Icon.
In the deepest relationships, lovers do not turn each other into idols, but recognize one another as icons, leading them through their love into the very bosom of the Godhead.
~ Tessa Bielecki
In my contemporary charismatic church upbringing, I learned to appreciate the “now-ness” of God. Skeptical of tradition, we wanted to know God by direct connection. If it was old, it felt irrelevant; if it was new, it felt authentic. New worship styles, new building styles, new leadership styles. I still value those things, especially the priority on encountering God personally and intimately, for which we might now use the old word mystical.
I am also learning more recently to value spiritual practices rooted over time in the traditions of Godward men and women. To feel the gravitas, even the authority of the ancient. Ancient prayers, ancient places, ancient methods of worship. There is a groundedness, a substance and stability within the timeless that beautifully intersects and complements the modern. At least that’s how I experience it.
Five years ago I was introduced to a practice so ancient as to seem perhaps antiquated: worship through icons. Dating back to the fourth and fifth centuries, icons were hand-painted images of Jesus and the saints that rose to a high art in eleventh and twelfth century Russia. Resistance to icons (iconoclasm) was pervasive in the western church (and echoed in the Jewish and Islamic traditions) out of concern for their potential as idols, but were embraced by the eastern church as a means of genuine, artful worship.
Two icons hang in our personal prayer room: Kellie’s favorite, the widely-loved “Trinity” by Andrei Rublev (15th c - in the top banner), and my favorite, “The Good Shepherd,” originally found in the Roman catacombs among the early persecuted Christian community (below). For us, icons are portals, conduits. Immanent representations of transcendent truths: the first inviting us into community with the Trinity; the second offering us tender nurture and divine care.
As Bielecki noted in the epigraph, icons have the power to draw us into the visceral embrace of God. Can you taste some of that right now? Take a single minute—60 seconds—and gaze on this image. Let it speak its truth into your heart.
What was that like for you? What was its gift?
Did you know that it’s not only icons that serve as “icons”? Other images can mediate the presence of Christ and invite us into divine embrace. Consider these pointers to the Holy:
Creation, the “first Bible,” calls us deeply into divine encounter…offering us a finite glimpse of infinite beauty, whimsy, and aliveness. “Deep calls to deep,” the Psalmist cries.
Scripture is a familiar icon, a means of gazing upon the Beloved.
Our emotions, as reflections of God’s nature, invite us into the divine heart. Feelings, both light and dark, beckon us to intimate communion. God occupies each, speaks through each, longs to meet us in each.
The face of a loved one is an icon. Even that of a stranger. Can you see the face of God etched into the human visage? CS Lewis mused that “it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” That potential lies just beneath the surface right now.
Yet the very images that can mediate the Holy can, in truth, become counterfeits of the Holy. Idols. When we mistake the medium for the source, we attach ourselves addictively, sucking the life out of them, trying to satiate legitimate human needs in illegitimate ways. Human love, precious as it is, cannot substitute for divine love. Financial abundance cannot substitute for poverty of spirit. Even scripture cannot substitute for worship. One may mediate the other—but cannot replace it.
Mark Twain once said that the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lighting and a lightning bug. As a writer, I value the distinction! And as one trying to follow Christ in the world, I don’t want to confuse the right way to hold these precious means of grace from the almost-right way. One fills the deepest longings of the soul while the other teases and leaves us empty, disheartened.
The difference between love and lust in the difference between iconography and idolatry.
Contemplate
Look at your life and your environment with fresh eyes today. What icons surround you in this very moment? There are easily dozens! Imagine the myriad ways God longs to reveal God’s very self through each. Choose one to meditate upon all day. Look through the portal to the source…and savor the Holy.
Takeaway
All is inherently sacred. All can be corrupted.