In the 15th century Andrei Rublev was commissioned to create an icon (a visual representation of a sacred personage or event) for a Christian church in the Russian town of Zvenigorod. His three-panel design would feature the archangel Micheal, the apostle Paul, the Savior Jesus Christ. This is one of the oldest surviving icons in history. Found in a barn in the 1920s, the icon has been preserved by the church.
Now while we might not fully understand the necessity or value of icons in our Western Protestant Church, they occupied a sacred space for a population who could not read and did not have access to the holy scriptures. For a more Western equivalent think of DiVinci's Last Supper and you can begin to see the symbolism that icons contain. They point to something else in the church--in the case Christ Himself.
(At this point I encourage you to go search for the icon. A simple google search of "The Savior of Zvenigorod" will produce a lot of copies of the image for your consideration).
Years ago I was given a book by a colleague who was preparing to retire. He wanted to 'seed me' (his words) a library as I was a new minister needing to build my personal library. If you come to the church you can see how those seeds have produced a lot of fruit.
On the cover I saw the icon. By the time that I finished the book I learned how the author was touched by the image. So I gazed at it for a little bit and decided to make it a children's message on the following Sunday. I asked all 10 children who was the Savior looking at? What did they see?
They all agreed that he was looking at them. This as the desired outcome as I wanted the young people of the church to know that Jesus keeps his eye consistently upon them. But then a final young lady spoke up; her perspective was different.
She said, " I don't think he's looking at me."
Intrigued I asked, 'Well who is he looking at then?"
She paused. Looked at the image again for a long moment and said, "He's looking over my shoulder at someone behind me. Like someone's back there keeping their eye on me."
I pressed further, "Who would that be?" I had no idea where this was going. . .
Again she looked at it. She cocked her head to the side and then back to the center. The church was silent waiting for her response. "I think," she began, "That the Holy Spirit is behind me and Jesus is making sure that I know he's back there."
I was stunned. . . The church was stunned. A young 5th grade girl just said, in her own way, that Jesus sent the Spirit to guide her, and affirmed that the Spirit was doing that."
There are times that we think that we know where the story or the image is taking us. But if we linger, if we are patient, we may just learn something deeper, something that stays with us, something that others need to hear also.
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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