#89 Father Michael Explains the Orthodox Crucifixion Icon + Father Michael Butler

Today we're going to do a crucifixion. We're going to walk through it piece by piece. It's gross, it's violent, it's something that's really hard to watch.

But there's so much scripture in there that we might be missing. There is an historical event in the crucifixion, yes.

There's also then the question, what does it mean? So what am I missing when I don't study iconography?

You don't just see a raw event. We see the event with richness and fullness to it.

Christ holds all of the tension together in himself. See, that's good stuff.

So what am I missing? Hi, it's Cass. I wanted to first start off by saying thank you for listening. I created this because I could not find it anywhere else on the internet.

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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking.

My name is Kassim Blino and I am your host. If you have known our previous episodes with Father Michael, then you know anything about orthodoxy, sin, confession, and most recently we talked about the icon of the nativity scene from the orthodox perspective where we broke down all the different aspects that you see in the icon.

Today we're gonna do the same thing but for the crucifixion. If you have seen the orthodox depiction of the crucifixion, there's a lot going on.

So today we're going to walk through it piece by piece to understand it because you might be like me. I know my depiction of the crucifixion is what we see in Passion of the

Christ, what's on every Easter Sunday, and it's gross, it's violent, it's something that's really hard to watch but there's so much scripture in there that we might be missing.

There's a lot of context and imagery and symbolism. There's a lot of prophecies that are fulfilled, all of which is going over my head so I called in the big guns and I brought in Father Michael.

So this is somebody who you should go back, you should listen to our episodes with him. I mean, every single episode does so well and it's making me fall back in love with the orthodox faith that I was raised with but if you are new to, biblically speaking, and maybe you haven't heard any episodes, this is why you should listen.

He's highly credentialed. Father Michael, you have been a priest for over 30 years.

You just recently retired as of what, six, two weeks ago? Yeah, two months ago, yeah.

Two months ago but from a educational standpoint, you've worked with the Foundation for Research and Economics in the

Environment, you've worked at the Liberty Fund, you've worked at the Action Institute, you have a PhD in church history and patristics, you specialize in St.

Maximus the Confessor, you've taught at the university level, you've helped form church leaders, you've worked across theology history and social thought, you coach men, you're a father, you're a husband, you're now a grandfather.

So this is the person to talk to when it comes to understanding the orthodox faith. Thank you so much for coming back on the show,

Father Michael. Always a pleasure, always a pleasure. I enjoy being here. It's so good to have you back amidst all of our tech issues.

No one knows but we had to re -record the last 10 minutes because everything shut down. That to me is just the spirit, the enemy doesn't want us to talk about this.

I think it's gonna be a great conversation. Yeah, yeah, I've seen stuff like that happen before. Doesn't surprise me in the least.

Right, when we were shutting down, I'm like, come on, God, come on, God. But getting back into the crucifixion, my experience with it is kind of the movies.

So from the orthodox perspective, when you watch Passion of the Christ, kind of all I know, did you have notes or did you say, right, that was perfect?

No, frankly, I found it gross and disturbing. I think there was a little too graphic for my taste, to be perfectly honest.

And while I think there was a lot of historical accuracy there, I think there was, well, when things are done for the cinema, it was like somebody wise in the last century said, you know, an authentic dialogue can only take place between two people because if there's any more present, you can't help playing to the gallery.

And so since it was a movie, it was kind of playing to the gallery. And I think there's a little of that there, a little too theatrical for my tastes.

Way too much blood and gore. But wasn't it bloody and gory? It was bloody and gory.

How does that improve upon this? Okay, there is an historical event in the crucifixion, yes.

There's also then the question of what does it mean? And the meaning of it is sometimes greater than what we see.

I forget now who it was. I was listening to someone say, you know, when Moses and the

Israelites crossed the Red Sea, you know, it probably wasn't quite a Cecil B. DeMille, you know, depiction of standing walls of water and all of this.

