
It’s hard to avoid Rublev’s famous icon of the Hospitality of Abraham on Trinity Sunday.
We’ve just had our first ‘big’ party since I took up office as Bishop. Entertaining is something Jean and I really want to do, but for large scale entertaining we at least need to feel ‘at home’ ourselves first, and properly geared up to it.
Then, it’s fine. And I have to say that the evening felt very right and seemed very well appreciated. And after all, hospitality towards both friends and strangers is a deeply rooted value in our faith.
Abraham entertains three strangers who turn out to be messengers from God and perhaps in some sense God himself. This must have been in the mind of the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews when he wrote, “Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebs 13.1-2) And of course Jesus teaches us plainly in the parable of the sheep and the goats that when welcome a stranger we welcome Him. (Mt 25.35).
So here is something which is at the heart of our faith. God welcomes us back to him when we have become strangers to Him, prodigal sons and daughters, and he asks us in return to welcome others – into our own lives, and into His Life. Furthermore, if we do not welcome others ourselves, we put at risk our own welcome by God. This is a lesson we need to learn, even if it is sometimes a hard one, especially for the more introverted or hurt among us.
There is a deeper mystery here too. Deep within the heart of God there is a sort of eternal welcome going on. One of the important truths of the doctrine of the Trinity is that although God is One, He is not One that is cold or closed-in on Himself. He is Love, love in action not a disembodied ideal, and within His own being are, as St Augustine put it, the lover, the beloved and the love that flows between them – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
It is this truth that the great icon painter – or icon writer as they properly say – Andrei Rublev tried to make present to us in his work that we call The Hospitality of Abraham or The Old Testament Trinity. The very act of making an icon was, according to St Gregory Palamas, a response of love to God for His love to us. It aimed, according to St John Damascene, to be God present to us in the image of the picture just as the Bible is God present to us in the Word, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. So reading the icon becomes an act of prayer that unites us with the Father, in Christ his image, through the Spirit: we are brought into the very life of the Trinity.
The way the icon is painted brings this truth to life. Rublev has left out the figures of Abraham and Sarah to concentrate on the presence of God. On the left is the angel representing the Father – with Abraham’s house behind Him representing the Father’s house of many rooms into which we are invited. Like all the figures he holds a rod of authority and is clothed in blue, the colour of the heavens and divinity, here overlain with the shimmering purplish-gold of majesty and transcendence. With his right hand he blesses the Son, represented by the angel in the middle, in whom He is well pleased.
The Son wears his blue like a deacon’s stole, over the crimson tunic of His incarnation and passion – His unvarying garments in the eastern tradition. Behind him the tree of the oasis’s life stands for the Cross, the Tree of Life itself. He bows towards the Father in obedience – ‘Thy will be done’ – and blesses the cup of sacrifice which is in front of Him. The cup contains literally the meat prepared by Abraham for his guests, but spiritually the sacrifice of the Passover and of Christ himself, and the Communion in which we share.
To the right is the angel representing the Holy Spirit, on Whom the gaze of the Father rests, as He sends Him to be our Comforter. The Spirit is clothed in the green of the resurrection life which He leads us into, and behind Him is the mountain of prayer which is also the rock from which living water pours out for us.
The Spirit points downwards, to a rectangular opening in the front of the altar, for that is how we must read the table. The opening is four cornered, as the earth was said to be, and in an altar would have held the relics of martyrs, of those who shared in Christ’s suffering as His witnesses, and share now in His risen life. Christ’s hand also blesses here as it blesses the cup above, and we are shown that His sacrifice is indeed for the salvation of the world, and – most importantly – that we share in that salvation by entering into the sacrifice.
Finally, standing back from the icon, we can see that its very composition is making the same point as its parts. The three angels and the opening, which is us, form a circle – our invitation to be joined into the eternal love of the Godhead. The heads going across and the opening, the cup, the head of Christ and the tree going upwards then make the sign of the Cross, by which we have our entry into that circle of sacrifice. And finally see how the bodies of the two outer angels frame the shape of another cup between them: the cup of communion that is the sacrament of God’s presence with us and ours with Him.
So the whole icon is a deliberate invitation to us to enter the circle of loving sacrifice, to be joined with God, and to find our joy and our salvation there. In modern times the writer Henri Nouwen looked long at it, and at a time of great stress and exhaustion found in it a renewing peace that reminded him of a verse from Psalm 84: “The sparrow has found its home at last … Happy are those who live in your house.”
So, back to the week that each of us has just left behind us, and to the week that lies ahead of us. It is into those weeks that God has called us. It is there that we must spend our daily lives, and face in them the challenges of both friend and stranger, of both trying to do good and confronting evil.
God’s word to us is that we are not called to this only, though, and not to do it in our own strength. We are also called to spend time in the circle of His love. We are already citizens of heaven, daughters and sons of His family, welcome in His home. In prayer, with the help of an icon like Rublev’s or without it, we can share in the hospitality and refreshment of heaven even while we offer it to others here on earth. And when the cost is more than we can bear, we can find a place in the heart of God’s love, a place like the place of the martyrs, and know that we are safe.
Post Communion Prayer for Trinity Sunday
Almighty and eternal God,
you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and live and reign in the perfect unity of love:
hold us firm in this faith,
that we may know you in all your ways
and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory,
who are three Persons yet one God,
now and for ever.