First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Isaiah 64

“You Hid Your Face”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

November 30, 2008 First Sunday of Advent

The great church building, the Hagia Sophia, was built in 532. By this time Rome had fallen twice to the barbarians, Augustine was dead almost 100 years and it would be another century before Islam would arrive. This was the peak of the Byzantine Empire. Constantine moved the center of the empire from Rome to Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, 200 years before and made Christianity the official religion and thus the empire “holy.”

After Constantine the emperors were colorful and diverse, yet, when you reach Justinian and the Hagia Sophia there is a moment of awe and splendor. The great dome of the church was not surpassed in size for 1000 years; it stood alone as the grandest place of worship until the cathedral in Seville was completed. The Hagia Sophia was a kind of celebration and achievement that marveled the world. Justinian and his wife, Theodora, carved their initials throughout the church to live as an effigy of their role in the construction. Indeed, their initials are about all that remains of the ornamentation offered in the sixth century.

In 1453 the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. Unlike other conquerors the Muslims didn’t destroy churches like the Hagia Sophia they simply converted it into a mosque. An intriguing part of this is that not only did they leave the building standing but also then used its structure as a model for some of the greatest Islamic holy sites in the world. But their veneration ended at architecture. The Muslims, who believe God cannot be represented in images, systematically dismantled the 50 foot iconostasis, a wall of icons, stripped the church of its riches and plastered over all the frescos and mosaics.

It would be as if someone started painting over the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, if they scraped Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” off the wall at Ravenna. Much of Byzantine art has been lost because of this conversion to Islam. Constantinople fell in 1453, but most of what had been the Eastern Empire had already been conquered by that time, some parts for centuries. In the 11 century the Fatimid ruler of Palestine destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and in desecrating the great church some would say prompted the Crusades. Destruction of art and architecture had gone on for centuries before the Hagia Sophia became a mosque.

Standing in the vestibule, today, you can see a partial attempt toward restoration. A fresco of Justinian has been revealed. As it is not a divine image, there has not been an outcry, and since it is not in the sanctuary proper, is helpful too. But the image of Justinian as you look at his classic Byzantine representation is exciting and maddening at the same time. Walking inside it’s maddening as you can then imagine what the interior would have looked like once covered in mosaics, frescoes, and icons. But those are all gone.

The irony of the Hagia Sophia is that the destruction of the art and images by the Muslims was not a new idea. The Orthodox Church, so devoted to iconic art, had gone through periods where they destroyed their own art. In the eighth and ninth centuries a debate raged as to the place of art in worship. Known as the iconoclast controversy, it was a debate about revelation and freedom. One side said, God had been revealed in human form in Jesus Christ, thus blessing the representation of him in art; the other side, the iconoclasts, argued that the commandments expressly forbade graven images, and thus God was not to be figured, but ever seen as free from our attempts to define or predict him.

The iconoclasts had a long tradition behind them. Truly one of the unique features of Judaism was that there were no statues of Yahweh, the God who is who he is. When Hadrian leveled Herod’s temple 40 years after Jesus there was a moment of great disappointment when he reached the holy of holies. He expected the Jews to have an enormous gold statue of God adorning His holy place as every other religion did. Yet, once inside the place where God dwells he found nothing to represent the God who is Lord of all. It was a place where a spirit dwelled, not an image, not an icon.

But the icondules, the lovers of images, also had a point. The stumbling block of Christianity for the Jewish faith and pagan belief was the very fact that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The idea the transcendent God had emptied himself of glory and abided in our midst full of beauty and truth was the whole point. The icons, the images, the statues, the frescoes: they were all meant to celebrate, to venerate, to reveal this truth. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You could see Him, touch Him. John baptized Him in the Jordan.

Of course by the eighth and ninth centuries the icons were not as pure as this. The icons had become imbued with magical powers. They were places, objects of devotion themselves. Orthodox clergy would be called to take special icons out into battle, parading them in front of the enemy. You can imagine what the icon became in the moment of victory. It was a good luck charm, an amulet of power; it- in itself- should be considered holy. So it wasn’t just an issue of images, but idolatry the iconoclasts opposed.

Yet the real debate is what is found in our passage from Isaiah, from the visions and utterances of the remnant hoping God would return to them. Isaiah has three parts. The first is written before Jerusalem fell, the second was written during the exile, and the third was written by the remnant who returned from Babylon and pleaded with God that they would once again be a people and He would once again be the God who dwells in their midst. Our reading is from this third part, this plea for God to be seen again.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. If you did that the nations would tremble in your presence. No eye has perceived any God besides you, who work for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right; but because we sinned you hid yourself from us. The doctrine of the last line is deus absconditus. It is Latin for the disappearance of God, God fleeing, a fleeting image just out of reach. You hid from us; we can no longer sense your presence.

Third Isaiah then fills his plea with images of control and art. No one who calls your name can control you, take hold of you. In fact it is our sins that hold us, let alone we can control what is holy. We are clay in your hands; we are the work of your artistic vision.

Twice though he mentions this image of God hiding his face, turning away so the people cannot see God. There is a sense that the blessing of God was a kind of attention, a kind of gaze fixed upon a people, like a parent who watches over a child to keep them from harm. You can hear it in the phrase, “don’t take your eye off them for a minute” or if the child is really squirmy, “a second.” This vision, this sight had been lost. God was looking elsewhere now. And the people could feel the absence of God’s attention. We could also recast it as an artist who looks at his subject, looking at it all the while recreating it in precious metal or in the beauty of color. It’s all about attention and seeing the subject. Isaiah is saying, look at us again. Look at your people once more and make us something beautiful.

