We are not alone. It s hard to believe that when someone you love dies. The feeling of isolation is profound on so many levels.

Transcription

1 Icons as Gateways to God Eternity Sunday Sermon at The First Mennonite Church, Vineland, Ontario by Carol Penner November 22, 2009 Texts: Hebrews 11:29-12:3, Revelation 1:18, Luke 23:43, I Corinthians 15, Luke 20:27-40, John 6:34, I Peter 3:18, 19 We are not alone. It s hard to believe that when someone you love dies. The feeling of isolation is profound on so many levels. Someone you love dies, let s call him Martin. Martin could be your husband, or your best friend, or your son, or your dad. Martin dies. And suddenly there is a Martin sized hole in your heart. The companionship, the love, the history you have together is all suddenly emptied, drained away like water out of giant bathtub. The space inside your soul echoes, you call Martin.Martin Martin no answer. You are alone. Martin is gone. And those of you who ve lost someone you love know how lonely and alone you can feel when Martin is gone. Grief gathers and pools in you and you begin to feel even more alone as you realize that no one else is grieving Martin precisely like you do. No one was friends with him like you were. No one has exactly the same memories that ache in the same way your memories ache. You are alone. Aloneness of grief can stretch all the way into your relationship with God. You can feel desolate, Godless, alone in the world. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why did you let this happen to Martin? Why did Martin die? And yet, in the midst of this aloneness, you sometimes feel God s presence. You can sense that God is near, that Jesus understands our pain, that the Holy Spirit is the great Comforter. Just as you feel alone, and separated from the people around you, you realize that other people feel grief too. Everyone loses people they love. Grieving is part of the human condition. And other people are missing Martin too, maybe not in exactly the same way you miss him, but they reach out to you and say, You re not alone, we are here with you. Even in the midst of the aloneness of missing Martin, even in the desolation of sitting at the Great Wall of death, you sometimes get a sense that Martin isn t that far away after all. Memories make him feel close. You recall things that Martin did, and how he shaped you, and loved you, and encouraged you, and you feel that Martin is still shaping and loving and encouraging you, even though you can t physically see him. There is something about love that passes through that great wall of death. even though we are only human, sometimes we can sense that for love, death is not a final barrier For the Spirit of Love, for God s love, death simply isn t a barrier, it s not a wall that closes out. As Revelation 1 puts it, Jesus has the keys of death. For our God is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive, even those who have died. (Luke 20:38) We have a lot to learn from Martin s death.

2 Today is Eternity Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent, where many Mennonite churches traditionally remember those who have died. It`s a day to remember and name our grief, and acknowledge the grieving among us. Many Christian traditions around the world have a day set aside to remember the faithful who have died whether it`s called All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, Eternity Sunday, Memorial Sunday, Totensonntag. In all these celebrations, we remember that we are not alone, that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. The kingdom of God, of which we are a part, includes those who have died before us. I`ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of my recent trip to Ukraine, where I visited many Orthodox churches. Some of you have been in Orthodox churches, but I want to describe it for those of you who haven`t. When you enter an Orthodox church, it is a feast for the senses candles burning, incense in the air, bells ringing, people praying and chanting. And over every visible surface there are paintings. The Orthodox tradition is not into stained glass, it`s not into carvings and statues so much what they fill their churches with are paintings. These paintings are called icons. There are all sorts of pictures: of Jesus and his life, Mary, the disciples, many biblical characters, and many historical people who have lived faithful lives. Little icons, big icons, icons on the ceiling, icons on the doors, icons on the outside walls, icons on the roof icons everywhere. There are so many paintings of people all over these churches that when you go in, even though you may be almost alone, you can feel like the place is crowded because you see people all around you! This is the communion of the saints. Now I`m familiar with this from visiting churches in Canada. Catholic or Anglican or Lutheran churches, all have pictures. These pictures are there to remind you of all the faithful people who have gone before you. To remind you that you should be like them. And in the Orthodox church I saw all sorts of pictures which reminded me of things. Mary caring for Jesus, which reminds us to care for the children. St. Francis caring for animals, which reminds us to care for creation. Elijah preaching, which reminds us to speak the truth boldly. Jesus carrying the cross, which reminds us to take up our cross daily. I saw many pictures of St. Cyril and Methodius, two Greek brothers who in the 800 s came as missionaries to Slavic countries. They were the first people to write down the language of the Slavs, inventing the Cyrillic alphabet, and they translated the Bible into a language the people could understand. All these pictures remind us that we are not alone in the kingdom of God, others have gone before us. I began to wonder what our sanctuary here at First Mennonite would look like with paintings of the faithful. This morning all around the sanctuary I`ve placed empty frames. How would you fill these paintings to remind us of the faithful who have gone before us? We d definitely have paintings of Jesus. Maybe a big picture of Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. Or paintings of the disciples healing the sick, or feeding the hungry, or Paul preaching to crowds of people in the marketplace. We could have paintings of holy people from history, like Menno Simons, or Dirk Willms. But paintings too, of people who may not have been famous, but who were faithful. People whose lives inspire us. We could have a painting of S. F. Coffman preaching. We could have a painting of Rhea Young caring for a little lonely neighbour girl. We could have a painting of Ralph Snyder singing God`s praises at the front of the congregation as a songleader. We could have a painting of Lyall Fretz kneeling in his garden, surrounded

