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The Last Sunday After The Epiphany (Quinquagesima)
O God, who before the passion of thy only-begotten Son didst reveal his glory upon the holy mount: Grant unto us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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A Sermon by
✛
Stained Glass Icons
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
First of all, thank you to Father Turner for the invitation, given last October, to preach for this happy occasion of the celebration of the completion of the restoration of the stained glass. It has been a long pilgrimage to get here, just over a decade. There was the matter of securing Saint Thomas’s air rights to help maintain this historic New York landmark. There was the capital campaign. And there was the project itself, an awe-inspiring feat of artistry. All of these spanned the interruption of the financial crisis of 2008. But here we are! And there are those glorious windows, not seen like this within memory. So it’s very good to be here. And now, on to the completion of the other capital campaign project – the building of the new organ!
Saint Thomas gets many visitors, by the several hundreds of thousands every year, not counting the numbers who attend scheduled services. Some of these visitors ask questions. And some of the questions are about the stained glass windows and other images and symbols that adorn this glorious church. Here is one that will focus this sermon: “Why do you have all these graven images? I thought the Bible was against that.” This of course is the second commandment of the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor of the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.”
The first four of the Ten Commandments concern our relationship with God. The coming of Jesus Christ our Lord and God affects all four of them, right at the start where God identifies himself. The first commandment says, “I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods but me.” Jesus Christ has transformed our understanding of the Exodus from “the land of Egypt” and the “house of bondage.” Because of the Incarnation, Ministry, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, we see that God’s Son has redeemed us and brought us out of the land of sin and the house of death. That is the Christians’ Exodus, and their Passover meal is the Eucharist.
In the light of this Christ-centered understanding of the first four commandments, the Church addressed the question of images in what was called the Iconoclastic (or Image-smashing) controversy of the seventh and eighth centuries A.D.[1] The Church has symbols and images of Christ (and of his saints) because Jesus is the visible incarnation, the human face, the icon, of the invisible God. “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” said Jesus. He is the Word-made-flesh who came to dwell among us, and we beheld his glory. The images and symbols, signs and sacraments in the church stem from that fundamental Gospel truth, that in Jesus’s Person and Work we see, hear, touch, eat and drink the life of the living God.
The Third Commandment, concerning the Name of God, and the Fourth Commandment, concerning the observance of the Sabbath, are similarly affected. But those are other sermons for other days. Back to the question of images.
On the bureau of my dresser at home are two old framed photographs of my family when I was a small boy. There are Mom and Dad, my mother and father, who died a long time ago. Sometimes I talk to them through those photographs. Sometime I pick them up and kiss them, like an icon. I do not imagine that the framed paper is other than a photograph. Nevertheless, at one time light capturing the reflection of Mom and Dad many years ago was imprinted on film; and that moment of happiness and life was imaged for me in the photograph.
When the Church gathered in formal ecumenical council[2] to defend images against those who would destroy them, she made this fine statement about the veneration of icons and symbols. “The honor rendered to an icon passes to its prototype, and whoever venerates an icon venerates the one portrayed in it.” So I love and miss my mother and my father, and the images assist me in my loss and affection. How much more do such things as crosses and crucifixes, statues of our Lord and our Lady and the saints, bring my mind and heart near to Jesus Christ and his faithful friends.
Here are words from the first millennium that speak for many people today: “I am too poor to possess books; / I have no leisure for reading; / I enter the church bowed with the cares of this world. / The glowing colors attract my sense like a flowering meadow, / And the glory of God steals imperceptibly into my soul.”[3]
Our stained glass windows not only tell the story of God as revealed by Jesus, but the lives of Jesus’s faithful followers. We have saints ancient and modern up there. We have little episodes in the history of our beloved Saint Thomas Church. The images over the altar, in the reredos pierced by that glorious stained glass, tell not only the story of Christ’s resurrection but of Saint Thomas Church’s resurrection from the rubble of the catastrophic fire of 1905. And now the windows are all back to tell their various stories of the progress of Jesus’s gospel, right into the time of this Church. I believe the ordination of Dr. Morris, our Tenth Rector, is up there and visible again.
Saint Thomas uses a number of arts to reach the souls of those who see and hear these arts. In music, as we listen to the glorious rendering of sacred music from the first millennium until this very year, we may by the grace of God begin to move from aesthetic appreciation into spiritual apprehension – to begin to worship the Muse, the Lord himself, who is the inspirer and the object of the composition. Likewise, as we look at the beauty of this temple, its architecture of gothic splendor and its many images of glass, stone, and wood made to depict the mysteries and the heroes of the faith, we may begin to perceive and know what these mysteries mean and what their heroes stood for; and be ourselves drawn into the glory of God, into the worship of the Lord in spirit and in truth.
So now, may our blessed Lord Jesus Christ and all his angels and saints, his Mother our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary, his apostle Saint Thomas our patron and all God’s elect, bless and hallow this joyful dedication of images made to his honor and glory. And may many souls, as they gaze upon these beauties of holiness, be drawn into holiness itself, worship Jesus Christ our Lord and God, and be saved and sanctified in return.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
_______________
[1] It is significant that the Church was confronted by Iconoclasm at the same time as the rise of Islam, whose radically transcendent understanding of God denied the Only-Begotten Son and all images as well, including those commanded in the Torah for the Ark of the Covenant.
[2] The Seventh Ecumenical Council received by both the Eastern and Western Churches, The Second Council of Nicaea, in 787.
[3] Thanks to Irmgard and Robert Kramer for this quote attributed to St. John of Damascus, the great defender of the veneration of icons against iconoclasm.
