Whi’tuesday
Today’s assigned readings:
Deuteronomy 4:15-24; 2 Corinthians 1:12-22; Luke 15:1-10
Since you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure - the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven.
Deuteronomy 4:15:19
The very simplified line or argument for using what are called “Holy Images” in church (icons, statues, etc) runs like this:
Under the covenant with Israel it was true that “since [Moses] saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire” the people of God were not allowed to make images of anything, lest they should fall in to idolatry. However, even God broke this, his own command, by putting images of angels in the tabernacle - even on the Ark of the very Covenant itself. So, clearly, it’s not images that are bad, in and of themselves. But in these latter days, “the Word of God and God Himself has been made flesh and dwelt among us”. We beheld him. We heard him. We touched him. The argument of “since you saw no form” is no longer valid and, in celebration of the incarnation - God taking human flesh - we make images.
After that simplified form, it gets pretty complex: it can come out demanding we use icons (but not statues) or it can come out supporting all sorts of things that might seem strange to us in modern times when an image is only a photograph or a google away. But that’s the basic argument: God has a form now.
Let me underscore how radical this is. Judaism is adamant in her rejection of this idea. The rejection of it is sung in synagogue services - the hymn Yigdal includes the lines
Exalted be the Living G-d and praised,
He exists - unbounded by time in His existence.
He is One - and there is no unity like His Oneness.
Inscrutable and infinite is His Oneness.
He has no semblance of a body nor is He corporeal;
nor has His holiness any comparison.
But Christianity says the Unity of the Holy is not impaired in any way, but rather further glorified because it is a Tri-Unity and because the Second Person of the Trinity has Human Flesh and that same is incorporated in the Godhead.
There’s a reason I’m piling all this doctrine on the top of the post… it’s important for the storyline that follows.
I have an addiction to adult content. It’s a rather strong addiction. It’s so strong that I can make “adult content” out of a newspaper sports section. It’s hard to describe the process… it’s like becoming enmeshed in something in which you can’t get out, but don’t want to. In fact, you want to keep going deeper. The availability of adult content on the net is irrelevant to me: Time magazine or the latest edition of CMT will provide enough. And that is my clue. The overlap, if you will. It’s something - that I can’t quite explain yet - about the image, the icon, if you will, that is out of balance. In a sense one tries to eat the icon instead of being pointed beyond to God. It’s getting tied up in the earthly with no heavenly involvement. It’s the thing that the writer was trying to get to in Deuteronomy: it’s so possible to get led astray by the beauty of it all, the beauty of the things that God has given to all people, that we forget the Beauty God has reserved until himself.
But then there is the other side…
The word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Beauty of God’s son, God Himself, is just a human beauty like ours. Or rather… our human beauty is just like God’s.
It is a hard line for me to walk. It’s so easy to get into a gnostic denial of the body. It’s so easy to get into a simple “turn-it-off-because-it’s-evil” attitude that, at heart, denies the incarnation no matter how much we want to dress it up as pious modesty or post-Resurrection “Holiness Teaching”. It’s equally easy to get lost in the “flesh is ok now” attitude. So hard is the line to hold that I wish the rules were black and white.
When I force myself into a black and white box - which obsessiveness with rules, I’m learning at work, is just another aspect of addiction - it becomes, ironically, easier to judge others for breaking the rules I have trouble keeping. Once I start myself down that road, it’s easy to gnostically deny others too.
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Luke 15 1-2
Jesus, however, has other plans. Jesus ignores all those rules - including the ones that God himself wrote. He walks in, sits down and breaks bread with the sinners. Are we supposed to hear in this text an echo of Eucharist in Luke’s community? This accusatory phrase is carved into the side of the altar at St Gregory of Nyssa Church. If God broke bread with sinners and told us to love as he loved, and told us to break bread… guess what: we’re going to break bread with sinners, too. It’s about communion.
This is the point of the Tri-Unity, really: God is so filled with Love that he is not complete alone but rather requires in his love an expression of communion. As with God so with us - it is not enough that we love. But that we love in communion. This goes beyond simple “howdy” on the street corner or simply sitting next to each other on the bus (or in the pew). It certainly goes beyond the mere objectification of pornography or beyond the internalised rote responses of addiction. It requires… demands communion. And God has given us the tools and the wherewithal to pull it off. We feed each other rather than eating up each other. When we feed each other we feed God and we feast on him.
It’s not a complex step. It’s not a hard dance to figure out. In fact it’s too easy: that’s the problem. In Christ all the answers are yes… (2 Cor 1:19) and that love, that charity can be, for one who likes rules, just a stumbling block. But “all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God.”
The divine image of God (i.e. humanity) comes home and dances with God again in the cool of the evening.