3 by colourful rhodendrons, as he bred beautiful flowers for everyone to enjoy. We could have a painting of Isaac Culp growing delicious fruit to feed hungry people. These walls could be covered with paintings, floor to ceiling, of people from this congregation who have died, but whose stories continue to inspire us to be faithful. Spend a moment thinking about people who have died who have inspired you to be faithful how would you paint their picture? Now I know that thinking about pictures in church is a pretty unusual thing for Mennonites! Mennonites way back in the 1500`s decided that there shouldn`t be pictures in churches. The early Anabaptists worried that people were worshipping the images. They saw people paying too much attention to the pictures, and not enough attention to God, not enough attention to being disciples of Jesus. They felt that these icons weren t helpful in bringing people closer to God. That s why Mennonites decided that they would have nothing to do with icons they were iconoclasts, which is a word you hear sometimes, which means, breaker of icons. I don t think Mennonites actually went around breaking icons they just wanted to break with that tradition. That s why when they did build churches, they were simply called meeting houses. They were simple and unadorned. And that tradition comes down all the way to today, and the decisions that were made in building this church. We do not have pictures on the walls of our sanctuary. Now the word icon used to be only a religious word, but since the advent of computers and Windows operating system, many of us are very familiar with the word icon in a new way. In computer terminology, an icon is a little picture that represents something else. When I turn on my computer, there are a bunch of little pictures on the screen. These pictures are called icons. Each of these icons represents a program on my computer. My word-processing program has an icon, or a little picture, that contains a W, and when I CLICK on that with my mouse, it`s the gateway to what the icon represents. My word-processing program opens up. Similarly, I have a little wastebasket icon. I CLICK on that icon, and it`s a little gateway to the folders and files I have deleted. I think people understand what an icon is. There is no mix-up about icons today. I may be explaining my computer to someone and point at the little icon and say, that`s my word-processing program. But they know and I know, that my word-processing program is not a little picture with a W, which would be of no use to anyone. The icon is not the program itself, it`s a gateway to entering that program. Anabaptists were worried that people would look at a picture, like the banner of Jesus that we have at the front of the church today, and that they would get mixed up. I might point to that picture of Jesus and say, `That`s the Saviour I love``. Anabaptists were worried that people might think, `Carol is worshipping that banner, she loves that banner!` But really the banner is a type of icon it`s a gateway. I come into church, and my eyes wander all over and they hit the picture, and CLICK, I suddenly remember Jesus and everything he did for me, and that I am here because of Jesus. The early Anabaptists observed that something wasn t clicking for people in churches they were going to churches but they weren t finding God there. The icons weren t working for the people, in fact they might even have been a distraction keeping them from finding God. So the early Anabaptists entirely discarded the practice of having icons in church.

