Prayer-Part 1 Images and Icons

The Apostle Paul exhorted us to “pray without ceasing.”1 Thessalonians 5:17

Prayer is a big topic and it is really important. It is a key part of the love relationship we have with God, of Life in Christ, or Covenant. It is central to how we are intimate with him. It is our love language.

Because Prayer is such a big topic I have decided to break it into three parts:

1. Images and Icons
2. To Whom?
3. Object, Posture, Purpose and More

 

This is the first of the three blogs to be posted over the next three weeks. There is so much in Scripture on prayer, and so much written about it in theology, one hardly knows where to start. But we’ll try to tackle the most common issues.

Here’s a good place to start: Broadly speaking, Christians in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions use “common prayer.” That is, they pray liturgically and simultaneously. They recite prayers together aloud, that were written by someone else, often from a prayer book or worship booklet. To them this seems normal, communal, holy and God-honoring. Many such folks look at modern spontaneous Protestant prayer and feel that it is casual, lacks awe, and is out of order.

Many modern Protestants, on the other hand, look at this liturgical prayer and see it as stiff, impersonal, rote, disengaged and potentially not honored by God: Mere ritual. To such Protestants, Jesus is “best friend and savior,” the Father is “Abba,” and the Holy Spirit is the power present to act and meet needs—why would they want to pray to such an intimate God with anything other than a spontaneous outpouring of their hearts?

I’ve described these differences a bit in caricature, but to make a point: We are raised up in, or adopt, a stream of Church tradition that we find familiar or fitting, and it tends to make us look askance (or dismissively) at other streams. We see what is familiar to us as right, and what is unfamiliar as wrong or at least suspicious. Not always, but often enough that it is worthwhile to consider seriously how others pray.

 

So, as we begin to look at prayer, know that my intention is not to declare who is right and who is wrong, but rather to study and grasp how each of many groups within the Church has learned (and loves) to pray. At the end of this journey we’ll reflect on what we’ve learned and how to apply it in our own Life with Christ. Parts of this will be uncomfortable for some of us, out of our comfort zone and at odds with what we learned or accepted as we grew up. For now I beg your patience as we press in.

 

So, let’s explore, and ask some pointed questions, starting with:

 

CAN WE PRAY TO STATUES, OR THE VIRGIN MARY, OR TO THE SAINTS?
  

For Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” They do this as a normal part of their Christian life. A very few modern Protestants do also, but most would consider it a kind of idolatry.

While there are exceptions and nuances in this debate, the primary reason statues and icons are opposed is due to a misunderstanding of their intended purpose. This opposition is mostly from some modern Protestant Christians, who often assume (or were taught, as I was), that the Roman and Eastern churches teach their members that they should:

• Pray to the statue or icon
• Worship the statue or icon
• Worship the saint depicted by the statue or icon

 

This is simply incorrect. In both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, the primary purpose of statues and icons—in addition to the beauty they bring to a sanctuary—is to remind Christians of the lives of faithful followers of Jesus who lived before us, and to encourage today’s Christians to be similarly faithful. These churches do not teach their people to pray to or worship the statue, icon or saint. (Do some people, mistakenly, do so? Yes. We’ll look at that next week.)

In earlier eras, when few people could read, statues and icons (and larger paintings and stained-glass windows) were the “books” of the day to tell the Gospel stories, and to recall the history of the Church in the lives of the saints. They are the Bible and Church history told through art, rather than in words. THAT was and still is their purpose.

Beyond this, icons have taken on another, special role in the prayer life of many Christians—said simply, they are a point of focus, a “window into heaven,” to help the people who are praying to deepen their relationship with God and their comprehension of Scripture. The elements of the icon’s image all serve to encourage this deepening. This is spelled out much more fully in my book, but that’s the basic idea: to pictorially represent a scriptural event or truth, and serve to focus one’s prayer on this.

So we should be careful in what we assume is going on, or being taught or believed, in a denomination or stream of the Church which is not our own. And this is a caution that we should all keep close to our hearts, not just in relation to icons or statues, but to any of the religious concepts we hold dear. In defending concepts, and in attacking those we disagree with, we can too easily end up destroying objects, concepts and even people.

This is not to say that nothing should be defended or challenged, but rather that we need to remember that Jesus said “all the Law and the Prophets” depend upon, and are subject to, the love of God and neighbor. If we harm someone in defense of a religious concept, we have violated Jesus’ clear commands, and missed something fundamental about the character of our God.

So let’s ask Him to guide our hearts as we continue to study and understand the nature of prayer, and its various expressions in the Church. More next week.

In Christ,

Pastor George