Dear Friends in Christ,
Last month in this space I quoted Eastern Orthodox theologian Gennadios Limouris on the Orthodox refusal of a separation between sacred and profane. All reality is God’s reality and what we learn from and how we live in the “profane” world is of religious importance. Everything is, or can be, epiphany. This month, Limouris wants to take that general truth and apply it to our individual lives. Every human being has been created imago dei, in the image of God:
…The icon helps us to decipher every human face as an icon. For
every human face is an icon. Beneath all the masks, all the ashes,
every human being, however ravaged he or she may be by his or her
destiny, by the destiny of history and of civilization, carries with him
or her the pearl of great price, the hidden face. During the liturgies in
an Orthodox church, when the priest censes the people, he censes
every individual Christian, and in every individual Christian he censes
the possibility, the opportunity of the icon, in some sense or other,
the chance of ultimate beauty, of true beauty.
I hope when you read those words, you recalled that when we use incense at CTS, we don’t only cense holy altars and books. We cense the congregation, carrying forth this fundamental Christian insight into the holiness of our lives and of every individual living person. I would only add: not only is every Christian an icon, every human being regardless of religion is an image of God and therefore deserving of iconic status. NO EXCEPTIONS. So we, as Christians holding this belief, are dedicated to the struggle for human rights for all: religion, gender, sexual orientation, racial categories, class categories, nation identity, and whatever else you can think of to discriminate–we Christians are called to say: NO EXCEPTIONS.
The other important consequence of this faith in the image of God in us is our belief in redemption. Some of the people the priest censes are indeed living ravaged lives, so we cense their potential, the possibility of rising to their God-given iconic status. That act of incensation should be a first installment of our commitment as Christians to working for TIKKUN OLAM, the mending of the world. My big concern about our post-modern culture is that it is in danger of becoming a culture of despair that has given up on redemption as a real possibility. I think we celebrate Easter to remind ourselves that not even death can stop us now. God built God’s image into us. We have suppressed it, forgotten it, misplaced it; but it is always there waiting for us to be censed and to rise up to the fullness of who we are. Homeless people on grates are imago dei and we must not give up on them. Or, what may be even harder to believe, presidents of corporations, politicians, pedophile priests and the bishops who enable them, are all still imago dei and we must pray for them as well. It’s that pesky NO EXCEPTIONS thing again. Christ died and rose again for us all, sinners though we be. “Sinner” is too non-specific though: selfish people though we be, people who defraud pensioners, people who play cynical games in political office, people who abuse power, people who let sick, distorted desire rule their hearts, people who do real, quantifiable evil–they are imago dei. We cense them and do whatever we can to call out the iconic being hidden deep under all those layers of garbage and death.
I would love to cense Tiger Woods or Bernie Madoff or Osama bin Laden. (Insert here the name of a person who arouses your feelings of moral outrage.) I would love to cense them to remind them that Easter is for them, and to remind myself that Easter is for them. NO EXCEPTIONS!
Have a blessed Eastertide,
–Pastor Bastien
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