THE SUNDAY OF ORTHODOXY
(A sermon on the Meaning of Icons)

The first Sunday of Lent is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. It marks the day of which the use of icons was reinstated. It commemorates the triumph of Orthodox against the iconoclasts whose purpose it was to remove forcibly all icons from churches and destroy them as instruments of idolatry.
The use of icons is certainly subject to abuse: the record of the iconoclastic controversy is full of evidence to that point. A letter addressed by Byzantine Emperor Michael in 824 A.D. to Louis Ledebonnaire says among other things: "They choose the images of saints to serve as godparents to their children... Some priests have taken to the practice of scraping the paint on the icons, mixing this powder with the Eucharistic bread and wine and distributing the mixture to the faithful after the Eucharist.
But the misuse of any religious practice cannot be an argument against its true use. Even the spoken word, for example, is an icon. It describes the reality of God and His disclosure of Himself through His Son. Yet even the word-spoken or written can become an idol which we worship in lieu of God Himself.
Since the icon is one of the most distinctive features of Orthodoxy, we shall consider briefly what it signifies, why it is used, its practical value as well as its doctrinal significance.
First, let us consider the charge of idolatry. Orthodox Christians do not worship icons; they merely reverence or venerate them as symbols. Leontius of Neapolis wrote in the seventh century: "We do not make obeisance to the nature of wood, but we revere and make obeisance to Him who was crucified on the Cross... When the two beams of the Cross are joined together I adore the figure because of Christ who on the cross was crucified, but if the beams are separated, I throw them away and burn them."*(Magine, Patrologia Graeca)

Why Icons?

The iconoclasts held that God cannot be painted because He is eternal and invisible. "No man has seen God at any time" (John 1:18). But the Orthodox insisted that God can be painted because He became man. Because of this it is lawful to make a picture of Him. Those who were denying the icon of Christ were denying the truth that He had become man. In other words, they were denying the basis of our salvation: God became man in Christ. Thus, what we really commemorate on the first Sunday of Lent is not a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation of Christ and the salvation of man.
It would be theologically accurate to say that God Himself was the first icon maker by visibly reproducing Himself in the likeness of His Son. The iconoclast controversy was not simply a controversy over religious art, but over the entire meaning and implication of the incarnation. God took a material body, thereby proving that matter can be redeemed.
"The Word made flesh has deified the flesh," said John of Damascus. The materials employed in the icons are but another expression of belief in the materialism of Christianity. This has much to say to us today in the area of ecology: that matter is sacred and should not be abused or contaminated.
The Reformation was negative to icons. For Luther they were permissible as illustrations. Calvin could accept nothing more then historical scenes with more then one person depicted, so that it would not make the faithful stumble into idolatry.
Puritants in England and America took a dim view of religious art. They despised and prohibited all religious paintings. In a way they were probably right. Much of contemporary "religious art" is offensive because it makes it hard to believe that the only begotten Son of God became man.
The picture of the Christ as bearded lady, sometimes with a bleeding valentine heart showing through a transparent chest, if taken seriously, denies that he was made man. Such pictures give the idea that he became a phantom, neither male nor female.
As Eric Newton writes, "But from the moment when God sent His only begotten Son to dwell on earth, born of a mortal woman, to preach, to perform miracles, to suffer death and to be resurrected, the situation for the artist changed, for the new religion contained within itself the fact of the invisible made visible, the Deity made human, the supernatural made physically manifest. At last there was no reason to forbid imagery, for if God Himself became incarnate there could be no possibility of the artist's image of Him leading to Idolatry."* "(2000 Years of Christian Art," Eric Newton and Wm. Neil. Harper and Row.

What Is An Icon?

