Under the light of the full moon

Here it is, pre-dawn of Friday and almost through Publican and Pharisee week successfully. I mean, I was able to remember to eat steak on Wednesday and fill my belly with good things that I will soon be foregoing: my favorite sandwich, beef pastrami and swiss on rustic wheat bread, at least once almost every day—my panini press hasn’t been so busy since I first got it. Use up all the meat and cheese in the fridge, get ready to become a grass eating ox during the great fast! What a Pharisee I can be while proving to myself that I am an utter publican! Did Luther really say we’re still sinners, even in the best of life? If he did, I think I know what he meant.

In the night my inmost self instructs me, as the psalmist sings.
I remember my astonishment and shame when, visiting the house of fellow Orthodox during a pilgrimage to a local monastery, I noticed a large, very detailed ikon hanging high above a doorway leading to a study off their living room. I was drawn to it because its main feature was a large boat. I love ikons with ships. One of my favorites is St Nicholas saving drowning sailors at sea, where a ship under full sail is the central element. This ikon had a vague resemblance to it, but the ship was larger and there were far more people out of the boat. I went closer to get a better look.

It turned out to be not an ikon one could venerate, but an illustration rendered in ikonographic style of ‘the good ship Orthodoxy’ and the various non-Orthodox and non-Christian ‘forces’ battling against it.

I was astonished and ashamed because I was visiting with a brother who was not an Orthodox Christian by church affiliation, and he too saw this image given a place of honor in an Orthodox home, making him suddenly an outsider and declaring him unwelcome in that home, in our home the Holy Church, and making me a liar and my love for him a pretense. How could he not feel that this image somehow threw him out of the ark of salvation where his faith had placed him?

Many pious people have acquired this image with the best of intentions, but it is not an ikon, it is no more than an angry polemical piece. Of course, it is incumbent on Christians to defend the truths of faith against heresy, but to portray the Pope of Rome, other non-Orthodox, and non-Christians as being demons out to destroy Orthodoxy is not possible in an ikon, which is never political, even if the politics are church politics. Even in ikons of the martyrs, their persecutors are not portrayed this way. Nor do you see the Jewish authorities portrayed thus in ikons of the betrayal, passion and crucifixion of Christ. Looking like an ikon does not make an ikon, just as looking like a Christian doesn’t make a Christian.

Why does this incident come to my memory now? Well, because the Pharisee spirit can so blatantly reveal itself in the guise of piety and sometimes be venerated in the Church as much as that image was honored in that house we visited. The result was the eventual estrangement of my friend from Orthodoxy, seeing in it the same defects that estranged him from his Baptist upbringing, and I can understand why. How can you trust what a friend tells you about the Church when you see the enemy in its very heart? Not having the forbearance of one who has ‘seen everything’ and knows for sure that you must have faith even in the face of sin within the Church, hurt feelings can throw you overboard.

It’s still dark, and the full moon is setting in the west, while I write by its waning light, and the sun won’t rise for over two hours yet. The Pharisee in me writhes with embarrassment, knowing that he can’t hide much longer, and the publican hasn’t yet arisen from the floor, where his face is cast downwards, his forehead kneading the pavement and drenching his pillow with tears. Why is it that we stone one another so frequently? Why is it that we love to triumph over our defects in others but not in ourselves? In my mind’s ear this stanza from Bob Dylan’s song Rainy Day Women keeps sounding…

Well, they'll stone you when you're trying to be so good
They'll stone you just like they said they would
They'll stone you when you're trying to go home
Then they'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

The heartless reasoning that we put on as mental clothing, wrapping ourselves in the very vanity that we thank God we’ve been delivered from! Don’t we understand yet that fig leaves will not cover our nakedness before the Lord? Don’t we understand yet that He has already provided for us a covering, the fleece of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world? We stand proud and cast glances of pious false pity at everything and everyone we feel ourselves superior to. We are caught dead in our tracks as we ready ourselves to stone our infidelities in the other harlot, while ignoring the written Word of God, that His own finger carves not on tablets of stone but doodles in the dust of our hearts.

O heavenly God hidden in weakness and rejection! Becoming sin for us, You have taken away our shame and hold out to us in Your open, pierced palms the Bread of Life, yet we turn away to consume the bread of suffering, of tears, we prefer to remain in our camps and grumble at manna and quails! Forty years are not enough to purge us of our insane cravings, we want to enter the land of promise but without walking there on the only road possible, following Jesus. Instead, pining after dead Moses whose body has disappeared, we collect fragments of broken tablets and stay in the wilderness.
Save us, O Lord! Save Your people and bless Your inheritance!

Help us, heavenly Shepherd. Guide us, quietly but firmly, back to the flock, back to dwell close by the shepherd’s tents. Make us meek again, renew our childhood, open to us the gates of repentance.