A Kingdom of Living Icons

Today we celebrate the Feast (Synaxis) of the Twelve Apostles. In the Gospel reading we heard: At that time, when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority…..And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.”

Old Byzantine icon of the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles. Although Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot, icons of the twelve apostles invariably show Paul as the twelfth apostle instead of Matthias. So in this icon Paul is clearly identifiable as second from the right in the front row, sharing the centre of the image with Peter.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is the message Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles preached. The word “Kingdom” was an up-front threat to the political forces of the Roman Empire. And the word “Heaven” challenged the notions of the Jews. How can heaven be at hand? Heaven is removed from earthly existence. This is why Jews could not tolerate the idea of God becoming man. Heaven is in heaven. The kingdom the Jews waited for was the kingdom of the Messiah, a kingdom that would be established by military force agains Rome. So neither Jews nor Romans could possibly be pleased by such a message going forth from Jesus himself and his twelve apostles. And yet, this is the message he gave them as he sent them out.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It is always at hand, always around the corner, and yet never revealing itself in any way that we can recognise. It is always behind the curtain, the curtain that prevents our eyes from seeing what is really going on. The kingdom never reveals itself in a way that we can recognise, and so we keep postponing it to some indeterminate future. Of course there is a future coming of the Lord and the kingdom will be established conclusively in that future event. But in the meantime, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The key lies in that phrase I just used: The kingdom never reveals itself in a way that we can recognise. When you stop to think about it, there is no difference between the Jewish expectations of the Messiah’s kingdom and the way most Christians envisage the kingdom of heaven coming in some future time, when Jesus the Messiah will smash all opposing forces and establish God’s rule over all the earth. Just talk to any Christian who believes in the Rapture or some other similar futuristic fantasy. There’s war, there’s Armageddon, there’s death – and only then, only after all the death and destruction does the kingdom get established. The future is rated R for extreme violence.

But this was a wrong idea 2,000 years ago, and it is wrong today! What are Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading? “And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.”

The kingdom of heaven is at hand, is very near, is just around the corner – if you see the signs of its presence: heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. And all of it without any talk of money: You received without paying, give without pay!

Jesus is throwing the gauntlet not to Caesar, not to the devil, not to Antichrist – but to us. The kingdom is here. No need to wait for it thousands of years in the future! Open your eyes and see what God is doing and what the apostles of God are doing. Apostle is someone who is sent. There are many apostles at work today. Every generation has its apostles, who go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, drive out demons. One recent book is titled “Twentieth-Century Apostles, Contemporary Spirituality in Action.” Twelve chapters look at the lives of twelve apostles, all from the Roman Catholic tradition: Charles de Foucauld, Dorothy Day, Franz Jägerstätter, Teresa of Calcutta, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, Jean Vanier, and five others.

And there is no shortage of Orthodox men and women that I can call 20th century apostles: Maria Skobtsova, Lev Gillet, Alexander Men, Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Olga Arsamquq Michael, Paul Evdokimov, Sergius Bulgakov, Silouan of the Holy Mountain, Nektarios of Aegina. Some of these are already saints of the Orthodox Church – but all of them preached the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Their lives and actions brought the power of the kingdom into our midst. Demons come in all sizes and denominations. Schmemann drove out demons – the demons of ecclesiastical division and liturgical boredom. Olga Michael was an Eskimo woman, the wife of an Orthodox priest in Alaska. Her extraordinary care for women, her liturgical gifts, and above all her healings have earned her a strong popular push for canonisation – though certain forces are fighting against her canonisation. Nektarios is one of the most beloved healing saints. Maria Skobtsova is already a saint. She died in a Nazi concentration camp after a life dedicated to helping Jews escape the Nazi horrors. Alexander Men was a priest in Russia during the Soviet era and was assassinated in 1990. 

Matushka Olga Michael: “A Helper in Restoring the Work of God’s Hands.” Although not declared a saint by the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), icons proliferate among the Orthodox faithful in North America. Veneration of saints often starts among the people, sometimes long before the hierarchy of the church comes around to seeing what the rest of the church is seeing.

When we see lives such as these even in our own days, we know that the kingdom of the heavens is at hand. But rather than give more snippets of the lives of these 20th century apostles, I’d like to close with a quote from Mother Maria Skobtsova, who died in a Nazi concentration camp. You have heard me many times explain to you why I cense all of you at the Liturgy. But I have never explained it better and more profoundly than Saint Maria Skobtsova did in one of her essays. This is how an apostle teaches in the 20th or 21st century:

During a service, the priest does not only cense the icons of the Savior, the Mother of God, and the saints. He also censes the icon-people, the image of God in the people who are present. And as they leave the church precincts, these people remain as much the images of God, worthy of being censed and venerated. Our relations with people should be an authentic and profound veneration….. We like it when the “churching” of life is discussed, but few people understand what it means. Indeed, must we attend all the church services in order to “church” our life? Or hang an icon in every room and burn an icon-lamp in front of it? No, the churching of life is the sense of the whole world as one church, adorned with icons that should be venerated, that should be honoured and loved, because these icons are true images of God that have the holiness of the Living God upon them…. The liturgy outside the church is our sacrificial ministry in the church of the world, adorned with living icons of God.

Mother Maria Skobtsova. She died in the gas chamber of Ravensbrück concentration camp on Holy Saturday 1945. Her feast day is July 20th.

What Mother Maria describes in this passage is the profoundly positive and transformative vision of the Orthodox Church. This is the meaning of the kingdom of heaven is at hand – when we can see the world as church, populated by living icons of God. The kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of living icons.