Today is the triumph of Orthodoxy. On this First Sunday of Lent in 842 A.D. the iconodules—our “right believing” forefathers who upheld the Apostolic Faith, celebrated their victory over the heretical beliefs of the iconoclasts, the “icon-smashers.”
Now, if there’s one charge we Orthodox hear more often than any other from our Protestant friends, it’s this: “You worship icons!” Of course, it’s at such times that we as Orthodox have the opportunity to explain that while we venerate and greatly honor the holy icons, we only worship God the Holy Trinity.
The greatest object of veneration in Israel was the Ark of the Covenant, which God directed the Israelites to appoint with pure gold and decorate with images of golden cherubim, (Exodus 25:18). No Israelite would even think of worshiping the Ark, but they held the Ark in holy awe and fear. The Ark contained the holiest objects of Israel’s veneration: the rod of Aaron and the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. But just a few chapters later in Exodus 32, we read that the Israelites were worshiping a golden calf. That is what we truly call idolatry, but the honor they rightly showed the Ark, we recognize as veneration, which gives glory to God.
The holy icons, the Gospel, the cross, are objects of Christian veneration precisely because they direct us and inspire in us worship of the Holy Trinity. When we see an icon of Christ, we know that He is not some mythical being, but rather the Lord God Himself who became incarnate on our behalf, to enter into human nature as man and defeat our sin and death as God. We can depict Christ iconographically, with great honor and in accordance with Holy Tradition because of and in affirmation of the historic reality of the Incarnation of the Word made flesh. This is the truth revealed in the icon of Christ Pantokrator and the icon of the Theotokos holding Christ.
Likewise, we depict the Saints who’ve triumphed in the life of Christ precisely because of the witness they are to the reality of changed lives, of deification, of growth in holiness that Christ God brings us by virtue of His Incarnation, entering into human nature as man and vivifying it, making it new once again, as God. Our veneration of the holy icons witnesses to this truth. When we gaze upon an icon of the Theotokos or any of the Saints of the Church and venerate them, we affirm the reality of Christ God’s work in them and through them to God’s glory, as St. Paul says, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (II Thess. 1:12).
And so, for us as Orthodox, the holy icons are more than ‘pictures’ and they are never “religious art”: our Fathers in the Faith, countless of whom lost their lives in martyrdom to uphold the Apostolic, Orthodox Faith, rightly understood that without the holy icons, the fullness of the historic reality of the Incarnation, would be altered, if not lost altogether; the affirmation that the Word became flesh and “dwelt among us” to raise up fallen Adam, would come to be understood in increasingly twisted ways, threatening our faith, healing, and salvation in Christ.
Our Orthodox forefathers rightly understood that if the icons of Christ, His Saints, His miracles, and the faithful interpretation of the Gospels as passed down in the holy icons, were lost, the reality of the fullness of the Faith Christ entrusted to His Church for all time, would also be lost.
Those who gave their lives to uphold Orthodoxy, celebrated the victory of the Orthodox as God’s protection of His Church, the Body of Christ in unity with Him, communing with Him. The battle against the iconoclasts was the last of a five hundred year struggle to uphold the Orthodox Faith against those who would change our faith and lead others into heresy. Each of these heresies tried to alter the Faith of the Apostles, the Orthodoxy, we still profess. They were all defeated in that 7th Council, the victory of which we celebrate today!
In this way, we truly affirm that the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy goes to the very heart of our belief in Christ and our salvation. All other triumphs of our faith stem from this truth: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,” as we’ll sing at our joyous celebration of Pascha. It’s because of Christ’s incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection, that we’re here today worshipping Him, participating in His life so that with Him, we too may be conquerors over sin and death.
The holy icons proclaim this truth: God is glorified in His Saints—in men and women turning from sin to Christ God, finding healing from sin-sickness, and by God’s grace, becoming the men and women He created us and calls us to be: full of life, joy, discernment, light and life, having recovered our first beauty.
“The great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) St. Paul reminds us of today, are paraded around the church. We testify through them to the truth of man’s redemption through Christ and only through Christ. Every icon of a Saint testifies to this redemptive work of God in us: redemption from a life of sin is real, healing is real, a new life is real, love and joy are real, salvation is real, the Kingdom of God is real—we see this reality no clearer than in the faces of the Saints, in the testimony of their lives.
Truly, as St. Paul proclaims to us today, “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses!” If people want proof of God’s existence, reality, and relevance, they need look no further than the lives of these Saints, whose number is too great to count. For this reason, I greatly encourage you to daily take time to read the life of one of the many Saints commemorated on any given day in the Church calendar. We learn from their example to cling to Christ, to be in the world as witnesses of hope in Christ.
We learn to follow in their footsteps—cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We do so spurred on by their witness and intercessions on our behalf. The days of battling new heresies may have come to an end; there are really no new heresies—just newly recycled versions of the originals. But Orthodoxy faces new challenges as our forebears did of old.
In our own day, we’re challenged by growing relativism, secularism, nihilism, the ‘new-morality’—all of which threaten the faithful proclamation of the “Faith once received,” of the loving way of healing to which all people are called and no one exempted. Because we love as Christ loves, we call on all people “to come and see,” we call all to repentance in the beauty of holiness.
Many modern religious groups are experimenting with new forms of worship, props, ‘dumbing down,’ changing the definition of marriage, of what chastity means, of who Jesus is, doing away with the idea of sin without curing the disease. But it is Christ God who is the Great Physician. He alone is the cure and reveals the treatment through His Church. So we cling to what He’s revealed as the “narrow way that leads to life,” as Christ puts it, that we may help others to come to the knowledge and love of Christ too.
We don’t compromise the truth, who Jesus Christ is; we keep the Faith, which is not an idea, a philosophy; it’s communion with the historic Jesus and life with Him and in Him. We’re participating in eternity, the Kingdom, which begins now in His Body, the Church. We don’t shape the faith; the faith shapes us through our relationship with the Truth, Jesus Christ.
Our God is the God, Who was, and is, and is to come (Rev. 1:8, 4:8, 11:17). He it is who ordered the images of cherubim meticulously depicted on the Ark. Our worship as the New Israel, the Church, is in continuity with that of the faithful in Israel and the first Orthodox who worshipped God, the Christ-believing Jews in the synagogues, the persecuted faithful in the catacombs, and the faithful in the basilicas and cathedrals, chapels and churches who kept the faith through the centuries. Our faith and veneration of the icons is in continuity with all these faithful who kept the Faith proclaimed once and for all— “to all people, at all times, in every place” (Vincentian Canon, 5th century).
For love of God, love of neighbor, for love of those who will come after us, our children’s sake, “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith.” The Saints cheer us on! We model ourselves on them and their witness in Christ. To God be the glory! Christ is in our midst!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday of Orthodoxy
Sunday, 9 March 2014
Epistle: Heb. 11:24-026, 32-12:1
Gospel: John 1:43-51
