Jan 29 2020 Matthew 6: 19-23 Commemoration of Andrei Rublev, Iconographer

Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.

Rublev was a 14th century Russian artist, who wrote icons. In modern times, icons are signs we understand, without even really thinking about it. A yellow sign with kids on a see-saw means kids are around, probably a school zone. The sign itself is not a school, or a child, but we see it and know what it signals. We see into the sign the meaning ascribed or understood. But the sign isn’t the thing itself.

Similarly, ancient icons are not the things themselves. A painting of God isn’t God. In traditions that use icons, a painting of God isn’t revered because it is an idol of God, but rather it symbolizes the unbounded immensity of God. Staring at icons, praying with icons is a way that some people can hold their attention and focus on God.

The Gospel reading appointed for Rublev’s commemoration talks about the eyes being windows into the body. Other people can tell a lot about our souls, by what and how we see things around us. The light we let in through our eyes enlightens our whole bodies. Our eyes aren’t our bodies, but looking at someone’s eyes can be a window, or icon, into their soul. 

Rublev’s most famous icon, The Trinity, includes a whole lot of symbolism. I don’t understand nor appreciate most of it. But basically, there are three angels, representing the Trinity, from left to right God, Jesus, Holy Spirit. They’re at a table, and their outline creates a circle, so your eye is drawn within the circle and at the same time, there’s movement between the three figures because of fluid nature of circles.

One of the coolest part of this icon to me, is what’s not there. On the front of the table they’re sitting at, is a small rectangle, and remnants of glue. Art historians believe that was a mirror, so when you look at the icon of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit sitting at a table, you were at the table too. Knowing this, I see that mirror, when I see the square – an icon within an icon. I can look at that icon, and without words or directions to do so, I contemplate my place at God’s table – my role within the Trinity. The picture is not the Trinity, but it is a window through which I can gaze, and see the unseeable, imagine the unimaginable.

My recent trip to Guatemala provided other icons of God, that I could gaze at for a long time, thinking about God’s power, and love, and mercy. Volcanic vistas, sweet, smiling faces of children. I gaze at these things not because they are actually God, but by looking out at the beautiful mountains poofing their volcanic ash, I immediately contemplate God’s power. I’m transported and transfixed because of what the volcano reveals to me about God. In the faces of the children and mission workers, I see Jesus.

This morning, I’m thinking about the icons around me. About how my concrete thinking benefits from something real and tangible, that represents something else. I can stare out a mountain, or even at an icon, and I’m transported through that window into something deeper.