It might have seemed rather ordinary at the time. It might not have been except in retrospect that they realized the significance of what had happened.

It is people in the moment don't always appreciate that this is a moment, you know, that somehow pregnant with more meat is only reflecting on it later or looking back as we're gonna do when we talk about this icon, looking back at prior events in light of something that comes later.

You know, there's a lot of like Old Testament stories when we talk about, we'll talk about types and prophecies about the crucifixion that maybe didn't seem quite so meaningful at the time, or they had one meaning at the time, but in light of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, they take on even greater meaning that no one could have anticipated or seen.

And so a lot of things that are significant to us or we see in retrospect. And so, yeah,

I mean, back to the passion of the Christ, I just personally didn't care for the thing. And maybe that's just a matter of taste, but there is -

But yet, you have so much meaning for it. I mean, that sentence doesn't demean any, you know, value that you have for the crucifixion.

You're not saying that it wasn't a big event or that it didn't have a lot of meaning. It's more so, let's not get caught up in the blood and the gore and the theatrics.

And the cinema, and the cinemography, yeah. Okay, so from the Orthodox perspective, the crucifixion looks very different.

So what am I missing when I don't study iconography? You know, what's the value that we're gonna uncover today?

Well, like in all Orthodox icons, they're, gosh, it's a phrase

I'm about to use that I don't like to use because it has some inaccuracy, but sort of window into heaven.

So what we're looking at when we see an icon is something we're trying to show sort of the universal meaning of the event depicted, you know, if it's an icon of an event, like of the resurrection, the crucifixion, or like we discussed a few months ago, the birth of Christ in the cave in Bethlehem.

So what we're trying to do in an icon is to point to and to give a rich presentation of an event with a lot of the depth that is hinted at so that when you look at it, you don't just see a raw event, a snapshot, a photograph taken out of context and viewed in isolation and in sterile isolation, but we see the event with richness and fullness to it.

And we'll go into that because as you mentioned earlier, there's a whole lot of details all over the icon that point to things that are deeper and to the deeper meaning of what it is that Christ did for us on the cross.

Yeah, so you think that understanding these symbols that are depicted within the icon are going to help us further understand a deeper meaning regarding his sacrifice?

That could be, we miss when we just kind of glance at it or if we don't know scripture very well. Exactly. Okay, well, happy Easter.

Okay, so the crucifixion icon, why does it exist? Is it, like, how should somebody who's not familiar with iconography within their faith treat it?

Is it artwork? Is it to remind them? Is it a guidance for prayer? In the first place, it exists because the

Christian church has always made images of persons who are important to them and also of significant events in salvation history.

I mean, you can look at the catacombs in the second century, painted in the year 120, 150.

We find the three holy children in the furnace of flames. We find Daniel in the lion's den.

We find Christ, the good shepherd. We find scenes of the ascension. We see images of the last supper.

And what's remarkable about, and Martin used to speak English. What's remarkable about those images is that the

Orthodox iconography still very closely tracks to some of those earliest images that were ever created.

There is a consistency of style, of composition, and of organization, and therefore of understanding that has persisted from the very earliest days of the church down to the present, okay?

So when we look at an icon, for example, of the crucifixion of Christ, it's gonna look like, if it's an icon, then it's gonna look relatively the same, whether it was painted yesterday, last year, last century, or 1 ,000 years ago.

They're going to, and I don't have a number of examples. I could have pulled up some examples for you, but they look largely the same because there is a canon.

There is a rule because an icon isn't just an artist's interpretation of something that happened.

It's not individualistic at all. It's a statement of theology. It's like a treatise or a dogmatic definition or something.

And so it's supposed to tell us something about the crucif-, in this case, the crucifixion, that the church has always believed.