This summer I was blessed to visit two great museums filled with art coveted the world over. The Louvre, like the British Museum, is filled with Greek and Roman art; there is a great collection of Medieval and Renaissance paintings; and then it begins to fade into the modern era, finishing its collection around the time of Napoleon with the paintings of David. Walking the Louvre is a feast for the eyes just in terms of its own architecture let alone the Venus de Milo or the Dying Slaves of Michelangelo and the paintings of Da Vinci.

The next day, though, we went to the Musee de Orsay. Standing outside I turned to my older children and said, do you want an idea of what is in this museum or do you want to just let it be? They placated me and asked for my synopsis. I said, “It will be as if God goes away. In the Louvre there are tons of biblical scenes (paintings of the crucifix, the annunciation, the prophet Jeremiah and the saints of the church, and so on). In this museum it will be as if God is no longer explicit, but inside the water lilies, the peasants sleeping and the stars in the night. Gaugan will depict beauty as the simple dignity of the Tahitian culture, a culture whose message is without scripture reference.

Churches are no longer the patron of the artists, but the subject. Van Gogh and Monet would paint the church buildings as an image to be enjoyed. Their work was not meant to hang in the church; the artists were not looking from the inside but the outside. I watched Ethan as he walked the rooms filled with art that were about gardens and flowers more than it was about Salome dancing before Herod. Thinking back to him walking the halls of the Orsay I couldn’t help but wonder if this were a kind of echo of Isaiah and the iconoclast movement reborn in these works of art; I wondered if Renoir wasn’t a kind of icon for the iconoclast. It was as if the artist could no longer contain God, the spirit had broken out of the image; God was a spirit again moving, blowing where he wills. The paintings were a sign to say, God blew through here, but he’s gone now.

Although it would be hard to call much of it fine art, Advent is a time of icons and images, decorations and adornment. On Friday our house began the annual transformation of garland and nutcrackers and candles not meant for lighting. The CD player was raided of Frank Sinatra’s and Nat King Coles’ greatest hits and replaced with their Christmas albums. Gone is the “Girl from Inpanema” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is in her place.

There is a kind of well-worn path to this. Next weekend we will venture down to Sandy Creek to secure a tree. The boys will throw snowballs as we wait for a young man with a chainsaw to speed our purchase. All of a sudden burgundy and forest green match- even if I am still told not to wear them together. And as the days progress, presents will begin to surround the tree as I lose all hope of weight control with the real advent: cookies, fruitcake, and special cheddar cheese.

All of our hymns will change in worship. The readings will be about waiting and expectations, praying the ancient prayer, come Lord Jesus. The changes go on and on until we reach Christmas Eve and with candles lit we sing Silent night, Holy night.

We make an icon with all of this. And to some extent we expect miracles. Children who are wearing clothes they don’t like to are expected to eat food on fine china they are not supposed to break, and be calm with cousins for whom every other gathering is about wild play. And ancient grudges are to be cooled, family disputes are to be declared a truce, and alcohol is to be consumed as medication without excess lest someone say what they really mean with a false sense of courage.

We may not string the lights around our house thinking this will make my children all get along, or hang a wreath thinking this will bring a sense of compassion to the world, but in essence it is just for this reason. And there are iconoclasts in this; people who do not want the adornment, the decoration, claiming it doesn’t capture the true spirit of Christmas. But to this we can say, bah humbug.

While most of us wouldn’t look at our tree or string of Christmas cards as magic art, they all point to the long desire to see what is good in life and for God to look again at us. We want to see peace on earth; we want to behold the ones we love and know life is good; we want to have that moment which seems to capture blessings as a table well prepared, life as a feast of mercy. We know that the special rolls don’t ensure harmony, let alone bring the conflicts of the globe into a new sense of brotherly love. Fudge might have this power, but not special rolls.

Although our Christmas traditions may lack the grandeur of a building unsurpassed for a thousand years, and our decorations may pale when compared to a Renoir or a Matisse, they are the way we make the plea of Isaiah, O that you would be with us. I am not sure if we want God to tear open the heavens and come down, even though we have infused this image into the idea that Santa Claus comes out of the sky; even though tearing open the sky and nations quaking may be beyond our expectations, we do want God to be seen.

We want to see God in the child opening a present, we want to revel in the image of the pageant and the wily shepherds and dancing cows that seem to be ever ready to bring joy. And we know that it isn’t a matter of doing everything right, even though we try. Like an incantation we offer just in case superstition has a power we don’t recognize, we try to get everything in its right place, in the right order, with the right amount of nutmeg on the eggnog. We know perfection is impossible, but we try again.

Maybe by making our icon a season we keep what is good on each side of the ancient debate. God is free to come and go. We know God isn’t captured in the small crèche scenes we put up; but we put them up to know that Jesus was the child in the manger and Mary did treasure all these things in her heart. Maybe by keeping the art to a time rather than a place we come closer to the hope of Isaiah that God would make something of us, not us of God. Maybe Advent is a prayer asking God to make us right, to prepare us, so hope can be born anew in us.

Do deck the halls, sing the carols, and hang the ornaments. And in doing so pray, pray, come Lord Jesus. Come into our midst, not to be captured or kept, but abide with us and our family for just a moment. Let us see and believe that we are all your people and somehow your intent to bring peace on earth. Let the church be wrapped in garland and bedecked with trees and wreaths so we remember: unto us a child is born, this day. Salvation is at hand. So let us make an image of beauty and joy for a time, this time. Come Lord Jesus. Amen.