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Icons for today
THE DANCE OF GODHEAD  We have a marvellous picture here of the divine being, and I'd like to take you round the dance. So here we have a painting by the Russian painter Rublev, painted in the 15th century, a time of terrible chaos in Russia. This is a painting derived from scripture, from the story of the visit of three angels to Abraham and Sarah, and it's called the Old Testament Trinity. It's a glimpse, a vision, of God's way of being as Trinity, and you see the dance expressed in the tender regard, the attention, that the one casts on the other, in the lines of the clothes, and in the fact that if you put the point of a compass in the centre of the table you could draw a perfect circle which would include all three beings. The figure on the right is identified with the Holy Spirit, wearing green and blue. Blue is the common colour of these three characters, the blue of baptism and water, the birth of the soul's journey, and the Spirit's tender regard is cast on the figure at the other extreme of the table on which the chalice rests. The central figure is the figure of the incarnate Son, wearing the imperial purple. He also casts a look of tender regard on this much more shadowy figure, the primordial Father, the principle of the godhead. And so the icon is an extraordinary vision of God's way of being, as dynamic, as a dance. "I am in the Father and the Father in me", as Jesus said – overcoming duality, divorce, division, one in the other. There is a gap at the front of the table, and that gap is of course the invitation to us. The meaning of Christian life is not to think complicated and exquisite thoughts about God, it is quite simply to participate in the life of God, in his way of being as Holy Trinity. The gap in the icon is the invitation to us, through the Holy Eucharist, through our life in the Christian Body, to become trinitarian persons ourselves. As we relate to the Beyond All, relate to the incarnate Son in our neighbours, and relate to the Spirit which Jesus Christ says is within us, we grow as trinitarian beings, and that empty gap is our invitation.The meaning of being a Christian is more and more to come to participate in the very being of God as Holy Trinity.
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We have a marvellous picture here of the divine being, and I'd like to take you round the dance. So here we have a painting by the Russian painter Rublev, painted in the 15th century, a time of terrible chaos in Russia. This is a painting derived from scripture, from the story of the visit of three angels to Abraham and Sarah, and it's called the Old Testament Trinity. It's a glimpse, a vision, of God's way of being as Trinity, and you see the dance expressed in the tender regard, the attention, that the one casts on the other, in the lines of the clothes, and in the fact that if you put the point of a compass in the centre of the table you could draw a perfect circle which would include all three beings. The figure on the right is identified with the Holy Spirit, wearing green and blue. Blue is the common colour of these three characters, the blue of baptism and water, the birth of the soul's journey, and the Spirit's tender regard is cast on the figure at the other extreme of the table on which the chalice rests. The central figure is the figure of the incarnate Son, wearing the imperial purple. He also casts a look of tender regard on this much more shadowy figure, the primordial Father, the principle of the godhead. And so the icon is an extraordinary vision of God's way of being, as dynamic, as a dance. "I am in the Father and the Father in me", as Jesus said – overcoming duality, divorce, division, one in the other. There is a gap at the front of the table, and that gap is of course the invitation to us. The meaning of Christian life is not to think complicated and exquisite thoughts about God, it is quite simply to participate in the life of God, in his way of being as Holy Trinity. The gap in the icon is the invitation to us, through the Holy Eucharist, through our life in the Christian Body, to become trinitarian persons ourselves. As we relate to the Beyond All, relate to the incarnate Son in our neighbours, and relate to the Spirit which Jesus Christ says is within us, we grow as trinitarian beings, and that empty gap is our invitation.The meaning of being a Christian is more and more to come to participate in the very being of God as Holy Trinity.
