Ancient Church

Doubters and unbelievers are amazed to hear that streams of divine grace flow through your icon,
while we know that this is so with this icon of Sitka and that God’s grace will abide with it forever. Therefore,
standing reverently before it, we kiss it and venerate it as we would your very self; for the honor paid to icons passes to their prototype, and God’s grace acts through this icon in wonders and signs for those who run to you with faith and cry to God: Alleluia. (Kontakion Eight of the Akathist to the Sitka Icon)

On Friday night, the Sitka icon was at St. John the Wonderworker, an intown OCA parish in Atlanta. St. John’s is a story in itself: led by a Jewish convert priest, with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial congregation and numerous ministries directed toward the poor and homeless in their neighborhood. Last night it was packed with a respectable crowd of 300 people or so, all of whom had turned out to venerate and pray before the icon. There was a full night of services planned. The Akathist was sung at 7 p.m., followed by an unction service. That in turn was followed by a Romanian service of the Akathist to the Kazan Mother of God, after which the English speaking types picked back up for an all night vigil and Divine Liturgy at about 3:00 a.m.

It was interesting to look at the crowd. Once you hang around Orthodoxy a while, you start to recognize the different looks of ethnicities. We were all there last night: Russians and other Slavs, Greeks and Arabs and, this being American Orthodoxy, substantial numbers of converts: people with red hair and blonde hair, people of color, and people who were simply a mix of all of the above. I mention all of this because as the evening progressed, I found myself struck more and more by the people around me. It was in their faces that I was finding at least part of the answer to the question in my mind: what makes an icon into a wonderworking icon, a miraculous icon?

Obviously, the short answer to this question is God. But I suspect that the longer, more complete answer, also involves us. A wonderworking icon is the manifestation of God’s grace in response to the fervent prayers of the faithful. Some miraculous icons are nothing more than paper, printed copies of icons. Others, like the Sitka Theotokos, are extraordinarily beautiful: the Virgin is serene. The eyes are serious, deep pools of glimmering darkness, but her mouth contains the faintest hint of a smile. Still, regardless of any artistic merit, the common denominator of each of the miraculous icons is the fervent supplications of Orthodox Christians.

It was that fervency, that faith, that was evident in the faces around me last night. In the candlelit church, tears glistened on more than a few faces. Many people had photographs of loved ones to show the Virgin. There were many, many children, and they approached the icon as spontaneously and joyfully as they might approach their own mother. I was not so uninhibited. When I first prayed before her, I found myself tongue tied and halting. Unlike the children, I was deeply aware of my sin. Yet when I stood up, and venerated her, I was aware, on some utterly unknowable level, that I had been heard and that intercession would be made. My certainty was born of faith.

It is that faith which marks us. It is in faith that we approach the chalice, knowing it to be the real body and the real blood. It is in faith that we confess our sins, knowing that in confession we find cleansing. It is in faith that we struggle through the fasts, trying in accord with our strength to begin to take up our cross. And it is in faith that we approach icons and see, not wood and paint, but Christ and His mother and His saints. At bottom, it is the faith of the faithful that prompts God to send forth his grace in wonderful and miraculous ways. It is the two way street of love, of God for us, and us for God.

Last night there was evidence of faith and love reborn. During the unction service, a young family approached Father Deacon Athanasius and myself. In broken English, they asked if they could receive
anointing. They explained that they were Orthodox, having been baptized as children, and in turn had their own children baptized. They were not, apparently, active Christians. Still, in their question, and in their evident joy as they led their children to the priest, it was clear that God was moving in their lives.

Yet there was one thing that I saw that spoke more to me than anything else. As the Romanians started their Akathist, I approached the icon to venerate it one last time. In front of me was a man clutching an ultrasound picture. The baby in that picture, resting in her mother’s womb, is certainly known to God. But in tears, in faith, in love and in fervency, the man knelt before the icon, pressed the picture to it, and began to make a more formal introduction. He was a living icon, an icon of Orthodoxy.

