Are You a Little Icon?
Are You a Little Icon?
Colossians 1:15-28
Christian Community Presbyterian Church, Bowie Maryland
July 17, 2022
You are all familiar with logos, aren’t you? They are symbols that represent a company or group. When you see the multi-colored stylized peacock, you know that it is NBC. The same is true of the CBS eyeball. The red dot within a larger red circle means Target. MLB stands for Major League Baseball.
Those of us who use electronic devices all the time know the logos on our screens (icons in computer-speak). Each one stands for an application (app for short) and when you click on one, the app opens and you can do whatever that app is intended for: send email, take pictures, write a letter, do your taxes, play music, check your bank balance, order pizza, count your steps, just to name a few.
The word icon can also describe a person or thing that is the epitome of whatever they do and are revered or idolized. We could say that Elvis Presley was a cultural icon of mid-20th century popular music or that Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., were icons of non-violent socio-political change. Ivana Trump was an icon of 1980's opulence. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are icons in the current world of football, otherwise known to Americans as soccer. Elena Delle Donne is an icon of the Washington Mystics basketball team.
The etymology of the word icon shows that it comes from the Greek word eikon, which denotes an image or a representation. Christian iconography (the creation and study of religious images) began evolving about two hundred years after Jesus. Some early critics argued that images of Christ and the early saints went against the commandment about images and idols. Over the ensuing centuries icons developed as devotional paintings of Christ or other holy figures, typically in a prescribed, traditional style on wood.
Angela Manno is an American iconographer. She calls icon painting a spiritual practice, with the emphasis on “practice.” Here’s how she describes the stages of creating an icon as recapitulating our own creation:
Icons were venerated and used as aids to devotion in the Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The icons are not the anemic Sunday school pictures of our youth or the illustrations featured in some Bibles. Icons are windows that open onto God. They teach deep theological truths. For some believers, the icons peer into the soul of the viewer. One of the most famous icons is Andrei Rublev’s “Holy Trinity.”
This icon is based on the “Hospitality of Abraham” account in Genesis 18. Abraham, sitting by his tent at the Oaks of Mamre, saw three men, later revealed to be angels. He bade them stay and ordered a meal prepared for them. One of the angels told Abraham that Sarah would soon give birth to a son, the future Isaac.
The consensus among recent scholars is that the three angels who visited Abraham represented the Christian Trinity, "one God in three persons"—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. The silent communion of the three angels is the center of the composition and depicts the inner communication of persons of the Trinity. As complex as that description may seem, it is a lot simpler than trying to write a sermon to explain the Doctrine of the Trinity.
The first part of today’s reading from Colossians is an early Christian hymn of unknown authorship. The hymn uses the Greek word eikon to describe Jesus: “He is the image [eikon] of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” As we listen to the apostle Paul reciting these words, we realize that he is not just speaking of the Christ who confronted him on the road to Damascus. Paul is joining the hymn’s author in singing of the cosmic Christ, who is the only one to have the status of being the firstborn of all creation. Christ outranks Adam; in fact, he was present for Adam’s creation.
We also realize that the humanity of the earthly Christ is inseparably united with the preexistent and cosmic Christ. These two aspects of Christ cannot be wrenched apart without destroying every basis of belief in him. For Paul, the saving work of Christ, as well as the church as the creative form of his body, could not have been conceived of without the cosmic reality of Christ.
Paul’s theology always runs very deep. But here he manages to do it without his often lengthy and convoluted sentences. Yet for all the unfathomable depth of his theology, his faith boils down to a simple, unerring belief that Jesus is Lord and has been from forever ago and will be Lord until forever from now.
Paul says that everything—thrones, dominions, rulers, powers—were created through Christ and were created for him. That little word “for” shows the purpose of all creation: to glorify Christ. We have to step back in order to take in the length and breadth of this cosmic understanding.
Increasingly people (perhaps some of us) have little confidence in and great disdain for the thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers that we are stuck with. Surely God in holy mercy wouldn’t give us some of the political candidates that we will have to choose from. Surely God would have kept the National Socialists from rising to power in Germany in the 1930's. Surely God will find a solution to the violence of thought and action espoused by conspiracy-minded, misogynist, nativist, Christian nationalist bullies against people: non-white, non-Christian, women, LGBTQ, immigrant. Surely God will honor the dignity of every person, shedding the light of truth on the flagrant conspiracy theories that disrupt our civic sanity. With the prophets of the Old Testament, we cry out, “How long, O Lord?” And seeing regress rather than progress, doubts about God grow.