The tendency among some of the early Christian was not to use a realistic image of Jesus. Instead they used abstract signs-letters that would stand for Jesus, such as Chi-Rho, the first two letter of the Greek word for Christ, or IHS, the first letters for the name Jesus in Greek. They also used figures as the fish, which was a secret sign for Christ, or a sheep, standing for the lamb of God.
The Trullan Synod, held in Constantinople in 692 A.D., stated that it was wrong for the church to depict Christ in signs and symbols any longer. The Synod specifically decreed that it would be wrong to portray Christ as a lamb. If He really became man, the Synod said, then He must be portrayed as a human being-not as an animal or as a symbol.
But the church fathers felt that the divine nature of Christ should be brought out in the images as well as His human nature. They said, in the same directive, that images of Him should not be "too carnal." So the icon makers worked out a representation in which the image of Christ was thoroughly human but also highly stylized. This is perhaps why the icons look so very contemporary. They have the stylization, something of the abstraction, of contemporary art, but they have wedded this to an image of Christ as a human being. It is interesting that the late medieval Gothic artists made the image of Christ more human and lost the Byzantine stylization and abstraction that attempted to present also the divine nature of Christ.
Perhaps we should mention the fact that the West has traditionally emphasized the human nature of Christ through the use of statues, the Sacred heart of Jesus, the Christmas Crib etc., whereas the East has placed more emphasis on the divine nature of Jesus through the icon that lends itself very effectively to the expression of the divine, transfigured state of Jesus through the use of stylization and abstraction.

Three Ways of Portrayal

There are three possible ways of "portraying" someone: the photograph, the portrait and the icon. The photograph records the features as they are. A successful portrait reproduces a person's features in a way that is true to life and recognizable; but at the same time it brings out his character and gives expression to his inner nature. An icon is not a photograph but more like a portrait. Yet it is more even than a portrait. It aims at giving a true likeness of the person, and at the same time it attempts to bring out in a person what he has become through the power of the Holy Spirit. An icon than is more than a photograph, more even that a portrait. Iconography portrays what happens to people after God touches them. They become new persons. By omitting everything irrelevant to the spiritual figure, the figure becomes stylized, spiritualized, not unrealistic but supra-realistic. The icon is thus set aside from all other forms of pictorial art. It offers an external expression of the transfigured state of man, of a body so filled with the Holy Spirit, so trained in good, that it has become like the spiritual body which we shall receive at the Second Coming of Christ.
There are some who believe that abstractionism, the reduction of a figure to its purest essence, originated with the iconographers.
Icons have been called prayers, hymns, sermons, in form and color. They are the visual Gospel. In reality, the Eastern Church has two Gospels: the verbal and the visual to appeal to the whole man. As St. Basil said, "What the word transmits through the ear, the painting silently shows through the image, and by these two means, mutually accompanying one another... we receive knowledge of one and the same thing." One has but to enter an Orthodox Church to see unfolded before him on the walls all the mysteries of the Christian religion. "If a pagan asks you to show him your faith," said John of Damascus, "take him into church and place him before the icons."
Through the icon the Orthodox Church appeals to the eye which is the pope of the senses. We remember much more easily what we see than what we hear. The Old Testament prophets, for example, often used the method of dramatic and symbolic action. Men might refuse to listen, but they could hardly fail to see. Jeremiah, for example, forewarned the people of the slavery that was to fall upon them by making yokes and wearing them on his neck.

Existential Encounter

The icon is more even than a means of instruction. It is in effect a sacrament. For, an icon is not fully and icon until it has been blessed. Then it becomes a link between the human and the divine. It provides an existential encounter between men and God. It becomes the place of an appearance of Christ, provided one stands before it with the right disposition of heart and mind. It becomes a place of prayer. An icon participates in the event it depicts and is almost a recreation of that event existentially for the believer. "By the blessing of the icon of Christ, a mystical meeting of the faithful and Christ is made possible." Many icons are regarded as "wonderworking." These are considered to be the icons per excellence.
Standing in an Orthodox Church whose walls and ceiling are covered with icons of Christ and the saints, the worshipper does not feel alone. He experiences the communion of saints. He experiences a fellowship with Christ and the saints. He is made to feel that with Christ and the saints. He is made to feel that he is a member of the family of God. Cecil Stewart describes this well when he writes, "The pictures seem to be arranged in a way which instills a feeling of direct relationship between the viewer and the pictures... each personality is represented facing one, so that one stands, as it were, within the congregation of saints. Bizantine art, in fact, puts one in the picture... He (the viewer) observes and is observed."

