The Heavens

The Mystery of the Floating Priest

Chris Pipkin

"The Heavens are the Heavens of the Lord,

But the earth he has given to the sons of men."

Scouring the online news for an article to hand out to my English students, I came across an interesting piece about a Brazilian priest—a certain Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli.

It seems that Padre de Carli, as part of a fund-raising stunt for a mission to truck drivers, strapped himself to hundreds of colorful, helium-filled balloons, intending to fly to another city hundreds of miles away. In mid-flight over the ocean, the priest lost contact with his flight crew, and only the balloons have been found since. His former flight instructor, who described the priest as "rash," said something like, "I can't really say this tragedy was unexpected."

I would like to imagine that, at some point in his journey, the priest shared the fate of Enoch—rather than that of Jonah—and was simply snatched up by a Monty Python-esque hand reaching down from a passing cloud—carried higher than plastic and helium could afford to take him. We'll probably never know exactly what happened (the Brazilian coast guard called off the search for his body a few days ago), but drowned or not, I'd like to think he no longer needs party favors to walk about the sky. Which brings me to this month's topic:

How did we ever get the idea--common enough nowadays, whether encountered in Dante or Disney--that when we die, our souls go up into the sky? For thousands of years, most cultures seemed to believe the opposite. Expired Greeks and Romans traveled like loose leaves among the caves of Hades, Norsemen went to "Hel" which worked along the same lines; Egyptian and Chinese equipped imperial graves with food and earthen slaves, and even Hebrews seemed to believe that the soul--good or bad--always went "down to Sheol."

Heaven (with very few exceptions) was not the final resting place of mortals, but the realm, rather, of the gods. Valhalla, Asgard, Olympus, and "The Heavens" of Jewish Scripture were bright and beautiful, in contrast to the shadowy underworld(s), and bursting with lights and glory, but they were alien, inhospitable, and even hostile to mankind.

There are various accounts of unhappy humans who, in their pride, refused to accept this fact--who aspired to transcend their sphere and reach the bright haunts of the immortal spirits. The Greeks write of Bellepheron, who tried to ride Pegasus up to the gods' domain until he was struck down by Zeus himself. The builders of the Tower of Babel were similarly (though less severely) punished, as was the King of Babylon (Isaiah 14:13-15). Even when God-fearing prophets of monotheistic Judaism are permitted a glimpse into Heaven, they are terrified at the sight of its immortal inhabitants (closely associated and clothed with the glory of the one God) and have great difficulty describing them. Their reaction, most usually, is to fall down "as though dead," and feel, despite angelic reassurances, that this is no place for them.

The mere sight of the sky, during a moment of insight, causes poets to tremble. "When I consider your heavens," says David, "The work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place...what is man that you give a thought to him?"

Modern science, as far as the material, visible heavens are concerned, has proved these ancient ideas to be, in a way, correct. The higher we lift ourselves off the earth, the less capable we seem to be of living. We now know (do we?) that this is not because of proximity to any sort of gods, but due to terrestrial conditions which keep our bodies together.

There seems, then, to be an agreement here between ancient and modern thought: The sky is no place for humans. And yet modern failures and successes at flight, and ancient study of heavenly beings and bodies is a testimony to the continued human desire to "slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God." Nevertheless, the hulking winged machines, precarious balloons and now-weightless pieces of iron (mined, embarrassingly, from the very place we wish to escape) frustrate this dream even as they help us (partially) to achieve it. We would prefer, if we could, to soar naked on the back of the wind, to float on pixie dust or angels' wings to an alien realm beyond; to somehow find a home there with the gods and sip ambrosia at their table, and to feel, in doing so, that we have come home. This we still cannot do, for we are insubstantial crumbling clay, not solid light.

The latter half of the book of Daniel brims with bizarre showings. Unearthly beasts and bright warring spirits appear to a wise but bewildered Jewish eunuch already caught between rising and falling world powers. Yet, terrified as he is, he keeps "looking in the night visions," and there, sees "Coming in the clouds of heaven...One like a son of man."

