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Prayer
Using Our Eyes |
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Prayer
Using Our Eyes |
I received a surprise
gift last Sunday. I had lent my
books by St. Joan Chittister to Sherrill Heinz and Sherrill returned them to me
with the added addition of a Chittister book I didn’t have, her book on icons:
A Passion for Life: Fragments of the Face
of God.
Well it just so happened,
that in this week when I received this wonderful book of icons – low and
behold – on our bulletin cover is an icon of the Gospel before us.
And we are given its name: “Icon of Jesus Healing the Multitudes” –
from
So, with these two things
coming together, it seemed right to do as we’ve done several times this month
and again focus on prayer. A few
weeks ago we asked Jesus to teach us to pray.
Another week we focused on when the answer to prayer is “No!”
Today I want to reflect on prayer using our eyes.
I don’t know what you
know about icons, but I didn’t know much until a few years ago.
I used to think they were a Greek/Russian Orthodox thing.
That Lutherans didn’t deal in icons.
But I’ve come to learn otherwise. Praying
with icons now enjoys a broad popularity because to pray with icons is visual.
Rather than using our ears and our lips, we use our eyes.
The newspaper reported
the other day that only a small percentage of adults in the
Now computer websites get
the prize for bringing the word “icon” into contemporary use.
We have icons on our church website.
One icon lets you click on to see pictures of our sisters and brothers in
I would like us to use
our eyes this morning as we look at the Gospel and not just our ears.
Now it was helpful for me to learn that the purpose of an icon is not so
much the self-expression of the artist as they are to serve the seer.
They are to serve as glimpses into the presence of God – to make God
more visible, or as Joan Chittister says: to bring us “fragments of the face
of God.” Some describe icons as
windows into God’s reign. I’ve
heard that some artists don’t like icons because they seem so rigid and
lifeless. But their purpose is to be
a servant of the word – to call us deeper into the message.
There are rules followed
in writing icons . And that’s what
they are – written, but not with words. The
task is to learn to read the gestures, the colors, the expressions, the
relationships in what is shown in the icon.
I had known that Carolyn
Kees has used icons in her work as a Spiritual Director.
I asked her to tell me a little of what praying with icons means to her.
She shared that they help bring to mind the scripture without having to
have words. She enjoys how gazing on
an icon leads into a deeper spiritual story and adds dimension to her prayer.
Father Henri Nouwen has
written a book on Praying with Icons called Behold
the Beauty of the Lord. Nouwen
tells how praying with icons became helpful to him.
He writes,
“There
are many times when I cannot pray, when I am too tired to read the Gospels, too
restless to have spiritual thoughts, too depressed to find words for God, or too
exhausted to do anything. But I can still look at these images so intimately
connected with the experience of love. Acting,
speaking, even thinking may at times be too demanding, but we are forever
seeing. Even when we dream, we
see.”
Later he goes on to talk
about how easy it is to become victims of all the visual stimuli surrounding us.
It’s everywhere! But we
don’t have to be taken over by it. One
of the challenges of a spiritual life is to learn to be in charge of our eyes.
We try to be in charge of what we eat.
We also do well to learn to be in charge of what we take into our eyes.
Praying with icons helps
us see not just one dimensional, but the depth and breadth. And when we practice
seeing this way, it transfers over to how we see all of life – how we see each
other – how we see the gifts of bread and wine at Holy Communion.
It is not just pita bread and Angelica wine, but the real presence of our
Lord as he promised – if we have eyes to see.
And the friend, relative
or stranger sitting next to you – they too are more than flesh and blood
breathing in and out. They are
children of God – witnesses to God in whose image they are made.
All of our lives are fragments of the face of God.
But it’s not always easy to see! We
first have to want to see this way. Then
it takes practice. And guidance
always helps.
Joan Chittister’s book
on icons is helpful because it takes people like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther
King, Jr., Oscar Romero, Gandhi, Mary Magdalene and Hagar – and points out how
there lives live on as ageless windows into God’s passion for life.
My hope for today is that we will go home from here a little more ready
to gaze on each other and the animals and trees and our neighbors and teachers
and barbers as faces and lives that hold glimpses of the loving God who created
them.
And to help us see this
way look at the Gospel story as it’s shown on the icon.
We heard in the story that Jesus had been teaching in a synagogue on the
Sabbath. A woman bent over for
eighteen years appears. She would
not have been in the synagogue as women were not allowed in those days, but
Jesus approaches her. In doing so he
risks being placed outside the synagogue himself for he is not to approach a
woman – and especially to not heal her, or anyone, on the Sabbath.
But Jesus does it. He takes
the risk. And that’s where it
lands him – outside the city at the edge of the cliff.
Looking at the icon –
do you see the wall? All the people
with ailments are outside the city wall. And
at the very forefront of the picture – across the bottom – you can see the
edge of a cliff. Jesus comes to meet
them there, outside the city, along a ragged edge.
Have you ever felt yourself to be on a ragged edge?
Jesus promises to meet you there.
And notice the hands
reaching out or pointing to Jesus. And
all eyes are focused on him. The
halo around his head has a cross in it. It
is not without cost to him that he has come.
Jesus goes out there to
raise these ailing ones to new life and to bring them home.
They are as good as dead out there. A
woman with no access – bent over by systems that count her out and keep her
down. Lepers holding each other when
no one else will dare! But Jesus
comes, all the way to the edge of the cliff – for love of them.
And if for love of them,
then certainly for love of all who are still bent over by systems that don’t
allow them to stand up fully into who God intends them to be.
The Good News in today’s story is that God comes in Jesus to meet all
who are ailing, outside the walls, at the edge of the cliff.
And He is here too,
meeting us at the edge of the Table, with the assurance that when we work for
justice, we do not work alone. For,
as poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it: “the Holy Ghost over the bent world
broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
The more we have eyes to
so see, the more we will join with those who sing:
My
heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let
the fires of your justice burn. Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn. (ELW
#723)
Amen.
+Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson,
to the glory of God
Faith