So I don't want to get in the way of telling the story by putting my own spin interpretation, you know, or, you know, dolling it up with whatever

I think might be nice to go in there. That just gets between the viewer and the event. And so, like, you know, very few icons are ever even signed by the artist because the, you know, the artist who painted it is not what's important.

He's making a statement or she's making a statement of Orthodox faith. And so a person ought to come to an icon and see what the

Christian church has always believed about the resurrection, the crucifixion, the transfiguration of Christ, his baptism by John in the

Jordan. You know, those are the kinds of things that we represent in icons, which are about usually events in the life of Christ or in salvation history.

You know, for instance, yeah, I don't, we don't see it here on the background, but there, I'll turn my camera. You see up in the corner, see there is, that's

Jonah coming out of the belly of the whale. Okay. Yeah, I see it. I mean, once I tell you what it is, you understand it because you kind of had the idea.

So Jonah's being vomited out of the belly of the whale there. Now, a lot of them look rather like that, you know?

So if you, once I said it, you caught it immediately because it was familiar. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't, you know, some abstract representation of it.

And footnote, I have that one there because of all the men's work that I do. It's at the point when men had been in a really dark place, like in the belly of a whale for a long time, and they're starting to come out and they know that they need some help to get all the way out.

That's about where they are in the Jonah story. And so I keep the icon of Jonah being vomited out of the belly of the whale in the background.

So when I can see it in my own camera, but also the men I talk to can say, okay, this is where you are.

You're on the way out. Things are better. You know, let's get you on dry land. Yeah, get you going.

So all that by the side. To encounter an icon is to encounter a representation or a teaching.

It's an expression of faith. It's an expression of the truth of scriptural and religious truth.

And so you ought to approach it with veneration. You look at it and you approach it, you know, not as sort of not, you know, one step above looking down at it.

We approach it with veneration because it's teaching us something. We approach it in humility. And in Orthodox practice, as you know, we venerate icons.

We kiss them. We bow before them. In liturgical services, we cinch them with incense to honor the image of God that's depicted there.

Because in Orthodox understanding, an icon is not simply a photograph. It's not simply a remembrance, a memorial of something.

The theology behind the icon is that, excuse me, is that it makes present here and now the event that's depicted in the icon.

And so when we stand before the icon of the crucifixion, for example, we are standing at Golgotha.

That's the idea that's being presented here. And so how would you stand at Golgotha? You know, were you there when they crucified my

Lord? You know, what's the attitude you would take if you were there? You know, casually sprawled out in a pew, you know, scrolling your phone with one hand is not really the attitude we take, you know, when we take these things seriously.

So, you know, that's some of what we do. And so, and we put these icons, you know, they're painted on panels.

We put them on the walls of our churches, giant frescoes on the walls of our churches to remind us of the events of salvation history as teaching things.

And I've always, you know, if I could ever point to an icon and say, look, see this element here in this way.

This is what I'm talking about. See, there it is. And we'll do that with the icon here directly.

You know, but, you know, they are there for educational purposes. Here's what took place at the nativity of Christ when he was born.

Look, there's the star. Look, there are the angels. Look, here are the wise men. Look, there are the shepherds. Look, what's

Joseph doing down there in the corner? Why are there over here? You know, what's this little tree in the center?

Okay, and then when you unfold all of that, you'd realize that, my

God, you know, the birth of Christ was the culmination of, well, the entire

Old Testament found its fruition, you know, in that cave in Bethlehem. And all of these little elements are there to draw it all out, to give it context and meaning.

So when you see that, all of this stuff flowers and finds its fulfillment there. And when you start playing around with it, it gets really fun real fast.

As you know. Yeah, let's have some fun. As you know. Oh, I have so much fun. Today, we're gonna jump right into that and have a bunch of fun.

So what I'm gonna do is you sent me over a couple icons. And this is so fun for me because, like, I grew up with icons.

Like, within the icons of the house, my every, like, in college, my dad sent me to college with icons. And now you just, you take them for granted.

