St Sava's

Our fieldtrip today was to St Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral. It's probably the most beautiful building I've ever been in. The only thing that compares aesthetically is the Library of Congress in Washington DC, except that it extols an entirely different religion than the cathedral in Milwaukee.

"Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" is clearly demonstrated in the plethora of mosaic icons. All the walls and ceilings are done in mosaics. There are traditional Orthodox saints, and there are saints specific to Serbia. There are church fathers and apostles and evangelists. But the ones I love the best are the Bible stories. So many Bible stories all over the walls in mosaic, and in the windows in stained glass.

The inside of the dome over the nave is one big icon of Jesus. At first I really liked it: Jesus looking down, watching over His people. But tonight, after praying the Creed with the kids at bedtime, I'm rethinking it. We so often think of Jesus' ascension as being His "going up" to heaven, sort of "away from us." Pastor has been making the point in the last couple of years that Jesus ascension is not a geographic ascension, "going away" to heaven. Rather, it is an ascension of office, like the king ascending the throne. The king isn't going anywhere. He's not necessarily going "up" (although sometimes there are a few stairs involved to make the point obvious). He's just being elevated to His position of power. I suppose the icon in the dome of St Sava's doesn't necessarily represent Jesus being "up there" in heaven. But the deacon did explain that the Greek church is more about heaven coming to earth, whereas the Serbian is more about earth benefiting from what goes on in heaven. That perspective would be consistent with my initial thoughts about the icon of Jesus in the main dome over the nave.