Rublev's Mirror: Dancing With the Trinity
According to the Orthodox Church, an icon is written, not painted. It is not art, but a window into another and sacred dimension of reality. Its construction must follow a rigid protocol by an ordained iconographer. It becomes efficacious only after it has received the blessing of a priest.
Some icons are intimate household items. Others are national treasures. Some are credited with healing and ending famines or plagues, while others were carried into battle to assure victory. When the Bosheviks came to power, they regarded these claims as mere ignorant superstitions. The radicals among them were energetic in their attempts to wipe religion completely from the minds and the communal life of the people. The Soviet regime aggressively destroyed churches, synagogues, icons, vestments and anything else relating to religion. Countless priests, nuns, monks and religious leaders were sent to the Gulag, or worse.
Some icons were too powerful to destroy. The Trinity icon, also called the Hospitality of Abraham icon, on the cover of the bulletin was one of these. Andrei Rublev, perhaps the world’s greatest iconographer, wrote this icon over 600 years ago. It depicts the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah recorded in Genesis 18 who turned out to be either angels, messengers of God, or the actual Trinity. For centuries devout Russians traveled many miles, often on foot, to offer prayers before it at the Trinity Monastery of Saint Sergius.
Rather than destroy it, the revolutionaries removed it to the Tretyakov Gallery where it has remained since 1929. If you visited this Moscow gallery you would inevitably find burnt candles and incense on the floor where it was displayed. It may be the most precious icon still existing, but conservators tell us it also is among the most fragile. They have argued, unsuccessfully, against any attempt to move it, even to return it to its original home.
But Vladimir Putin has other ideas. As his war in Ukraine falters, as the Russian economy sputters, as unrest in the population grows and spreads, he is looking for support wherever he can find it. Krilill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, is one of the few pillars on which he leans. Together, the two men are said to represent “the Mighty and the Almighty.” For decades the Russian church passionately denounced the blasphemy that their most sacred icon hung in a secular art gallery. They have always demanded its return to its rightful place. Who doesn’t see the justice of their demands?
Putin could do worse than to give in. So today - today! - he is ignoring the world’s leading art conservators and experts, and many within the church as well. He knows the icon is extremely fragile. He knows it may be destroyed by such a move. Yet today the icon is being moved from Tretyakov to Christ the Savior Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow where it will be venerated by thousands of devoted worshippers. (Pravda) In a few weeks, if it survives, it will be returned to its original home in the Monastery where it will undergo restoration.
Putin may be motivated by his own faith, but it is hard not to see a bit of political calculation here. For this brief moment, his gesture will be celebrated throughout Russia.It is possible, even likely, that people will turn away from the abject horror and suffering being inflicted daily on Ukraine. It’s not the first time that cynical leaders have used the cloak of piety to cover their nefarious deeds.
You and I might consider the Trinity icon to be an antique, a priceless item, perhaps, of Russian culture or spirituality, but of little spiritual value to us. We may see it as a historical memento that managed to survive the slings and arrows of an outrageous history. Some of us admire it in a curious sort of way, but most of us think nothing of ultimate value would be lost if it went away forever.
Frankly, however, at least some of us consider the Trinity itself in the same way - an old, tarnished and cumbersome piece of theological furniture we’ve inherited and must accommodate. Distant and unknown ancestors in faith bequeathed it to us in languages we don’t even understand. We get lost in their logical labyrinths of Three-in-One theologies and One-God-in-Three-Persons explanations. We grow old with the tireless repetitions of the words, “Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”
When St. Augustine tells us that the three persons of the Trinity are not the same, we get it. But then he tells us they are not separate, and it becomes confusing. Yet his final explanation is, shall we say, lovely. To Tina Turner’s great question, “What’s love got to do with it?” Augustine responds, Everything! God is the Lover, and the Beloved, and the Love they share between them. Not a bad beginning.
Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her role in The Three Faces of Eve, but Christians say God got there first. If she could be Eve White, Eve Black and Jane at the same time, why can’t God be one, and three, at the same time? If I can be a father, a son and a husband, then why can’t God be Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit? This helps, but it doesn’t tell us very much, does it? Most of my colleagues and I just go about our work and quietly ignore the perplexities of our theological inheritance.
Just as we are about to cart this theological contraption to the consignment store, guess who comes in the door. The feminists. The womanists. And those who would elevate hospitality to a spiritual practice. People like Dr. Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dallas; Dr. Hannah Bacon, Chester UK; Dr. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, at Notre Dame until she died; Father Richard Rohr, Albuquerque; and so many more. Even C. S. Lewis is ringing the bell! These seminal thinkers are revolutionizing the ways we think about - and the ways we relate to - the Holy One.
Without
getting too technical on this fine Spring morning, let me just say this. For
them, God is community. Fundamentally, God is relational. That’s
why community is fundamental in Christian spirituality - the Beloved
Community, the Church as Koinonia. The utopian at the end of time (Isaiah
25), will be a vast, all-inclusive feast that encompasses the full
diversity of creation. This is not apart from God or in addition to God. This
is God. This feast is God!
C. S. Lewis once described himself
as someone who “can dance no better than a centipede with wooden legs.” Yet he
ultimately affirmed that God is not a static thing, not even a
person, but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama.
Almost… a kind of dance… The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this (divine)
life is to be played out in each one of us… each one of us has got to
enter that pattern, and take (our) place in the dance.” (Lewis, Mere
Christianity, pp. 148-150)
Each of us has got to enter the
pattern, and take (our) place
in the dance.
This brings us back to Andrei Rublev and his Trinity icon, his Hospitality icon. Look at the image again, the one on the front of your worship folder. The three holy visitors are at table. Perhaps this is the eucharist, or communion. We can almost feel the energy flowing between these three rather androgynous figures. There is a circular movement in this triangular composition, If we spend time with it, the figures will almost seem to move toward each other.
Now look at it more closely. Do you see a little rectangle attached to the front of the table? What is this? There are many people who know a lot more about this than I do: historians, theologians, conservators and others. They believe that Rublev had attached a mirror to this icon. (Richard Rohr, Take Your Place At the Table, Online)
A mirror!
If
that is true, whenever we might stand or kneel before this icon to pray, we
would see ourselves included at the table. We would find ourselves as one of
the participants, perhaps even an equal participant, with the Holy
Trinity. We would be joining the dance and becoming a receiver and a giver of
holy energy. This suggests a choreographer, but who could that be? It might be
other than you expect.
Choreography suggests the partnership
of movement, wrote the late Catholic theologian, Catherine Mowry Lacugna. It is
symmetrical but not redundant, as each dancer expresses, and at the same time
fulfills, themself towards the others. In their interaction and inter-course,
the dancers experience one fluid motion of encircling, encompassing,
permeating, enveloping, and outstretching. They are neither leaders nor
followers in the divine dance, only participants in an eternal movement of
reciprocal giving and receiving, giving again and receiving again… The divine
dance is fully personal and interpersonal. It expresses the essence and unity
of God. The image of the dance forbids us to think of God a solitary
being. (LaCugna, God For Us, 272)
I love it when she says that there are not two sets of communion or two separate dances – one among the so-called Trinity and the other among us human beings. Rather, she affirms, there is only one dance, and one mystery of communion. God and we are beloved partners in this dance. (Lacugna, God For Us, 274)
To
participate in the divine dance is to participate in the transforming
love of God. We become the Lover, the Beloved and Love Itself. In doing so we
discover one another no longer as enemies, not as Russians and Ukrainians, not
as Democrats and Republicans, but as brothers, sisters and siblings -
participants together in the life and love of God. Would that Vladimir Putin -
and all of us - could peer deeply into Rublev’s mirror today. It would be a
different world.
© Rev.
Dr. Gilbert Friend-Jones
Trinity
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Peace
United Church of Christ
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