It’s good to be back at
St Peter’s. For those of you who don’t know me, this parish finally was able to
get some relief from my presence by sending me off to seminary in 2006.
Actually, I’m kidding - this parish was
a blessing to me in so many ways, not the least of which was supporting my
candidacy for ordination.
One of the things I did
while I was a parishioner here was to be a part of the icon-writing group
taught by Irena Beliakova. We met every Saturday down in the old basement for a
couple of hours of prayer, icon writing, and a whole lot of sighing. Sighing
mostly because we couldn’t get our brushes to do as we wanted, or we couldn’t
figure out the right color, or just because it was a hard spiritual discipline.
But eventually, with
the help of our teacher and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we would complete
an icon, and it always was greater than the sum of its parts.
Icons are wondrous
things. I know to some of you they look like artwork, but they are so much
more.
First, a point of clarification: they are not meant to be a teaching tool
like stained glass windows. No, they are an aid to prayer, a window into
heaven. When you look at one, at first glance it looks strange – elongated
limbs, no attention to Western rules of proportion, serious faces, odd symbols.
You might recognize the person portrayed in the icon – Jesus, Mary, Elijah, St.
Peter – but it’s hard to connect with the image at first. But when you spend
some time with them, you find yourself looking through them rather than at
them. You see beyond the image on the board, into a divine space.
Let me say that again.
You see BEYOND the image into another space, a divine space.
I spent the past week
on retreat down in North Carolina, writing an icon. Most of the icon-writing
time was spent in blessed silence. Since most of my workweek is spent talking
to people, silence is precious, and this week was doubly precious, because I
had no phone access, no interruptions, no unnecessary conversations…just writing
an icon, the one that portrays that moment when Mary Magdalene encounters the
newly risen Jesus outside the tomb. Once she recognizes him, she reaches out to
embrace him. He says, “don’t touch me. It isn’t the time for us to touch.” It’s
a blow to her, but as she looks at him, she realizes that the man she sees is
not the same person she knew. He is transformed. Not just marks in his hands
and feet, but he is different. She sees beyond the image she has had of Jesus,
her rabbi and friend, to what he has become, the risen Lord, and she has to
accept the impossible.
It’s a powerful icon.
Jesus looks at her with tenderness, recognizing her confusion. She looks at
Jesus longingly, wanting nothing more than the comfort of touch after the week
that preceded it…she reaches to him and he holds his hand up as if to say
“don’t.”
But she sees beyond
what she thought she saw when he said “Mary.” She sees a transformed person.
Mary Magdalene is not
the first person to see something different in Jesus.
As we hear in today’s gospel, most everybody
at the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion sees – what? A loser. A failed rabbi and
political provocateur who is going to pay for his transgressions with his life.
His friends and followers have deserted him. Only a few women stand off in the
distance – his mother and a few others. They see a beloved one whose mission
seems to have failed, but they stay, watching the horrible scene, because they
love him and they must bear witness. He
is still their Jesus: their understanding of Jesus, their image of Jesus.
But as he hangs from
the cross, in this most ignominious of poses, there is one who sees something
different. And it is an unlikely person – another person being crucified. Perhaps
it is desperation, perhaps it is a revelation, but this criminal sees the man
next to him as something other than another victim of Roman justice. He sees
one who is truly a King – Christ the King. He sees beyond the pain and the lash
marks and the blood dripping from hands and feet and sees majesty and power. He
sees Christ the King. No followers, not even Peter, the Rock who would be the
foundation of the church, see Christ the King in this moment. Only a criminal,
a thief, the least trustworthy of persons, sees this crucified rabbi as Christ
the King.
I wonder if we had been
there, if we had the stomach for the spectacle, what we would have seen. My
guess is that we would not have seen a king, we would have seen a failure. Now it’s
easy for us to say who it is – we went to Sunday school after all – but
without that, how would we have seen beyond the visual image to what existed
behind it?
That happens a lot
these days – we make a judgment on what we see based upon visual evidence
without looking deeper, without looking at the person behind the person. It’s
the sort of thing that leads to demonization – the awful language we heard in
recent weeks in the political sphere. We reduce the person whom we don’t like
to a catchphrase or a judgmental witticism, despite the fact that we know that
we human beings are infinitely more complicated than a snarky catchphrase can
convey. It gives us a feel of control, doesn’t it, this reduction of a person
to a judgment?
But it denies something
very important about each and every one of us, and here’s where I turn back to
the notion of icons and iconography.
What is one of the
first things we learn as we study our Christian faith? That human beings are
made in the image of God. We humans are the closest thing we can get to what
God is. We can’t imagine what God looks like, but if we look at ourselves,
that’s a start.
In other words, we are
icons of God. It is through us that we see God. Each and every one of us. Each
and every one of us is an icon of Creator God, of Christ the King, of the Holy
Spirit that sustains us. If we look at each other and look beyond our human
failings, what do we see? We see our Trinitarian God. We are the icons of God.
So now that we know
that, does it seem right to disrespect other human beings by calling them
names, by dismissing whole groups of people as bad in gross generalizations, by
classifying them in ways that meet political expediency rather than recognizing
that they are icons of God, of Christ the King?
Think of it this way:
if you looked at that thief being crucified, it would be easy to simply say
“that’s a bad person who robbed others of their honestly earned goods.” But if
you looked beyond the visual, into someone who, despite his brokenness, was an
icon of God, you would see why he was capable of recognizing Christ the King.
Exteriors are
deceiving. Look to the heart rather than the exterior. Look through the icon to
the God who created him. Visualize every human being, even the one you disdain,
as a sneak peek into who the King is who reigns among us, and then…
…treat them
accordingly.
Amen.
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