The Ascension

Doctrinal reflection

Look up, then stop looking up.

The Ascension dome at Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, made around 885, shows Christ in a mandorla held aloft by two angels at the apex of the dome. Below him, the Theotokos stands in orant posture, flanked by two more angels. Around the drum, the twelve apostles look up and reach toward him. The inscription circling the figures is the angels' question from Acts 1:11: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?"

The artists have built the question into the architecture. The worshipper standing on the church floor is forced to look up — that is the first instinct when you see this dome. And then the inscription corrects you. Why stand ye gazing up? Christ is not coming back to those who stand and stare at the sky. The angels in Acts had to rebuke the apostles for this. Get to work.

Acts 1:11 finishes the rebuke with a promise: "this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." The same Jesus. The same body. The same way. The post-trib reading is in this verse: he will come back visibly, bodily, publicly — the way he left. There is no secret return. Acts 1:11 forbids it.

The Thessaloniki mosaicists understood this. They put the apostles around the drum looking up because the disciples in Acts did look up. They put the inscription there because the angels rebuked the looking. And they put the Theotokos with arms raised in prayer because the right response to the Ascension is not gazing — it is intercession and obedience. Pray and go.

When you preach the Ascension, do not preach a sentimental departure. Christ ascended in body. He will return in body. The cloud that received him is the same cloud he is coming back in.

The dome at Thessaloniki asks you the question the angels asked the apostles: why are you still standing here?

Be Obedient. Be Bold.