In some ways we have not gotten much further in our belief than the folks in Colossae and other places in Paul’s time. False teachers stirred up the fledgling church people by telling them that the physical world was evil. If that was the case, then God himself could not have created it. If Christ were God, they reasoned, he would be in charge only of the spiritual world. But Paul counters those ideas, saying that all the thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers in heaven and on earth, of both the visible and invisible world (physical government and spiritual forces) were under the authority of Christ himself.
Paul listed these particular categories because of the people believed that the world was inhabited by powers and beings that worked against humanity. Because the false teachers gave undue prominence to these, Paul quickly put them under Christ’s rule, asserting that Christ has no equal and no rival. Because Christ is the Creator of the world, all powers, whether spiritual forces or material forces, are under Christ’s ultimate authority.
Scripture commentators sometimes have a field day trying to order and rank and explain the words that Paul has used. I think we get bogged down if we try to define them in political terms. The things that rule and have power over us, the things we allow to be authoritative for us are not always personalities and people. What often rules our lives are attitudes and ideologies. We treat them with religious reverence. Because of that we are frequently governed by fear. We are hemmed in by ignorance. We call blustering arrogance authoritative. We bow before thrones of hatred.
One of the results of bowing to the thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers of the world is that we downsize Jesus. We make Jesus manageable, palatable, acceptable. He becomes our pet rather than our Lord. Sixty years ago a parody song was written in reaction to a Texas Christian radio station broadcast.
“I don’t care if it rains or freezes
Long as I got my plastic Jesus
Sittin’ on the dashboard of my car.
Comes in colors, pink and pleasant,
Glows in the dark ’cause it’s iridescent,
Take it with you when you travel far.”(2)
When we tame Jesus like that, he is no longer an active force in our lives. That allows us to befriend Jesus rather than bow before him. People straightjacket Jesus’ teachings to fit a myriad of ideologies that quickly contradict the essence of the Word made flesh. They Photoshop Jesus according to flawed human images. He becomes a viral internet meme, a huckster for the very things the gospels tells us he railed against.
Paul asserts that Jesus is the image—icon—of God. What if Jesus is an icon that takes us to the very center of creation where God’s ongoing creative power is mixed with God’s grace and mercy as well as God’s judgment? If Jesus is creator of all that is, both seen and unseen, if Christ is the “firstborn of all creation,” then these thrones and dominions, rulers and powers which were created by him have now been dethroned by means of the cross and the empty tomb. They can no longer enslave. They no longer hold any sway over us. In spite of what things look like, in spite of the purple prose spoken by politicians, in spite of the bullets and blood strewn across the daily media, in spite of what our gut reaction is to the events of the world, everything holds together in Christ, the One who is the image of God. We can’t see all that from our angle of vision. We can’t see around corners unaided. Christ calls us to trust that if he can create, he can also redeem and rule as only God can.
One popular iconographic representation of Jesus depicts him as the ruler of the universe, Christ the Pantocrator—the omnipotent ruler. The haloed Christ looks at the viewer with a solemn, loving stare. His right hand is held in a position signifying teaching and in his left hand he holds the Holy Scriptures. In that form he is the head of the church. His work is to teach and to put the word of God into the hearts of his people.
While all the thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers have a multitude of names, there is only one name for the one who is head of the church, the one who is our head. So as we have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, through Christ we become little icons for him: representatives of the one who has no equal, the one who rules rulers, the one who empowers power, the one who undergirds true authority, and the one who is the foundation for any throne.
As sisters and brothers of Christ, as children adopted into Christ’s family, as people created in God’s image, each of us is an icon of Christ. Each of us is called to be a representation of the grace, mercy, loving kindness, peace, and integrity which is Christ. As Christ lived the presence of God for those he encountered on the paths and byways of Palestine, we are to live the presence of Christ in our homes, neighborhoods, worksites, places of education, recreation, or entertainment. We are icons of Christ. Let the world tap on us so God’s love can flow.
To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever! Amen.
(1) Angela Manno, interviewed by Andrea M. Couture, “Fostering a Re-Enchantment with the Earth,” Sojourners, vol. 51, no.7, July 2022, pp. 30f.
(2) Quoted by Victoria Emily Jones, “Plastic Jesus, sittin’ on the dashboard...,” posted on "The Jesus Question," April 12, 2012; https://thejesusquestion.org/2012/04/12/plastic-jesus-sittin-on-the-dashboard/; accessed July 6, 2022.
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