4 Because I am so used to bare-walled churches, it was quite an experience for me in Ukraine, to be in all of these icon-filled churches. As I looked at the pictures, I kept thinking, This is reminding me about all the faithful people who have gone before us. These pictures are here to remind me to be faithful like they were. And then in one of the churches, a Ukrainian guide said something that changed the way I thought about icons, and decoration in churches. She said, `Yes, of course, they are beautiful to look at. They remind you of the past. But don`t forget, it`s not just you looking at the icons. The icons are looking at you.`` She didn t mean literally that these paintings of oil and wood could see. What she meant was that the faithful who have gone before us are watching us. As Paul writes, Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witness.let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. Christians who have died are a cloud of witnesses around us. They are watching to see how we are doing. They are encouraging us. Now I know some of you who have lost loved ones have a sense of this. I ve heard you say, I feel that my grandmother is watching over me. I think of the way my father raised me, and what he would want me to do this situation. Paintings would visually remind us of that. Jesus is watching us worship today.as he raises up his arms, do we lift up our hearts? If we had paintings, maybe we would think about this more. Dirk Willms is watching us are we loving our enemies, are we giving our lives to follow Jesus? Mary is watching us, are we holding our babies tenderly? Menno Simons is preaching, are we telling the good news of Jesus to those we meet? And all these other people we`ve painted in our imagination think about them. The walls are peopled with the faithful. Rhea is asking, are you caring for you re the children in your neighbourhood? Ralph is asking are you praising God in your song-leading? Lyall is asking, are you making the world a more beautiful place? Isaac would ask, are you doing your part to feed the hungry? In the Orthodox tradition, the pictures aren`t there simply for us to look at the pictures are there watching, encouraging. All these faithful witnesses are all desiring the coming of God`s kingdom. And so we pray, with all the saints, `Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.`` Are the faithful who have died before us all literally watching us every moment? We don t know exactly. What happens after death is a mystery to us. It was a mystery to every human being who whose comments are recorded in the Bible. In some places it seems that those who die go directly to heaven. Jesus told the thief on the cross next to him, Today you will be with me in paradise, and yet Jesus talks about people being raised up on the last day. (John 6:34) I Peter describes Jesus going to preach to souls who had died (I Peter 3:18, 19), while Paul in I Corinthians 15 talks about people sleeping when they die, and being raised when the trumpet sounds. It s a mystery. But through the ages, Christians have taken great comfort and encouragement from the idea that the faithful who have died watch us, and encourage us.

5 We do know for sure that God, who sees the living and the dead is watching us! And we know that people who are alive are watching us. You are watching me. I am watching you. We watch each other, hopefully, with loving eyes. Not with eyes hoping to see each other fall or stumble, but with hopeful eyes. Eyes hoping to see each other do our very best. Just as a mother watches a child go into a playground will they push and shove a child they don`t know? Or will they run up to them and be friendly? We are watching and encouraging each other to do the right thing. We want to see each other living out our faith, being faithful disciples. We also know that we are being watched by people who are not Christians. We want our living to reflect something of Jesus. So that when people who don`t know Jesus look at us, they can see Jesus in us. We can do this in big ways, or little ways. When my sister was twenty years old she was working at a restaurant as a waitress. One busy Saturday morning, when the restaurant was crowded with people, she was busy serving customers. After a man left she went to clean up the table and she saw he left an envelope behind. He was long gone. She picked up the envelope and there was no writing on it, no markings, only thing inside it was money, lots of money. She went straight to her manager and said, Somebody has left this behind, they will probably come back for it before too long. The manager counted the money and there was $2300 in the envelope! And sure enough later that day, when my sister was already gone, the man came back. He was so impressed with this waitress who had been so honest, that he phoned the local newspaper and told about this waitress. My sister had her picture in the paper, with the man shaking her hand and giving her a $20 reward. What I remember though is my conversation with her at the time. I asked her whether she was tempted, not even for a minute, to just put the money in her pocket and not tell anyone. The restaurant was very busy, anyone could have taken it. That money would have paid the rent on her apartment for a year! She said, No that wouldn`t have been honest. It wasn`t my money. It didn`t even cross my mind to keep it! My sister was a Christian, and she was doing what Jesus would do. I d paint a picture on these walls of my sister and the man who lost the money shaking hands. I know just how I`d paint the smile on my sister`s face. People around us are watching. When they see us being honest, when many people around us are dishonest; when they see us being fair, when many people around us are unfair; when they see us caring when many people around us don`t care; when they see us giving, when many people around us are holding tight onto their money; when they see us being humble, when many people around us are being proud; when they see us being gentle, when many people around us are angry; they`ll stop and think, There`s something different about this picture! Maybe something will CLICK. Maybe even a double CLICK! It may give us the opportunity to be icons, to be a gateway, a gateway to Jesus, a gateway to God`s love. It`s Eternity Sunday. Someday everyone here will die, and we want to join the company of the faithful. How we live now matters. How will the children and the young people remember you? How will they

6 remember the community we make here in our congregation? What pictures will they be painting in fifty years? We are not alone! We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, the living around us, the dead all watching, all watching for Jesus. All praise to Him, our Living Lord!