What I’ve come to realize via using this icon as a window into the Divine, is that icons demand of us the same painstaking process Rublev used to create his icons.
The words “laugh” or “laughter” are mentioned a number of times in the Bible; add in “laughingstock” and it comes out to more than 60 times (per my Bible software), including 4 times in just this passage. In almost every mention of the word, the laugh/laughter context is that of scorn or derision
“You don’t even know all that I have done. You think God will have anything to do with me if he knows me. I’ve been there.
Approached in a prayerful manner, the Bible is found to be always contemporary–not just writings composed in the distant past but a message addressed directly
I’m afraid in the world of spreading The Good News In Christ, the institutional church in the past century, has been too complacent to “kick for one”–and the result is declining membership in the mainline denominations.
As much as Li Tim-Oi suffered at the hands of the Japanese and the Communists, the rejection by her church of her priestly vocation must have been one of the hardest battles she had to endure… It’s hard to be a prophet, and it’s hard to be the first. It’s hard to face an enemy but even harder to face brothers and sisters of one’s own spiritual family.
Jesus does good without recourse to the relative merit, or lack of merit, of the royal official. He did not reject the man because he was a servant of Herod Antipas, despite the cruel treatment to John.
It’s also important to consider that human nature reveals at times our “magnanimous” behavior isn’t always as magnanimous as it seems. I call it “The Mismatched Pieces of Pie Gambit.”
The disciples asked who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven but I don’t think they liked the answer.
All three of today’s readings invite Christians and all other religious people to develop creative relationships toward one another in our different religious expressions.