I'm sad to say, but you're just like, okay, this is just part of the religion that I'm being raised in. I'll kiss it,

I'll pray to him, and I'll go about my day. But this is kind of like we said, it's making theology made present.

It's making a structural present. It's a moment. It's not a photo. It's not an interpretation artistically.

It is something that connects a lot of theology, which is why I love this conversation. So I'm just gonna share my screen.

And so anybody that is visually listening to this podcast, you should be able to see, see a tab, show notes, maybe this one.

Okay, great. I love when things work out. It works. So you should be able to.

So let's start with the main character, Christ on the cross. Can I do a little prelude before, a little intro before we go further here?

Yeah, yeah, announce her. Yeah, one of the things that I'm going to get, that I use often when

I'm talking about this icon is I'm gonna start not here, but at the very end of scripture in the book of Revelation, the apocalypse.

And in Revelation chapter 13, verse eight, it mentions that Christ was the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth.

So if the lamb of God has been slain since the foundation of the earth, that means that somehow the crucifixion has to have been in God's plan from the foundation of the earth.

That somehow the cross of Christ is there from the very beginning. And what this tells us also then is that all of the events, there are many events in the

Old Testament then that point to it and that will become clear in what we say.

And on this, I would quote a second, third century, third century Saint, Melito of Sardis, who wrote this beautiful poem on Pascha on the resurrection of Christ.

And he says in the middle of it, starting in verse 58, it's sort of a poem. It says, thus the mystery of the

Lord prefigured from of old through the vision of a type, I'll tell you what a type is directly, is today fulfilled and has found faith even though people think it's something new.

For the mystery of the Lord is both new and old, old with respect to the law, but new with respect to grace.

But if you scrutinize the type through the outcome, you will discern him. So if you want to see the mystery of the

Lord, look at Abel, who was likewise slain, at Isaac, who was likewise tied up, at Joseph, who was likewise traded, at Moses, who was likewise exposed, at David, who was likewise hunted down, and at the prophets, who likewise suffer for the sake of Christ.

And so all of those persons just mentioned and many more besides did things or had things happen to them that were the same kind of things that happened to Christ.

And what Melito mentions, and we'll talk about this because it's a nice distinction for your listeners.

In the Old Testament, there are a couple of kinds of prophecy, if you will. Prophecy is verbal, thus saith the

Lord. We kind of understand that. But there's also prophecy in things, objects that somehow are present in the

Old Testament, but somehow find their fulfillment or their real meaning in the New Testament. We call that a type. And so, for example, a standard mention is the bronze serpent that Moses raised in the wilderness, which is mentioned in the book of Numbers.

Christ himself makes reference to that in St. John's Gospel, chapter three. He says, just as Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness, so shall the

Son of Man be lifted up. And so the bronze serpent is a type. It's a prophecy of what happened to Christ, but it wasn't a verbal, thus saith the

Lord kind of thing. It was an image that didn't find its fullest meaning until Christ was crucified.

So a lot of what we'll see in the icon of the crucifixion, like in many icons, are going to be types or images or things in the

Old, people, places, and things, you know, the old definition of a noun, that were in the

Old Testament that we don't fully understand until the work of Christ is completed. So that's sort of my little basis and background.

But you want me just to go on, or did you wanna ask specific questions? Oh, no, we are gonna get surgical with this.

Okay, so we're gonna go piece by piece. Thank you for that intro to this, because I think this is going to be quite a bit.

But let's start with Christ. So he looks peaceful, you know? And in some depictions, people say that he even looks triumphant.

So this is arguably one of the worst ways to die. Shouldn't he be in more agony? No, because we look at it through the lens of what he did for us.

And, you know, at least, you know, in more classical Christian understanding, the work of Christ was not simply to be wracked in agony and to splatter blood everywhere, you know, fully expressing the wrath of God in the most graphic way possible.

But he triumphed on the cross. This is his victory over death and over sin.

