Source : Summit :: Author : Finisher?

IC XC
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NI KA

WE USE A VERBAL IMAGE describing the liturgy as “heaven striking earth”. It usually gets used in discussions of “beauty” in Church, sometimes in defense of liturgical practices like incense or vestments. The first time Ukrainians came to Constantinople from Kyiv, they visited a liturgy at Hagia Sophia and reported they “did not know whether we were on earth or in heaven…” because of the beauty they saw.

I tried to explain this concept to my Hebrew teacher this morning in Hebrew. my vocabulary is limited so what I ended up saying in the lesson was (in English) “This world (olam hazeh) and the world to come (olam ba) are together (b’yachad)”. Again, that is my simple language version but it sparked one of those ah ha moments when it suddenly made sense differently.

How to read this idea? Is it a liturgical directive? Must we make the liturgy to be something because that is how we make it look/feel/sound more like heaven? If so, it’s something we do: we are replicating heaven in our liturgy. The liturgy is thus only as if it were heaven on earth. The implications made include the idea that, perhaps, less-beautiful liturgy somehow doesn’t work, and it certainly is lesser or even worse than. Perhaps languages other than Latin are not as beautiful. Possibly architecture or vestment choices keep us from experiencing certain things. Maybe singing the wrong music can prevent us from building the city of God in our churches. If we must build something beautiful to make it all work, if we can build something not-holy enough for God to bother with, then liturgy really is something we do to God. These claims seem shallow and almost make God seem petty or, perhaps, subject to our whims.

Knowing how people think, this easily becomes, if we just do everything right, certainly God will come. But knowing, as well, another part of our usual thought process we will also be asking ourselves, what is beautiful enough to get God’s interest? Certainly we don’t need to do any more than just enough. Finally, there is a third part of our process and it is far more common as a public expression of our religiosity: to do anything else is a sin. We can be judging of those who are sinning liturgically.

What if, though, that’s not how God works? It is possible that that’s not what it means for heaven and earth to be in contact. Maybe heaven and earth are together in an entirely different way. The Eucharist is the “Source and Summit” of our Faith, but that’s not 100% correct: for it’s Jesus that is the Source and Summit. Paul says, “Author and Finisher” and that’s a better phrase. First seeing Jesus as Author and Finisher helps us contextualize Source and Summit: because the Eucharist is Jesus. Jesus is the Person, and all of our faith rests in him. To see any other part of our faith apart from the person of Jesus is to create an idol – even of the Eucharist or of the Church. And there, is, I think, the key. For the Eucharist and the Church are – both – Jesus.

In the incarnation, Jesus – the Divine, Second Person of the Holy Trinity – unites his Divine nature with a Human Nature. Earth and Heaven unite. Eternity and Time unite. What is beyond all comprehension becomes comprehensible and what cannot be seen can now be painted. We have, in the person of Jesus, the union of all these things and so when, in the Church (the Body of Christ on Earth) with celebrate the Eucharist (which is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ) we have the fullest intersectionality of heaven striking earth. It’s not the beauty of the music, the vestments, the incense, or the icons that makes this happen: it’s Jesus. He is the author and finisher of our faith, he is the source and summit of all that we are. The liturgy is his action in his body, the Church.

It was heaven and earth together on Sunday in the corniest guitar mass with felt banners and in the most solemn Latin Vetus Ordo Missae with a full choir and a concert Mass setting. It was heaven and earth together on Sunday in the Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom as much as it was in the 1st Century with the prayers in Didache which do not even mention “body / blood” or even the cross! Gathered around the Eucharistic banquet the heaven and earth together has nothing to do with us: it’s what God has given us in the Eucharist. Everything else is our response to God in this feast and – provided it’s offered in sincerity and truth – God welcomes our love.

The beauty of liturgy is not something we do. But all that we do is a response to the gift God gives us.

This world and the world to come are together in Jesus who is the Kingdom in his person. Heaven and Earth come together in the Liturgy – and we dance for Joy.