Priestly offering was a supplication -- an intense definitive crux upon which all time and space, all creation and history turn. Jesus asked the Father to send “another Comforter”: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; you know Him, for He dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14.16-17).
Precisely because of this offering and request, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to descend upon the world. Now, the Holy Spirit is present to all of humanity, not to just a few special prophets.
In this way, the universal presence of the Holy Spirit (“Who are everywhere present, filling all things”), in His distinct personal role as the “Glorifier” of Christ, extends and presents and realizes the Reign of the King.
The Orthodox Church proclaims that Jesus Christ is King of Creation now, as He is seated now at the Right Hand of God the Father. This is affirmed by the Psalms, the Prophets (mainly Isaiah), and about twenty verses in the New Testament and is witnessed in the Nicene Creed.
And the Creed adds “And His Kingdom shall have no end.” Jesus is the Ascended King -- that is why, technically speaking, the Orthodox Church has no dogmatic room for the recognition of any worldly king or autocrat. We already have a King, and only He truly reigns. In a poignant and ironic reversal of the terrible statement of the chief priests (in John 19.15), we proclaim “We have no King but the Lord Jesus Christ!”
“By the power of Christ,” Fr Sergius Bulgakov wrote in his magisterial The Lamb of God, “human history moves toward its end, which is universal resurrection and the transfiguration of all creation. In this world, all things that are necessary for its transition to the new reality of another world are being accomplished … Christ leads His humankind, despite its antagonism and resistance.”
We live now in Pentecostal history, which is described mystically by the symbolic Millennium in Revelation 20. Christ is King and the Devil is bound: this is depicted in the dark abyss at the bottom of the Resurrection icon. Satan is severely limited in influence by the overwhelming power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The Mother of God and the Saints and our departed loved ones spiritually reign with Him. Even now.
But for now, that is not so obvious. Christ is King, but the world languishes still in darkness (Satan is bound and inhibited, but he is certainly not absent) -- and that comprises the deep psychic and historical tension in which we live. As Fr Bulgakov wrote in The Comforter, “God is love, but the world is full of malice, struggle, and hatred. The world is full of the immeasurable suffering of creatures.”
But God is Father Who cannot but respond to His suffering children. “The creature cries out and beseeches the Spirit, ‘Come and dwell within us.’ The creature beseeches in the extremity of sorrow; its yearning is unbearable. The Comforter is near … He is unceasingly accessible and clearly known in His breath, in His mysterious presence. Through the sacraments of the Church He gives us living communion with God. He watches over the Church and guides Her; by His power She is for us a higher reality that is not taken away from us and will not be taken away from us -- a joy forever, a light of eternity in this world below.”
Since Pentecost, history is the story of the slow, gradual emergence of Jesus’ Kingdom. It is not an obvious superficial story. It is an emergence draped in mystery, proceeding from heart to heart, out of hidden and unnoticed acts of goodness and love. Obviously, His Kingdom does not grow by wars or politics, worldly power or violence. It grows only by the Spirit:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4.6).
St Irenaeus of Lyons wrote (nineteen hundred years ago at the end of the second century) that “This is the order, the rhythm, the movement by which created humanity is fashioned after the image and likeness of the created God. The Father makes the decisions and gives the commands, the Son carries them out and adapts them, the Spirit provides nourishment and growth, and humanity progresses little by little.”
The Holy Spirit of Pentecost proceeds now “underground” — by miracle, Apostolic Proclamation, sacrament, loving ministry, self-denial, forgiveness, and meekness. It is a procession, and a history, that the news media and society and the politicians will never notice, but it is happening all the same.
It is why we pray, in that best of all prayers, “Thy Kingdom come.” It is why we are Orthodox, why we love, why we live.
“Thy Kingdom come” means that we say “Marana Tha” -- which is exactly what the catacomb Christians gladly exclaimed, over and over again: “Lord Jesus come soon!”
“Thy Kingdom come” is an eminently Pentecostal supplication. We pray for the emergence of the Kingdom in our hearts and in our houses. We pray, through the power of the Holy Spirit and our cooperation, for the enthronement of the One and Only King in our souls and in our world.
“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit.”
Indeed: “Thy Kingdom come.”
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