And so very often, and in almost all icons, all of the figures are rather peaceful because we look at it through a lens of eternity as well.

And so, yes, in fact, in here, Christ has just died, as you see his eyes are closed.

So Christ has died. And there on the crossbeam of the cross are two little letters on the left,

IC and on the right, XC, which is abbreviations for the Greek Jesus Christ.

And he's got his halo there. And if you look up at the top, the title above his head, which I know you can't see without, you know, dropping down the, you know, the menu, but it doesn't say

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, it says King of Glory. Basileus Dix Doxis, Tsar Slavu in Slavonic, because that's who he is.

Behold, the King of Glory enters. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory. Because this is the moment -

But this wasn't actually written on the cross when he died. No, no, it wasn't. And so this is a subsequent understanding, the understanding of the church of what

Christ is doing. Sometimes you will see I -N -R -I, you know, Jesus Nazareum, Rex Iudorum, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the

Jews. But very often in Orthodox icons, what you'll see is King of Glory, because this is who this is.

This is the bridegroom of the church, you know, seen through the book of Revelation. So this is the, his moment of most abject humiliation and apparent defeat is the moment of his greatest victory and triumph.

So we hold both of those together at the same time. And I'll point out, let's do the vertical access here first.

So the cross is set upright here in the center. Of course, the cross stands upright. The top of it points up to heaven.

And you see in this particular icon, there are a couple of angels flying around in heaven up there. Okay, so we've got angels in heaven, the cross stands on earth, and the bottom of the cross is bound, is, you know, stuck into the earth.

And so the cross itself unites heaven and earth and hell all at the same time.

So it forms this axis that unites everything together. And there at the bottom center, right under the cross, we see a little skull and crossbones down there.

That is Adam. That's Adam's skull and crossbones, yes. Yes, because the place of the skull was traditionally the place where Adam died and was buried.

And it underscores that Christ is the second Adam. Just as the first Adam disobeyed

God and fell into sin and died, so Christ, the second Adam, or the new Adam, obedient to his father, dies and out of his obedience, overcomes sin and death.

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Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now, back to the show. So that's part of the imagery that's going on there.

And this is where also you get the skull and crossbones that used to be on bottles of poison and the skull and crossbones on the

Jolly Roger that's on every pirate's flag. This is actually where it comes from, okay? It came from the icon of the crucifixion?

It comes from the icon of the crucifixion, yeah. Why a crossbones? I just got to put the thigh bones somewhere.

It's a very often they make it symmetrical. See, these aren't symmetrical. They're just bones laying around down there. It's not very obvious to me that that's

Adam. No, it is Adam, yeah. How would, I guess, like ancient viewers of this icon have connected that?

If it's not, these are the bones of Adam, like that's not written out, right? In some icons it's actually written there, yeah.

Oh, okay. Where things are a little more carefully labeled, yeah. But again, you find it in the hymnography of the church.

Okay. The songs that are sung at the services for Great and Holy Friday, for the day of the crucifixion.

I mean, all of this is in the readings from the fathers, the readings of the scriptures, that are all surround the observance and the celebration of the crucifixion of Christ.

So all of the orthodox services with all of their hymnology and all of the, are all meditations on the event and on the scriptures and on the prophecies that surround the event.

And so anybody who's standing in church on Good Friday would catch references to this, to Christ, the second

Adam and to the first Adam, who are there. Okay. So yeah, this needs to be said.

Is there significance with the angels here that are flying by that we kind of miss or is this to add decor?

You know, like are these - They're not quite there to add decor. Again, like I say, the cross stands with its top in heaven, its basis in hell or in Hades there, and standing upright.

So it functions as an axis of the world, an axis mundi, like a world tree. There are references to world trees in the

Old Testament and in a lot of pagan literature. But note, it's hard to see, but the angels, they're covering their faces as they fly.

