The Icon and the Word

 

My favorite icon is the one pictured here, of Jesus the Teacher.  Icons are meant to be "read," as literature is read.  In Russian Orthodox churches, one is surrounded on every side by icons; the idea is that one is able to gaze into heaven through the eyes of the icon, and heaven in turn looks back at us through the eyes of the icon.

Sometimes the icon above is portrayed with an open instead of a closed book, but in both cases, the meaning is the same:  Only Jesus can "open the book" for us; without Him, the Bible is a closed book.  St. John begins his gospel of Jesus Christ with the words, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Jesus is the Word of God made flesh, made visible, made "touchable" for us.  Through Him, we see God, we approach God, we touch God.  Without Him, God remains for us an idea, a philosophy, or made in our own image.  John goes on to say, For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

If the Bible is divorced from the Person of Jesus Christ, it becomes a dead book.  Although it has been studied by every discipline known to man, the Bible essentially remains closed to us until Jesus Himself opens the book and begins to unfold it to us. 

A woman I know recently told me an amazing story about her life.  She grew up in an abusive home and decided when she was 14 that she no longer believed the "fairy tales" that religion told -- none of it was real or believable to her.  She fled her home at the first opportunity, only to get into an abusive marriage, followed by four more marriages of the same kind.  Finally, in desperation, she cried out to God for help.  One night, she suddenly awoke out of a deep sleep to find Jesus standing next to her.  She saw only Light in the shape of a man, but the light was filled with words from top to bottom.  He did not speak to her, but she understood immediately that Jesus was and is the Word of God.  The next morning, she started to read the Bible for the first time in her life.

Shortly afterwards, she met a man who had grown up Catholic but who was now attending the Baptist Church, and she started going to church with him.  Eventually they married, and for the first time in her life, she was experiencing what it meant to be loved.  Although she was enjoying the Baptist church because it was helping us to understand and digest the Bible, her husband was beginning to yearn for the church of his youth.  "I need to go back to the Catholic church," he told her, "I cannot pray in this church."  "Why do you want to do that?" she asked.  "Go back to where they worship all those statues?" She told him she would go to the Catholic church with him for 3 months, and then she would go back to the Baptist church, and he could do whatever he wanted.  The first time she attended a Catholic Mass, she fell in love:  "This is true worship," she said; "it no longer depends on the preacher, or the music, or the fellowship, but only on true worship."  

Now my point here is not really which church has true worship, but it's this: the Word of God Himself began to teach her, to open the Book to her, and to lead her where she would find peace and joy.  The purpose of God is not to make us Scripture scholars, erudite in understanding, but to lead us to Himself.  We read the Bible not to be "educated," but in order to enter into the same relationship of loving intimacy with God that Jesus had/has, to become sons and daughters of God, sharing in His divine nature through Jesus' sonship.

The Gospels are full of incidents where the disciples fail to understand Jesus and His frustration at their lack of understanding.  But after the Resurrection, He seemingly cannot wait to begin unfolding the Scriptures to them, now through the Spirit rather than through the flesh.  On the same morning of the Resurrection, he appears to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and "opens their minds to understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24).  "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"  He said to them, "this is what I told you while I was still with you; Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms."

If we want to understand the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, the best place to begin is by standing before the Icon, metaphorically at least, and looking into the eyes of heaven, asking for the Gift of the Spirit of God, given to us in Christ Jesus.  Then the Book will be opened to us, and instead of "scratching our heads" over the obscure manuscripts, our hearts will be burning within us.