A sermon preached at Evensong on December 4, the
Feast of St. John of Damascus, at St.
Willibrord’s Church, Munich
Ecclesiastes 3:9-14, John
5:24-27
Today is the feast day of St John of Damascus. Now John is probably not one of the best known saints: He didn’t die a particularly spectacular or gory death, he is not known for any miracles, nor for conversing with birds or animals. He was an eighth century priest, monk, hymn writer, and theologian from Syria. Considered a Doctor of the Church, he was one of the last Eastern theologians to be fully recognized by both the Western and Eastern Church.
He lived in difficult and
dangerous times: Damascus was “occupied territory.” It had fallen to the
Islamic Arab armies only 70 years before he was born, yet was still majority
Christian. And then in the year he was ordained priest, the Byzantine emperor issued
an edict against ‘Holy Images’ i.e. Icons ordering their destruction. As a
result, icons were burned and murals in churches painted over and replaced by
whitewashed walls with at the most a picture of the cross – which all sounds a lot
like the destruction of images, statues, and windows during the 16th
century Reformation.
There were good theological reasons for
this ban – the second Commandment not to “make for yourself any idol” for one.
Also some historians think that the success of Islam, with its strict
prohibition of images of the divine, may have been a factor too. Perhaps
Christians were being punished for worshipping images and idols?
One of John’s theological works was
a very spirited defense of ‘Holy Images,’ which includes the great line: “If an
angel or an emperor teaches you anything contrary to what you have received,
shut your ears.”[1]
I suspect that his courage was probably helped by him living in Islamic
territory beyond the emperor’s reach! John argued that while it was indeed “impossible
to make a statue of one who is without body, invisible, boundless, and formless”
and would be wrong to make “statues of men, and hold them to be gods,
worshipping them as such,” icons were neither. They were images of the likeness
of our Lord, “who became incarnate and visible on earth” or of the
saints, but never of gods or as objects of worship. Instead their
purpose was to act as an aide or focus of our worship, they help us contemplate
Christ’s “saving sufferings …. and His miracles," and to “praise His almighty
power," as well as to record the glory of the saints allowing “us to become
imitators of their fortitude and faith.”
So why am I giving you this brief history
lesson? Apart from me being a frustrated would-be history teacher of course.
Because John’s insights about worship are still valid and important, As I
mentioned, John of Damascus also wrote many hymns and three of them, all Easter
hymns, are in our hymnal (# 198, 199, 210). So in John’s life and work we can
identify three means of worshipping God: intellectually through theology,
visually through images, and through music – and there are many more.
Worship is one way in which we try
to know God better and in which we express our love of God. This can never be,
as some reformers thought, just an intellectual exercise. For one thing because
the very
center of our Christian faith is the belief in an incarnate God, in an embodied
God, in a God of flesh and blood, and not just in a God of the written word.
Worshipping requires our whole body, not just our mind. Both in the Old and New
Testaments we are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” (Luke
10:27) Or to put it another way, to love and worship God with everything we
have and with all our senses, using them to see, hear, smell, taste and touch
the divine.
As John of Damascus rightly argued,
worshipping God includes things we see: art, statues, images, icons, books, or
just the beauty of creation. Worship includes things we hear, say or sing:
readings, sermons, music, and prayer. Beyond that worship includes things we
can smell: incense, fresh flowers, the smell of the sea, or of the forest and
also things we can taste: the Holy Food of the Eucharist, or just the food we
share with one another in fellowship. For as the author of Ecclesiastes writes
“it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their
toil.” (3:13) Worship includes what we feel: the handshake and hug at the Peace,
the hands on our head during prayer and anointing, the water of Baptism. It is
through our experience and enjoyment of all these things that we can know God better
and show our love and gratitude.
Last, and certainly not least, we worship
and know God in other human beings. We humans are also ‘Holy Images’: “God
created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” (Genesis
1:27). How we respect and treat all those we meet, whatever they may look like,
is an expression of how much we love God. Some of you will have seen or read
about how Pope Francis recently reached out to and embraced a man whose face
was completely covered in and disfigured by boils. That was not just a sign of compassion.
Pope Francis saw and worshipped God in that other person. The commandment to “love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength and with all your mind” that I quoted earlier continues in Luke’s
Gospel with the call to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The love of God and
love of neighbor are two sides of the same coin.
So as John of Damascus demonstrated
in his life and teaching let us worship God with all we are and have: with our
minds, with all our senses, and with all our hearts, and may our worship also
continue even after this service and once we have left this building.
Amen
Ecclesiastes
3:9-14
9 What gain have the workers from
their toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be
busy with. 11He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put
a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God
has done from the beginning to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better
for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;
13moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in
all their toil. 14I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can
be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all
should stand in awe before him.
John 5:24-27
24Very truly, I tell you, anyone who
hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come
under judgement, but has passed from death to life. 25 ‘Very truly, I tell you,
the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the
Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26For just as the Father has life in
himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; 27and he has
given him authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man.
No comments:
Post a Comment