Because this is - Yeah, they look like they're crying. Yeah, this is a mystery upon which even the angels dare not gaze.

Because who is Christ? He is the Son of God, is the second person of the Trinity. This is God -made flesh who is doing something absolutely incomprehensible.

How can God die? And it's too much for even the angels.

They cover their faces in awe. Now, there are things that are really beyond us.

Again, this is something we approach with reverence and with awe, not just to gawk at stuff, you know, and maybe even that's partly why

I think, you know, like the rendition of the Passion of the Christ, you know, being a little too bloody and gory, a little too cinemagraphic, it doesn't give room for, it shoves out the sense of awe and reverence as to what

Christ has done there, okay? Maybe that's what lies behind it. It's good to think these things out.

At any rate, that's a matter of opinion. You can take it or leave it. Yeah, so I'm just kind of connecting this and maybe this is something

I should have asked earlier, but if this is representing Hades, does that assume that Adam is in Hades?

Oh, yeah. What? Oh, yeah. Everybody who died before Christ was in Hades.

What? You need to distinguish between Hades and the Lake of Fire of Hell that's in Revelation.

Go back and - Those are two different places? Yes. Go back and look, go back and read in the

Psalms. I can't tell you which Psalm off the top of my head, but there are Psalms that make reference to who in the grave can praise you, or who can honor you in that dark and shady place.

The ancient Hebrews had a notion of Hades where all of the dead went after they died. It wasn't a place of punishment.

The Lake of Fire is reserved for Satan and all his angels after the second coming of Christ. There's nobody there now, okay?

But Hades was a repository - I thought they were just using that term interchangeably. People use it in a sloppy manner, but here when, okay, where we're getting into nitty gritty, we need to be clear on what we understand.

And you look at the Old Testament references to Hades and what the Jewish belief about Hades, it's just like a storage place, underground caverns where the souls of the departed were there.

They were shaved, they were barely conscious. They couldn't quite get anything out. Anyway, that's in the

Psalms and in the scriptures. So you can see what the Old Testament says about that. It was not a place of punishment.

So everybody who died before Christ died on the cross is in Hades. And if I had an icon of the resurrection, one of the most famous icons of the resurrection is what we call the harrowing of hell.

And it shows Christ rising in glory out of the pit of Hades, the bronze gates of Hades torn off their hinges and thrown down.

And Christ, as he comes out, lifts an old man and an old woman out of their graves.

And it's Adam and Eve. And they're symbolic of all of humanity that Christ is raising up out of the grave and out of Hades, bringing life to everybody.

Is this what they meant in that scripture where it kind of says like people, like even people in their graves that have been dead a long time.

We know when Jesus rose from the dead, so did a lot of other people. You know, that's kind of one of those verses where we're like, what's going on there?

Yes, in point of fact, in the Orthodox services for Great and Holy Saturday, which is Saturday after the crucifixion and death of Christ, the day between the crucifixion and Easter Sunday, when

Christ is risen from the dead, it says in the epistles of Peter and elsewhere in the

New Testament, forgive me, I can't quote chapter and verse right now. It says that Christ went into Hades.

That John the Baptist, when he died, went down into Hades and preached the coming of the Messiah. And Christ went down there and preached to those in the grave.

And when he arose, he took everybody out with him. So there ain't nobody left in Hades, at least in the classical

Christian understanding. Am I wrong to take a logistic, like a realistic, like a literal interpretation of that verse as a

Christian today and be like, okay, so zombies. Like how do we, you know, is this like spiritual?

Is this like one of those things where it doesn't mean something like zombies were up out of the ground walking around suddenly? Well, the souls of all the departed, no, they're not zombies because they don't come up with their bodies.

Okay, so that was the clarification that I need. I thought that the way that it was written made it seem like Adam and Eve were back.

Well, they are, but not in their brightest. They're with Christ in heaven, along with all the, you know, the great cloud of witnesses that's mentioned in Hebrews 11, you know?

