A Sermon for All Saints' Day
The Rev. Pat Gillespie

Ecclesiasticus 441-10, 13-14
Luke 16:19-31

"There is a time to speak" and not "to keep silent" if one has any ability in speaking; since a certain heresy is threatening us, barking at the truth, and frightening unstable minds by its empty noise. . . . Therefore, inadequate as I am, . . . yet relying on the prayers and urgings of the saints, I will speak.

The heresy is violence against images of God. You have it here today here just as I had it more than a thousand years ago in Constantinople.

I, sinner that I am, am known as Saint (ha!) Theodore of Studios. That is if you speak Greek. If your language is Latin you call my monastery Studium. Proper English folks call me St. Theodore the Studite, but you Americans, that's something else -- People here call me "Ted the Stud" ... and they laugh, as if that were not a proper name for an orthodox monk.

So, I'm Ted, and I'm an iconodule. Do you know what that is? No? It's someone who really understands about and values icons. Now, you do know what an icon is, don't you? Sure. One of those little pictures on your computer screen, right? Is the computer icon the whole program? Does it do the job for you? Of course not! But it gets you to the program. It opens the program for you It's an image of the program --"icon" is another word for "image" but it's more than just a pretty picture. It is part of the program. It links you to the full program.

Only a madman would want to destroy the link to the program. And that's just what those foolish heretic iconoclasts want to do. The iconoclasts want to smash the icons. But they don't mean the computer ones. There's another kind of icon. These icons are wonderful images of Jesus or the saints. The iconoclasts talk absurdities. The mad heretics confuse icons with idols and like the devil they quote scripture to meet their own absurd ends.

"Thou shalt note make to thyself any graven image," they say. "thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.' Now I'm the first to tell you that if you let one dot or squiggle of the law slip, the whole thing falls down, but I ask you when and to whom were these words spoken? [They were spoken] Before the age of grace, and to those who were "confined under the law."

In the age of grace, the Word became flesh. Jesus was born and in him God is with us. The fullness of God lived in Jesus. Jesus was fully God and fully human. We can make pictures of humans. Sudden grace and the law is made new! God was born in a baby ... and we all like to have pictures of babies.

Listen, my children: the blessed apostles saw Jesus. If they'd had cameras, they could have taken his picture for us to see. And the iconoclasts say we cannot have pictures of God. Who would not be amazed at their witless wisdom?

All of us may be depicted, for the one who cannot be depicted is not a person, but some abortive creature; indeed every living thing that has seen the light of day is naturally depictable. Hence Christ too may be depicted, even if the godless [iconoclasts] think otherwise and so deny the salutary Incarnation.

So images of Christ are not contrary to the law. And with those images, just like your computer icons, we can connect to God. We reverence the icons because they are like God. They show us something of God.

Even your American kids understand this. One boy when asked in Sunday school, "What is a saint?" Looked at the stained glass windows in his church and answered "The saints are people the light shines through." That kid must be an iconodule; he understands about icons. They let the light shine through. We call them windows to heaven.

In pictures of Jesus and the saints. we get a glimpse of God. Now it's not that we saints are perfect. You don't have to have our pictures to know that one. You just need to have more sense than an iconoclast and look at the things the saints have written. Like today's reading about praising famous men? Even my limited intelligence tells me that women are deserving of great praise for all those same gifts and maybe more. You only need to consider my sainted mother or my young friend Casia who as a maiden of 16 was the most gifted poet in all Christendom. "Famous men." Humph. Even I must admit that a dot or squiggle to change that bit of scripture wouldn't hurt. God won't be limited in God's choice of saints. Some of your kids here even have buttons that say "I am a saint in training." That's what we all are: children growing more and more in the image of Christ.

And see where logic has brought us: We find a third kind of icon besides the computer kind and the picture kind. The other icon of Christ, another image of Christ, is you. You are made in God's image. Christ lives in you. And the light shines through you like a saint in a stained glass window. Can you see it? Look around you. See the saints? See the images of Christ in the seat next to you? See the icons? You don't have to pretend to be a saint: you yourself are an icon of God.

You see Christ in icons. You see Christ in the saints. My beloved children, look for the image of Christ in your sisters in brothers. Reverence them and love them because in loving them you are showing your love for God. My saintly children, Live your life in a way that others can see Christ in you. Be an icon of Christ and face even the violent icon-smashing heretics with love. Know that whoever dares violate the image of Christ that you are, they shatter themselves on the rock of Christ.

But you, "even when they revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you, you are blessed" because you are icons of Christ. Doesn't sound like something to rejoice and be glad" about, does it? God knows the pain of living the truth. God knows what it's like to hang on a post and to die, whether in Palestine or Wyoming. The truth is there on the cross at the intersection of pain and blessing. There where "the truth shall set you free."

Before God, here in God's sanctuary, you are free to be all of who you were created to be. Here is a place where it is safe to throw away all the masks we hide behind. and be loved just as we are. We need not hide behind the saints or in the closets any longer.

Here is the place to celebrate our saintliness and to ask for healing where we are wounded Here is the place to be fed and strengthened and to find new life. Here is the place and now is the time to speak and not keep silent-- To tell the world that we will not tolerate the violence, and that the images of Christ cannot be shattered. Because Christ lives in you. And the life that is in you will never die.

Alleluia. Amen.

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