Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
May 15, 2014
‘Worshiping’ Images
I remember the first time I ever went into a traditional
church of the apostolic succession: the
Episcopal Church in Wenatchee Washington, where I went as a twelve-year old to
attend the wedding of the daughter of my father’s business partner. I was stunned to see all along the wall
paintings of Jesus, and more troubling to me, a statue of him in a place of
honor surrounded by flower offerings, before which were small kneelers clearly
intended for praying. Somewhere near the
back, there was even a small shrine to Jesus’ Mother. Now, I was raised in a markedly
non-liturgical church, one that didn’t even have a cross up on its steeple, let
alone “carved images” in its worship space, and I have to tell you, my initial
reaction was one of puzzled horror.
Somewhat scandalized by the sensuality of it all, I asked
one of my friends, who was an Episcopalian, how she got around feeling guilt at
not following the commandment “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven
images.” She look puzzled at me, as if
the question had never occurred to her.
“Well that’s easy. The
commandment is about images of false gods, and I for one happen to believe that
Jesus is the true God. I’m not sure about your church, but mine
believes that God Almighty” (I remember how unusual it was for me or people in
my Church to refer to God as ‘God Almighty’) “became flesh in the baby Jesus,
and that he is what God the father looks like.
So when we pray before his image, we aren’t’ praying to the wooden
statue or the paint on the icon, but to the person these represent, knowing
that Jesus’ image is the image of God.”
Only years later did I come across the biblical verses that
were the basis of this simple faith that my friend had expressed: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John
1:14) and “[Christ] is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of
God’s very being” (Hebrews 1: 3). And
it was yet again many years later than that, when I studied the story of the Iconoclast Controversy in the early church about the reverencing of
(not the “worship of”) images of the divine, whether two or
three-dimensional. The Church came to
the conclusion that the use of images in devotions and prayers was wholly
acceptable and allowed, and in fact reflected a healthy faith in the
incarnation of God in Christ. It was
only far later that radicals in the Protestant Reformation insisted on trashing
images as “idolatrous,” as suspicious as they had become of anything that
smacked of the political power of a corrupt papacy. As in most controversies associated with
the reformation, Anglicans tended to take a middle path here: using the
principle of not requiring any point of faith that could not be clearly
demonstrated by scripture, they considered painted images of Jesus as worthy of
reverence, and were somewhat divided over time about carved images or images of
his Mother or of the saints.
When we use icons in our contemplative or Celtic services,
we are following the spirituality of the great mainstream of Christian
faith. We see in these portrayals of
Jesus windows into the unseen world rather than objects to be adored in and of
themselves. I believe that most of our
community here at Trinity finds such devotion and reverence helpful and
edifying in focusing our thoughts and prayers.
Grace and Peace,
Fr.
Tony+
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