And, you know, all of the martyrs that are under the altar crying, how long, oh Lord, in Revelation chapter, what is that, four or five?

You know, because he is the God of the living, not the God of the dead.

And that Protestant notion of soul sleep doesn't obtain in Orthodox. Okay, I needed that clarification.

That was one of those like Christian things where we're like, yeah, yeah, our faith is so cool. Yeah, it is, it is when you have the fullness of it.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, back to the icon, and we'll never get through. Yeah, stop distracting me.

You're seeing more stuff that's here. This is why this is so much fun, you know? Okay, so we've done sort of the vertical axis here.

The rest of the icon, in the background, you see sort of city walls. Okay, that's what that is.

That's what the architecture in the background is. It's the walls of Jerusalem, because we know from the epistle to the

Hebrews that Christ was crucified outside the city. You know, he was crucified outside the city, so we go with him.

We have no abiding home here. We go out with him bearing his reproach. That's what it says in Hebrews.

So he's in the city or in the countryside outside the city of Jerusalem there. Okay, further in the corners, upper corners, you see what you have on the right is the sun, and on the left is the moon, and they're sort of in like little clouds there, which sort of shows, you know, they're sort of breaking into the scene a little bit here, but we see some stars and also, yeah.

So there's the moon over there, and on the other side is the sun, and they're not real bright because as we know from the gospel accounts, the sun hit its rays, that the sun was darkened for three hours.

See, even creation itself could not bear to look upon what was taking place.

Oh, so this is, so why is the sun and the moon there? Because I understand like there was an eclipse, so that's why the sun is there, that's why it's dark, but why is the moon there?

For balance, and also because all of the heavens turn their eyes away from what's going on on the cross.

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Yeah. Okay, so this is to symbolize not just the scientific eclipse that happened, but -

Which may or may not have happened. And no solar eclipse lasts three hours, by the way. So, at any rate.

Oh, do you think it maybe didn't happen? I'm thinking it was probably more supernatural, and that trying to find naturalistic explanations for what took place, or it's a fruitless endeavor.

The scripture says that the sun was darkened for three hours. I was present for totality in the eclipse that happened, what, last year or a couple of years ago?

Yeah, it lasts like five minutes, that's all. So, I'm not interested in historical accounts of that.

The sun and the moon, it says the sun was darkened. There's an Old Testament prophecy about the moon being darkened.

I didn't bother to pull that one up, I apologize. I don't have that one. But so we have the sun and the moon there, which represent day and night as well, and yet they're also dark, and so we have those.

And then there's another element here. We see there were people attending upon the crucifixion of Christ, right?

So, on the left hand, there's his mother, Mary. Yeah, she's right there in front. And then one of the other, what we call, myrrh -bearing women, so it might be, you know,

Salome, wife of Cleopa, Mary, Mary Magdalene, you know, any of that. And then on the right is

John, the beloved disciple, and then the centurion, who was there at the crucifixion, who said, truly, this was the son of God, okay?

We call him Longinus. He's known as Longinus in the tradition, which is simply the

Latin word for long spear, because we don't actually know his name. So we just call him

Saint Long Spear, Longinus, and we know who he is, okay? But what

I'd like for you to notice is that all the women are on one side, and all the men are on the other.

Like a church service. Like a church service, how about that? How about that? And that three of those present,

Mary, her female companion, who's not labeled, John, the beloved, are

Jews, and the centurion, Longinus, is a Gentile. And then if we were, if this icon of the crucifixion were expanded out a little more, if we could expand the tableau, we know, of course, that Christ was crucified between two thieves, one of whom was repentant, and one of whom was unrepentant, okay?

So we have repentance and unrepentance there. Oh, and a little footnote. For Orthodox crosses, you know, very often the foot beam of Christ, and you can see that at the bottom of the icon.

Now, see, that one's, those are even. Yeah, we don't have the, go back to the first icon that we had. All right, very often the foot board is slanted at an angle.

