Lenten Reflection 3: Triumph of Orthodoxy

Last Monday I took my kids to the Canons of St. Andrew. I must have forgotten how long the services were. I kept telling Kyla, "I think it's almost over." But we ended up spending a couple of hours at church. Then on Wednesday the family attended a the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, a midweek Eucharist with lots of bowing. On Thursday I flew out of town for a conference with a bunch of Wesleyans and Pentecostals. I decided to come back Saturday night because of how important Sunday was.

The first Sunday of Lent is the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. I'll spare you most of the history and theology of the iconoclastic controversy, the memory of violence that inserts itself into Lent like an unwelcome conversation partner. Of course, Lent is about violence, isn't it? The violence we do to Christ? The violence we do to ourselves for the sake of Christ? But the Sunday of the Orthodoxy is for me a sad reminder of the violence we do to each other.

Briefly, for about 150 years the Eastern Church was embroiled in a controversy over the veneration of images, icons. Icons were torn from the walls of churches and over the city gates. They were burned. The supporters of icons and also their opponents were at times subject to official and mob violence.

The iconoclasts actually had a valid concern. They were worried that images were being worshiped, that icons were idols. There is also some evidence to suggest that people did use icons like amulets and lucky charms. But there really isn't a theological case to be made against iconography, not a strong one anyways. In spite of imperial violence against icon-venerators (iconophiles or iconodules), it was the theological argument made by people like St John of Damascus that won the day. Destroyers of icons (iconoclasts) were basically gnostics. They could not think matter and spirit together. The position that won based its case on the Definition of Chalcedon. If the Logos united himself to matter in Jesus Christ, then matter can receive God. We recognize this when we call the Eucharist the body and blood of Christ, when we eat blessed bread, or are sprinkled with holy water. In Orthodoxy, material things are where we meet God. If God can unite Godself to flesh and blood, or bread and wine, then why not wood and paint?

I teach a Sunday School class. Yesterday I gave my students a kind of mini-lecture on the history of the iconoclastic controversy. One of the things I discussed with them was the narrative of decline most of their protestant friends assume applies to the history of the church. The narrative goes something like this: The first Christians were doing great, until they got close to power, then everything fell apart until Martin Luther rescued Christianity with the Protestant Reformation. One of my students said, "So everything was going alright until the Catholics messed it up?" I hemmed and hawed a bit. "Make no mistake," I responded (probably a bit more eloquently in my memory than in fact), "I disagree with the primacy of the pope. I think Orthodoxy has preserved the purer thread of the tradition" (otherwise, why would I be doing this?), "but the church is made of people. People are people, and they will do bad things. During the iconoclastic controversy, people died...on both sides. There was rioting and there was violence. So historically, bad things happen in any church." I think I ended my point by talking about the violence that came with the Reformation as an example.

The truth is that this cut runs pretty deep for me. Make no mistake, I ultimately agree with the conclusion. Given the circumstances, I'm not sure the church could have done much better. I guess what I am trying to say is that the history of the conflict reminds me of just how fallible we are, just how much we are prone to sin, just how easy it is for the historical church to veer off in the wrong direction, even if she gets on track in the end.

But the first Sunday of Lent is not just a bitter memory for me. It is, after all, a celebration of the triumph of Orthodoxy. I am saddened by the reminder of human fallibility, but I rejoice when I see the tiny fingers of my daughter clasped proudly around the image of her patron saint.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy is a day my daughter looks forward to every Lent. After service the choir begins to sing the trisagion, "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal have mercy on us!" The children are the first to follow the priests and deacons. We were a little slow getting our icons out of our overstuffed diaper bag yesterday. Kyla was a little panicked, worried that we wouldn't find her St Thecla in time to follow the clergy. But as the line of clergy passed our row in its circle around the church, icons held high overhead, we shoved her icon into her tiny hands and pushed her into a line of processing children. The last words we heard her say were, "But were's my icon?" Then she looked down, realized she was holding it, and began proudly marching with the rest of them. We grabbed our icons and followed in behind the children. George held the icon of Stephanie's patron saint, St Nona. Mostly he chewed on it, which I take to be an infant's form of veneration. He is a little young to kiss the icons yet. But whenever we leave church I bring him in close enough to touch the icons. Seeing the bright colors, he immediately makes a grab for the images, often making a loud "thwapping" sound as he quickly brings his hand down onto the face of Christ or his Mother. But I digress.

My daughter stops with the procession at the front of the church. Fr. Steven instructs the children to raise their icons high, over their heads while the church reads the following,

As the prophets beheld, as the Apostles have taught,...as the Church has received...as the teachers have dogmatized,...as the Universe has agreed,...as Grace has shown forth,...as Truth has revealed,...as falsehood has been dissolved,...as Wisdom has presented,...as Christ Awarded,...thus we declare,...thus we assert,...thus we preach Christ our true God, and honor as Saints in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in churches, in Holy Icons; on the one hand worshiping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord; and on the other hand honoring as true servants of the same Lord of all and accordingly offering them veneration.

This is the Faith of the Apostles, this is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this is the Faith which has established the Universe.

The historian Jaroslav Pelikan has pointed out that this Sunday is really the Sunday of the triumph of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. It is a triumph of the confession that God and the world "belong" together, that God loves the world as God loves Godself. So it is fitting that the procession ends when the chanter hymns, "Who is so great a God as our God? Thou art our God, who alone doest wonders."