Sermon for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

Luke 8:5–15

Today the Church remembers the holy fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. They met in Nicaea in the year 787. Today’s Gospel gives us the parable of the sower. At first these two may seem far apart. But they belong together.

Christ tells us that “a sower went out to sow his seed.” Some fell on the path and was trodden down. Some fell on rock and withered. Some fell among thorns and was choked. And some fell on good soil and bore fruit a hundredfold. Then the Lord explains it plainly. “The seed is the word of God.”

What is this Word? Saint John tells us at the start of his Gospel. The Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So the Word of God is not only a sound we hear. He is a Person we can see. He has a face. He is Christ.

This is exactly what the fathers of the council defended. For more than fifty years the iconoclasts had smashed icons and persecuted those who honoured them. They said that to paint Christ was to make an idol. The fathers answered with great clarity. Because God became man, he can be shown. To refuse to paint his face is, in the end, to doubt that he truly took our flesh.

Saint John of Damascus, whose teaching the council followed, said he did not worship matter. “I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake.”

The council also drew a careful line. Worship belongs to God alone. Icons receive honour and veneration. As Saint Basil taught, and the council repeated, “the honour paid to the image passes to the prototype.” In other words, it passes to the one shown. When we kiss the icon of the Mother of God, our love goes to her. When we bow before the icon of Christ, we bow to Christ himself.

So an icon is like the seed in the parable. It is the Word of God, shown in colour instead of spoken in sound. It is the Gospel for the eyes.

But the parable also warns us. The same seed can fall on very different ground. We can walk past the icons in this church every Sunday and never really look. That is the hard path. We can be moved for a moment, light a candle, and forget by Monday. That is the rocky ground. We can mean well, but let worry and busyness and the phone in our pocket choke everything. Those are the thorns.

The fathers show us the good soil. Many of them had suffered. Some had been exiled or beaten. Monks had been mocked in the streets. Yet they did not give up. They are those who, in the Lord’s words, “hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”

Patience is the key word. Seeds do not grow overnight. Faith does not either. The fathers waited, prayed and kept going. And the whole Church received the fruit. Every time we enter this church and see the faces of Christ and his saints, we are enjoying the harvest they sowed.

The icons in our homes and in this church are seeds still being sown. Each time we stand before the face of Christ, the Word falls again into our hearts. The Sower never grows tired. He comes back to the same ground again and again, with great love and great patience.

The fathers of the council knew this. Their own hearts were not always easy soil. Yet by God’s grace they bore a rich harvest. That same grace is at work in us. By the prayers of the holy fathers, even hard and stony ground can become good soil. Amen.