One of the treasured items in my office is a religious icon recently given to me by the wife of my former spiritual director, who died a year and a half ago. The icon is mounted in a glass box, preserved as if it’s a museum piece, although the icon is really a living vehicle of prayer that leads us to deeper union with God. The icon in my office dates from the fourteenth century. It may even be older than that.
The story behind this icon is fascinating. On the back of the box in which this icon is displayed is a typed note, explaining its history. It was purchased at a gallery in Philadelphia and given to an Episcopal priest, who bequeathed it to my former spiritual director. And then, it was kindly given to me. Supposedly, this icon was found strapped to the back of a Russian emigrant to this country at the time of the Russian Revolution. This emigrant was fleeing the unstable political scene there.
When gazing upon this icon, you can feel its age, so much so that I get little prickly goosebumps when I gaze upon it. It’s in the form of a triptych, like a miniature version of the triptych found behind the altar in our Lady Chapel. Two smaller outer panels frame a larger central panel. The outer panels can close inwards like doors, but in the icon’s current framed box, they remain open, fastened to the central panel with rudimentary wires.
It's difficult to tell exactly which saints are depicted on the outer panels because the layer of paint is rubbed off in many places, revealing the old wood beneath. But the center panel is almost fully preserved. In the center of this central panel is Christ himself, sitting, as if teaching, holding a book with Greek lettering, his hand raised in blessing. Mary and John surround him, gesturing to him with their hands. Christ looks straight at you, the beholder of this gorgeous icon.
Whether the legend of how this icon was transported to America is true or not, it’s an intriguing story. Imagine fleeing a country in turmoil and feeling compelled to bring an icon of Christ with you. Of all the things you could bring, why an icon? Did the emigrant sneak onto a boat crossing the Atlantic? Did he come by way of the Bering Strait? But the fact that this icon was supposedly strapped to the body of a Russian emigrant suggests that the endeavor had to be furtive. It’s as if this emigrant needed an image of Christ held close to his body to give him hope. It’s as if Christ were smuggled into this country, under the radar of authorities, and Christ’s visage, with hand raised in blessing, continues to bless those in possession of the icon. An image of the Word of God—capital W—entered this country on the back of a Russian emigrant.
It’s a strikingly good image for the way in which God’s word—lowercase w—seems to come to us. Through the ages, God’s word has come to dozens of prophets, alighting on them, unbidden and unsolicited, by surprise, slipping into their lives. Some of those prophets were called to give the people of Israel a good talking to. Others were called to encourage and comfort when times were rough. But through the ages, in a great succession of unlikely individuals, God’s word was smuggled into human time, and then passed on down the ages.
It's no different with how God’s word comes to John the Baptist. St. Luke the Evangelist seems to be making such a point as he lays out a litany of worldly authorities exercising power in the time when John the Baptist received God’s word. In the reigns of Caesar and Pontius Pilate and Herod and Philip and Lysanias and Annas and Caiphas, who all hold either earthly or religious power, John’s name is dropped in by Luke as an absolute nobody. He’s simply the son of Zechariah. He has no territorial jurisdiction. He’s not even in a city of great magnitude. He's in the desert, the wilderness, a wild and dangerous place that people generally avoid.
Into this unruly place, to a man of no fame, God’s word slips into human time. It seeps into human history from beneath the eyes of those wielding worldly power and abusing it all the same. God’s word enters the human story in a particular place and time, while rulers hold sway who would later be responsible for the death of Jesus, the Word of God—capital W. This is how God works. This is how God’s word—lowercase w—enters human history. God may be outside human time, but God works in our time.
But there’s more. The word comes to John as a chosen prophet. He has no claim to fame, except that we know him as the cousin of Jesus. But when God’s word comes to John, his mission doesn’t remain local. The word spoken into human history isn’t trapped in John’s head or heart or in his hut in the wilderness. That word is carried by John, as if strapped to his back like an ancient icon, and it goes into the region around the Jordan.
In this ungovernable region, into which only brave souls would tread, there’s no territorial jurisdiction by a Caesar or Pilate or Herod or Philip or Lysanias or Annas or Caiphas. It’s the wilderness, wild and free. It’s the area around the Jordan, where God’s people made their final journey from their wilderness wanderings across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. It’s the region that will be the site of Jesus’s own baptism. It’s a land of profound freedom.
Into this place, God’s word is carried by John, close to his heart, and then announced to all. It’s a message that might first seem about condemnation, but it’s not. It’s about freedom. It’s a call to be freed from sin and to live in the newness of that freedom and life. And like an icon that was smuggled into freedom and passed on from person to person, God’s word would be handed down from John through the centuries to us.
It was a word that made it to Jesus’s ears and called him to baptism. It was a word realized and fulfilled perfectly in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. It’s the word that alighted on the apostles at Pentecost and drove them to the ends of the world. It’s a word that has been taken into every corner of history in every time and place, to those who were willing to receive it. It’s the word that gives life.
The paradox of this holy word is that it’s always available. It’s the most transparent and open declaration imaginable. It’s a word that liberates people from secrecy and releases them from bondage to oppression. And yet it’s so frequently stifled or overlooked or rejected. In the face of human sin, this word must emerge from beneath the smothering effects of earthly might and human deceitfulness. But it always finds its way to us, not to trick us but to woo us in love.
No valley of pain and sorrow is too deep to escape the balm of this word of God. No mountain and hill of human hubris is too high for God’s word to humble it. No crooked path of life’s surprises and disappointments is immune from the reach of God’s comforting word. No rough patch of challenges is left untouched by God’s word of grace. God’s word always finds its way in to call us to repentance, forgiveness, and new life. And just when we think that God’s word has been snuffed out or drowned out by our cares and preoccupations, it comes to us to bless us and invigorate us. We only need ears to hear it.
The advent of God’s word to John was merely a precursor of that great advent of God’s Word—capital W—into human time, when Light and Life were smuggled into history in a dark cave in Bethlehem. But that’s for a few weeks from now. For now, it’s enough to prepare and make our hearts ready, and to clear an open path for God’s word to reach our ears and our hearts. It’s enough to welcome this word and treasure it and strap it to our bodies, like an ancient icon making its way from one continent to another. It’s enough to let Christ be on the central panel of our lives, to gaze upon his image, and to let it invite us to grow more and more into his likeness. It’s enough to know that God’s word will always find us, call us to repentance, forgive us, and set us free. And it’s enough to carry this good news into every place we go, proclaiming the timeless word that nothing can destroy: all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Advent
December 8, 2024