Tag Archives: ark of the covenant

05/21/09

Ascension Thursday

The Twelve Days of Commission conclude today in the Ascension of Jesus. This feast day is one of the Four Great Thursdays of AUR, the other three being Garden Thursday, Declaration Thursday, and Thanksgiving Thursday.

Ascension commemorates the return of Jesus to Heaven between two angels. This imagery confirms the centrality of reconciled, complementary virtues to Christian morality by closing Jesus’ time on Earth with symbolism that echoes a consistent theme throughout religion.

In the book of Numbers, we read that the Word of God came to the Jews from between the two angels on the “Reconciler,” a device which sat atop the Ark of the Covenant.

Medieval Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides explained that these two angels on the Ark represented the punitive and beneficent aspects of God, reconciled in God’s Unity.

This moral message of reconciled virtues can also be seen symbolically in the prophecy of Isaiah that the Anointed returns when the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, and the lion and the calf lie down together.

In the Christian idiom are repeated lessons in reconciled, complementary virtues:  Law and Wisdom reconciled in true religion, Faith and Hope reconciled in Divine Love, the shrewdness of serpents and the innocence of doves reconciled in the attitude of a true Christian.

Justice and mercy, strength and kindness, the arrow and the olive branch: only together and reconciled are these virtues. Apart and partisan, they become the vices of Beast and Babylon, rage and lust, violence and libertinism, authoritarianism and anarchy.

The Reconciling Word of God, manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, returned to Heaven between two angels representing the benevolent and punitive aspects of God, angels who appeared beside him echoing the cherubim of the Ark. It is this image, and its rich spiritual meaning, that we commemorate on Ascension Thursday.

11/25/08

Reform Unitarian Symbols – The Two Trees

aursymtwotreesNot wanting to imply that the power of Salvation was in the hands of those who condemned and executed Jesus, Reform Unitarianism shies away from using the cross as a symbol.

In fact, the earliest Christians used a variety of symbols, from fish and loaves to peacocks; the cross was not common until well into the 4th Century, when Tertullian conflationism reached its apostatic peak in the First Nicene Council of Constantinople and tyrannical Edict of Thessalonica.

Using symbols other than the cross is a long-established Christian tradition. In that tradition, Reform Unitarianism seeks symbols with deep Christian meaning as alternatives to the cross.

The Two Trees are but one example of a repeating pattern of imagery in Christianity of complementary opposites that when combined signify holiness, particularly its arrival or return: lion and lamb, alpha and omega, serpent and dove. The twin cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, from between which came the Voice of God, were said to symbolize God’s beneficent and punitive aspects.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise for having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, God set a Cherub with a flaming sword “turning in all directions” at the entrance to block them from returning. Some churches hold that Jesus, who brought humanity the fruit of the Tree of Life, removed this sword. Reform Unitarianism, holding that the Salvation offered by Jesus is no easy task, views this sword as a potent symbol of the spiritual difficulties facing the devoted Christian.

Herman Melville once stated that “one who desires to be impartially just in the expression of his views, moves as among sword-points presented on every side.” This is true in religion as it is in politics. Navigating the sacred road to Paradise between decisive Faith and open-minded Hope, between creedal sectarianism and vacuous creedlessness, between too much emphasis on the shrewdness of serpents and too much emphasis on the innocence of doves, one must be ready to face the sword.

The symbol of the Two Trees reminds us to be cautious and yet courageous.