Actor Michael Simkins wrote in the Sunday Telegraph about our own peculiar preferences with iconology. Apparently the BBC and the British Museum had assembled some 600 items covering the history of the world, and a strange range they were, from Joel Garner’s size 16 cricket boots to the mask of the god Laran. He spoke about his own preferences and mentioned his early passion with Gilbert and Sullivan operas when he purchased a photograph of the great Savoyard, Sir Henry Lytton, which had been personally signed. It depicted Lytton in his pomp as the Duke of Plaza-Toro, complete with rough cheeks, beauty spot and towering curls completed with a tricorn hat. He took it to be framed, and looking at the order sheet of the proprietor of the shop, he saw written about his almost sacred picture, to identify it later, “Poof with wig.”
We consciously collect things as mementoes as we pass through life, really they are like icons jogging our memory of blessings received and deeds done. If our homes became a museum we would have certain articles in pride of place. As I write this I glance around my study and see very little I have saved over the years. I do have a ship in a glass bottle presented to me by my first church to commemorate 25 years in ministry 1959 – 84. The next 25 passed swiftly and almost unnoticed and there is nothing to record it, except a lined face and wisdom of the years. I also have a carved timber plate given to me in Sri Lanka when I went to preach there, made by the boys of the orphanage depicting John 15:5 and carved in 1986. It is quite beautiful and full of appreciation and love.
There is a small water colour in my lounge painted by my eldest son when he was training to be an architect, which was framed in Westbourne Road Gallery when we lived in Portobello. The manager was impressed with it and wanted to know if he had any more, but there was just the one. It reminds us of his industry, his artistic skill and his thoughtfulness to us as parents for this was his gift one Christmas, struggling as a student with high fees and little money. It was the best he could provide for us and it is very precious indeed.
When I retired from lecturing I was presented with a gilt edged volume made by one of the other lecturers [it was his hobby] and signed by all my other colleagues. Their comments are as fresh now as when they wrote them in 1984. I had started an end-of-term bread and cheese celebration to end the academic year, and it caught on rapidly. I baked the bread, all different kinds, starting at 5:00am, someone bought cheese from the market and others contributed home-made wine. It became known throughout the institution, and gate-crashers were commonplace, from the top brass downwards! Happy memories indeed.
I have a book amongst many in my library which is small and insignificant looking, and it was given to me by a woman I did not know when I preached a sermon that particularly blessed her. I cannot even remember which church it was, it was so long ago, but she went home and posted it to me, with extreme thanks for my ministry. The book is by C. H. Spurgeon, the great Victorian preacher with the largest church in London, he had personally signed it in his own hand. It must have been precious to her, but such was the ministry that day, that she parted with it as an act of reward for my faithfulness. As a young preacher it was a milestone in my adventure with God. It has history written all over it. There are many more expensive and fine books in my study, but that takes prime place.
Churches tend to become full of icons celebrating lives spent in service for God, and historic moments for the faith. Unfortunately that can become a way of life, and the past runs the future. We need to learn from the past for it often sets precedents that are useful in determining actions in response to situations, but in God, His way is perfect and it is always wise to get His determination on an issue.
Israel lived an iconic life but with no life. The divine presence was missing, God’s glory left Israel [Ezk 11:33] and although they had a temple and an ark, the Shekinah was missing. It was all an empty showcase; worship and sacrifice continued but God had left them to their willful ways. We must learn from that act, in case we boast of a presence we do not have. Our programmes for evangelism and for worship can be just that, but is God in it, does He inhabit the praise of His people, does He reign as king in the assembly, or is He pushed out by tradition, and even Pentecostal churches have that? Has the church become iconised?