What else could I pray? My prayer when I reached the Virgin was that the faith the man had shown, that the little kids had shown, that all of the faithful present that night had shown, would be the faith of us all. I paused. There was more my heart wished to say, but I could not find words for. It didn’t really matter, I thought. God can read our heart as easily as He can hear our words. For a minute I rested in that comfort, in the joy of openness. Finally, I arose from my knees, kissed the Virgin, and went out into the night.

Tons of people have wacky ideas about the Book of Revelations. Let’s face it: its a tough book. People fill it with interpretations starring everyone from the Roman Pope (the all-time favorite of many) to Russia — a popular interpretation in the Cold War days, although it is losing steam as time goes on.

In discussing the book, the modern Greek theologian, Metropolitan Hierotheos, suggests that we should calm down and get a life. He argues that Scripture, just like individual Christians, exists on three levels:

First, to the body of Scripture belong those who are taught by the law, and of course this indicates those people who are struggling to be cured by keeping the law. To the second category, the soul, belong
those who are taught by grace, which indicates a higher spiritual condition. And to the third, the spirit, belong those who are ruled by the spirit, ‘with all carnal thoughts and movements being subjected to it’.

It is to the third category that the Book of Revelations is addressed, and it is largely incomprehensible to everybody else. I made my peace with this a long time ago, when I decided to subscribe to the Doris Day School of End Times, which argues fervently that what will be, will be.

Frustratingly, however, that is not exactly what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to briefly talk about something equally fascinating: how in the Book of Revelations we see clear traces of first century liturgy and eucharistic rite. These thoughts are not original. I have shamelessly lifted them from one of my professors, Father Lawrence Barriger, simply because the whole concept had never occurred to me before. Ever since I returned home a couple of weeks ago, I have been rolling it around in my mind.

Three examples illustrate the point. The first is found in Revelations 4:1-11, and specifically the description of the throne, surrounded by twenty four seats or thrones on which sat twenty four elders. Archeology and history come to our aid. Do you remember Jesus chastising the Pharisees for desiring the best seats in the synagogue? Those seats were those that surrounded the seat where the teacher or rabbi sat to teach. Digs of early Christian churches reveal a somewhat similar pattern. There is an altar, and in back of it is the throne, what we call these days the high place. It was in turn surrounded by a semi-circle of twenty four seats on which the elders sat. The actual Greek word for elders is presbyter, and my Orthodox
readers can interpret that one easily enough. In other words, while the setting is clearly heavenly, John has
described what any first century Christian would recognize as his or her church.

The second is found in Revelation 5, where there is dismay because no one can read the scroll. Finally the lamb — looking as one who was slain — is identified. The lamb, of course, is Christ. He has seven eyes (that is, He is all seeing and all knowing) and seven horns (meaning all powerful). It is only in the context of Christ that the scroll can be opened to understanding. What is it? We’ve just seen the little entrance and the Scripture readings.

Finally, Revelation 19 spends considerable time speaking of the “marriage supper of the Lamb” and the “great supper of God”. Read it. They just took communion.

Of course, my treatment here is not only overly light hearted, it is also impressively superficial. Still, you get the idea. Read the Book of Revelation even if, like me, you are the most unspiritual of all, and if you read it in the context of the Liturgy, it describes pretty well a…well, a first century Liturgy. Very neat.

I started what promises to be a lengthy custody case today. Even after twenty five years, I haven’t lost the feeling of dread at the prospect of such a thing, but there you have it. I represent the Defendant/Mom, so most of our time today was spent with Dad on the stand. He easily swatted his own lawyer’s softballs out of the park, and then scrambled some as he answered my questions. He didn’t do that badly on the surface of it, but the flood of witnesses, medical records and 8 by 10 glossies coming up in my case will help put
things in perspective.

But the details of the case aren’t really my point. As I listened to his testimony, his insistence that he had done nothing wrong while his wife was wholly responsible for their ills, I remembered a jury argument I made a long time ago. In that case, the opposing party had insisted that he had done absolutely nothing to make a particular situation worse. His story depended solely on his credibility. The case was a swearing match, and would turn on who the jury believed. I approached the jury box still struggling for the right
words to express the dilemma.