Now here is something new. The clouds, especially for a Jew forbidden to associate the Divine with the created, are not the place for anything resembling a man. The Cherubim, those dreadful, shape-shifting spirits surrounding the Throne of the unseen God, have been glimpsed among the clouds. God, it is written, clothes himself with "clouds and thick darkness," riding upon them like a chariot. And here we have "One like a son of man" using the clouds in this way.

At the end of the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, you have the risen Jesus, the self-named Son of Man suddenly "lifted up, and a cloud took him out of [the disciples'] sight." Jesus had died already. He had, according to the widely-held beliefs of his early followers, "descended into the lower parts of the earth," like all people--but while there, the Divine Man had--somehow--conquered the Grave itself, and brought souls up from it. We see him two days after his entombment, glorying in his victory. But when, forty days later, he floated up into the air, where did he go? Outer space? Another planet? Another dimension? Another time? America?

And so, as if the good Father de Carli didn't leave us with enough questions, here we have the mystery of another floating Priest. This past Sunday was Ascension Sunday, so I reckon now is as good a time as any to puzzle over it. Christ had told his disciples before his crucifixion that he was "going to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, there you also may be." Many of us, hearing this, imagine Jesus the Carpenter, spare nails in mouth, hammering away at a billion or so celestial mansions in some as-yet-undiscovered cloudy city. We all know that's probably not what he meant, exactly, but it's hard to shake the picture from our imagination. The difficulty is, of course, that Jesus didn't just evaporate. We believe he still lives in his physical body--and if he has retained a physical body, he has to be in a physical place--even now, long before a new heavens and new earth are created. But no one knows where. It's as ambiguous, to us, as the date and time of Christ's return.

So now the good news. In a sense, we do know exactly where Christ now is. The Gospels, the Creed, the Epistles, Stephen's vision in Acts, all have him "seated [in Acts, standing] at the right hand of the Father." Whatever else that may mean in terms of actual physical location, etc., the "right hand" of any ruler is the place of favor. Christ, following his Death, Resurrection and Ascension, was revealed as the Father's favored one, as the Priest, on creation's behalf (because sharing man's nature), to God (because sharing God's nature). "Right hand," when it occurs in the New Testament, is an allusion to Psalm 110, which Peter quotes in Acts 2: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." The Ascension, like the Resurrection which preceded it (and let us not be too stringent in our division or prioritizing of Christ's acts), marks Christ out as our unique Advocate before God, and God's chosen Minister to humanity. Most of all, it marks him out, once and for all, as God's beloved Son, in whom he is well-pleased.

Second piece of good news: Christ said, "I go there to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you may be also." In other words, if Christ is at the right hand of the Father, so, undeservedly, inexplicably, marvelously, are we. We do share a table with not only the gods, but with God himself, and we are there in the place of favor. The inability of humanity to exist in the same place as the Divine--the estrangement itself, which all ancient civilizations felt deeply--that has been put to death instead of us. Now it is given--not reached by merit of our own fuel, but given--to us to dwell in the abode of the gods, and not be burnt up. For in Christ, we are safe, and we ourselves are becoming gods and not ashes as we follow him through fire and beyond death.

Christ summed it up pretty well as he predicted his ascension to Mary Magdalene on that holiest of Sundays: "Go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

In his humility and generosity (and joy) he makes no distinction here between his relationship with the Father and that of his "brothers," though it is obvious enough that he is, by nature, the Only Begotten Son, and ourselves sons and daughters only through him. At present, we are (even priests) prevented from following Christ's glorified corporeal body wherever it went, because our own bodies have not yet been changed. And yet we are with him, in him, and he is with and in us, just as he is with the Father. The laws of physics have not changed, but other laws, in a way even more absolute, have been transcended, for we are being transformed within. And the day now approaches when even our physical bodies--faces, skin, fingernails--will rise into the air and meet, there, Him.