Christ Enthroned with Angels

Doctrinal reflection

This is Revelation 4 in mosaic.

In the upper register of the south wall of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Christ sits enthroned amid four angels. A long procession of twenty-six male martyrs walks toward him from Theodoric's palace at the west end of the church, each carrying a golden crown. They are bringing their crowns to lay them before the throne.

Read Revelation 4 alongside this mosaic: "the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne... and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power." The 6th-century mosaicists staged exactly that scene. They turned the wall of a basilica into the throne room of heaven and walked their congregation past it on the way to the altar.

Notice that Christ here is youthful. Beardless. Roman, almost solar. This is the early image-type for Christ — the type before the bearded Pantocrator settled into Byzantine convention. The Christ of Revelation 1 has hair white like wool; the Christ of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo is young. Both are him. The Lord shows different faces to different ages of his church.

Hebrews 12:1 says we are surrounded by "so great a cloud of witnesses." The procession in this nave is that cloud made visible — the martyrs who finished their race, bringing back the only thing they own that is worth offering. Their crowns, returned to the One who gave them.

When you preach the saints, do not preach them as ends. They are couriers. Everything they carried, they brought back to the throne.