Practical Use of Icons

A Japanese girl in an American college was invited to spend the Christmas holidays with a classmate. Afterwards she was asked how she enjoyed the holidays. "Very well," she replied, "but I missed God in the Home. I have seen you worship God in your Church. In my country we have a god-shelf so we can worship our gods in our homes. Do not Americans worship their God in their homes?"
It has been traditional for Orthodox homes to have such a "God-shelf" in the form of an icon with a votive light burning before it. This serves as a reminder of God's presence in the home and as a center for family prayer. In Ukraine, for example, every house-from the Prince palace to the thatched hut of the peasant-had an icon of Christ or the Virgin Mother. No Ukrainian home was a home until it was consecrated by the icon. In fact, upon entering his home or visiting a friend, a Ukrainian Christian would first of all bow low before the icons and make the sign of the cross before greeting his family or host.
If the Church in Ukraine has survived under Communism these past year despite lack of any facilities for instructing children in the Christian faith either at school or at church it is due (humanly speaking) to the Christian family. Throughout Orthodox Christendom the family has been regarded as a "house church" with its own "altar" where prayers are offered before the icons.
One wonders, however, what has happened to the "house church" and the "icons" in the modern Orthodox family. How many of our homes have icons today? Among our younger families we see pictures of famous movie stars on the walls but very few icons. Are we going to allow one of the most precious traditions of our Orthodox faith-the icon-to disappear from our homes? Then what will symbolize God's presence in our homes? What will serve to appeal to morality and conscience?
The icon was never intended to hang on a wall as an aesthetic object. If it is used as an attractive piece of decoration, it ceases to function as an icon. For an icon can only exist within the particular framework of belief and worship to which it belongs. Divorced from this framework, it loses its function as an icon.

In a fragment of the "Life of St. John Chrysostom" preserved in the work by St. John of Damascus (675-749), we are told that Chrysostom had an icon of the Apostle Paul before himself as he studied Paul's epistles. When he looked up from the text, the icon seemed to come to life and speak to him.
Icons in the home consecrate the profane; they transform a neutral dwelling-place into a "domestic church" and the life of the faithful into an unceasing liturgy.
One church leader said "If in hospitals, which treat the diseases of the body, everything is arranged to make the surroundings conducive to the patient's return to health, what great care must be taken to order everything in a spiritual hospital, a church of God." We can apply this also to the Christian home which should include reminders of God's strengthening and healing presence.

Icon Painters

It has been said that love is the great interpreter. It is the conductor of an orchestra who is in love with the music of a composer who can best interpret and express it. A young artist once brought a picture of Jesus which he had painted to a great painter for his verdict. The artist studied it for quite some time and finally said, "You don't love Him, or you would paint Him better."
This great truth is practiced among Orthodox icon painters who are usually monks. Such iconographers are not considered to be religious artists but rather as persons who have a religious vocation. They are clergymen preaching visual theology. The icon, like the Word, is a revelation, not a decoration or illustration. More important than being a good artist is the fact that the icon painter be a sincere Christian who prepares himself for his work through fasting, prayer, Confession and Communion and has the feeling that he is but an instrument through whom the Holy Spirit expresses Himself. It is important to know Him better if one is to paint Him better. In the West, the theologian has instructed and even limited the artist, whereas in the East the iconographer is a charismatic who contemplates the liturgical mysteries and instructs the theologian.

God's Best Icon

Since we are talking about icons we would be remiss if we neglected to say that by far the best icon of God is man who was made in God's own image. This is the reason the Orthodox priest during the liturgy turns and censes the congregation after having censed the icons. Each person in the congregation is a living icon of God. Through censing we pay respect to the image of God in man which resides in all men regardless of the color of skin or class. To pay respect to the icons in Church and to show disrespect to the living icons of God-our fellow men-is hypocrisy of the worst sort. The Sunday of Orthodoxy should remind us that God made us in His own image. We are His living, walking icons. Yet often we allow the icon of God in us painted by the Holy Spirit to be marred and blurred by sin. By her emphasis on the restoration of icons on the first Sunday of lent, the Orthodox Church calls on us to restor also the fallen icon of God in our souls through repentance and a return to the renewing power of Christ in the Eucharist.
As soon as one enters an Orthodox Church one is greeted at the door by an icon of Christ whose house we have just entered. He stands at the door to greet us as Host. We, in turn, greet Him by making the sign of the cross and bowing before or kissing His icon. Then as we enter the church we see Christ Pantocrator in the dome reminding us of His all-pervading presence in the universe and in our lives. On the walls and on the icon screen He is surrounded by the prophets, apostles, Virgin Mother, martyrs and Saints. Finally on the floor level of the Church are the living saints-all of us, the Church triumphant in heaven and the Church militant on earth, gathered round our Lord and singing praises to His glory feeling His presence. We can also feel His presence at home every day and every night through the devotional use of this great aid to prayer: the icon, the visual Gospel. (Taken from Ecclesiastical Publications)