That courthouse was an old one, and the jury box had a bar in front of it, made of solid wood long ago. I hesitated and looked at it. While it was a beautiful piece of work, it was covered with dents and nicks and tiny scratches. A few steps away, the court reporter sat at much more recent desk, with a top of plastic made to look like wood. The plastic wood looked perfect.

“Human truth,” I started, “is never perfect. For us, the truth is like this piece of wood here on the front of the box. It is exactly because this wood is pitted and gnarled and a little scratched that we know it is wood. In the same way, when we hear a story that is too perfect, without any acknowledgement of imperfections, it is like the top of the table the court reporter sits at. It is perfect and lovely, but we know it is not real, that it is not real wood. Only truth from God is perfect in every particular. Truth from ourselves, from our children, from our fellow human beings, will always reveal imperfections, will always admit of some responsibility. If you go home tonight and something lies broken on the floor, and your son or daughter looks at you with a perfectly angelic face and says the dog or their little sister did it, you instinctively know that you need to look into that matter more deeply. Mr. X’s testimony was like that, like the court reporter’s table — too perfect, without a blemish or stain at all. When you go to the jury room, think about all of the testimony you have heard. Was it like this,” (and I rapped the bar with my hand, and my wedding ring left a tiny dent) “or was it like this plastic table over here?”

It didn’t take them too long to decide that the other party was indeed too perfect and too artificial, and return a verdict for my man. I have never forgotten that, and it has greatly influenced the way I look at my cases. If I have someone in the office who is insisting that he or she has no responsibility in the tragedy at hand, I turn them away. I want my clients to be as transparent as possible, even if that includes warts. I have no patience with a strategy that includes the notion of “admit nothing, and make the other side prove it”.

The reason for this is illustrated in today’s custody case. My woman had a problem which was affecting her life. She admitted this when she first came to me. “Look,” I said, “it’s taking a year or so for these cases to come to trial. If you will address this directly and deal with it honestly, you will do fine at trial.” And she will. What can the husband’s lawyer hit her with that she won’t cheerfully admit? Nothing at all, but more critically, she is so improved and so genuine, that my experience tells me that she has a very decent chance of winning the case. The Husband has challenged me to prove he has some responsibility for what happened, and I will. My woman will admit her responsibility, leaving the field open to spend most of her time talking about what she has done to change her life for the benefit of her children. I couldn’t be prouder of her.

Don’t misunderstand me. Confession is one of the hardest things you can do. We all — myself included — instinctively recoil from hanging out our dirty laundry. We want to appear to be decent people. The truth is that we all hide our imperfections. In Orthodoxy we struggle with this openly, as we know that we must confess our sins as frequently as possible. To make it harder, our priests don’t even want to hear about the role the other person had to play in the sin. We are forced to acknowledge our sin and our responsibility. Yet paradoxically, we feel released and liberated after our time in front of the icon of Christ. Ask any Orthodox person, ask my Mom in this case. Once the pain of confession is over, we can turn our attention to moving ahead.

Oh, and the funny noises. After we ended testimony today, opposing counsel and I spent some time sifting through all of the medical records that had been produced under subpoena. I was reading a particularly entertaining excerpt when my opposite number broke the silence.

“You’re incredibly irritating, you know,” she said.

“Huh?” I responded intelligently.

“On cross examination. When people answer your question, you make this soft little noise like ummm hmmm. Its like you don’t believe anything that the person says. I’ve gotten to where I warn my clients about you.”

In all honesty, I wasn’t aware I was making noise, but I’ll take the rap. Heaven knows I’ve got a lengthy list of quirky habits, and adding one more won’t hurt. I tried feebly, though, to explain myself.

“I didn’t disbelieve everything your client said,” I pointed out. “Only some of it.”

“Right,” she snapped.

“Ummm hmmm,” I heard myself say softly as I returned to the nurse’s notes.