And some people say, oh, this shows that Christ really died on the cross, that the weight of his body caused the foot beam to sag, which

I think is okay. But some of our hymnography talks about the cross as the balance beam of righteousness, okay?

And it points up towards the repentant thief, and it points downward toward the unrepentant thief.

So we know if this icon, the tableau, were to be expanded out, the good thief, the repentant thief, would be behind the women, and the unrepentant condemned thief would be behind the men, because the foot beam points the way upwards towards the repentant thief.

I'm running through the three icons you sent me. Is there a reason why the thieves aren't depicted? What, the repentant and unrepentant thief?

Yeah, like this icon, for example, has many of them. Many more people. Yeah, and some of them, they are.

Again, sometimes the scenes are reduced to like bare minimums, just to emphasize certain facts that, like I say, if you go back to one of the others, see, wait, look here, in this icon, okay, go back,

I'll show you. So in this icon, we have the sun and the moon, and we have a couple of angels in heaven, okay?

Go to the next icon. Here we have the sun and the moon. We've only got one angel, and he's got a little chalice catching the blood and water that are flowing from the side of Christ, which is a detail we didn't have in the other icon.

Okay, we still have Adam down in the cave below. You know, we got the city walls behind, and we have kind of a very stylized or almost abstract sun and moon, you know, up there in the heavens, see?

Okay, then you go to the next one. There's no sun and moon. Adam is missing from underneath the cross of Christ, you know, and in this case, because there are so many people who are around, there are only three people with halos apart from Christ, his mother,

John, the beloved disciple, and Longinus, who is now a believer because he knows that truly this is the son of God because he has confessed

Christ. But these are all the murderers. Yeah, these are all disciples of the

Lord, you know, Mary Magdalene, the wife of Cleopas, you know,

Solome, Susanna, forgive me, the names are escaping me, and then here are some of the disciples of the

Lord over on the far right. You know, they're all holy, they're all counted as saints in the tradition of the church, but in order to bring out who's the central figures, only the, see, even in here, the other three of the

Myrrh -bearing women didn't have halos on them. It's not that they weren't holiest, that we're emphasizing, really, we're making prominent certain of the figures here, okay?

So that's all that's happening there. So if we can stay with this one for a moment, one of the things that I found most intriguing about the icon of Christ is that if we look at Christ, well, in this icon, what we see is a huge number of things held in tension, that Christ is in the center of the icon, and he's stretched out on the cross, but look at all the things that he's stretched out between.

Heaven and hell, the city and the country, the sun and the moon, day and night, male and female,

Gentile and Jew, repentant and unrepentant. All of these pairs are all present in the icon, and the tension is incredible.

Christ does not resolve any of these tensions. He holds all of the tension together in himself, and by holding it all together in himself, he makes a way through them all and reconciles all of them in himself.

Wow. That'll keep you awake at night, if you think about it. It kept me awake at night.

That, to me, is like the best way to kind of depict what you said before, of like, it makes the moment present.

Yes. Yeah, exactly that. It makes the historical event present here and now.

So even the icon does that, ancient and present, eternal and temporal.

The space between Lansing, Michigan or Hawaii and Golgotha in Jerusalem is overcome.

We're there. And it's not like, oh, pity us. We're born 2 ,000 years too late.

The crucifixion is ancient history. All we do is just remember it. No. The crucifixion is an eternal reality.

The lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. It is an eternal event in some sense.

It has eternal presence and resonance. It is meaningful for us today. The crucifixion of Christ is what makes our salvation possible today.

And not just because it's an historical event, but because we can participate in it now. I think, yeah, that definitely makes, that's something that you don't pick up on when you watch

The Passion of the Christ. No. One thing though, is that you did not like how gory and gruesome that movie is, because it kind of takes you out of the moments that you just depicted, but it is blood and gore depicted here.

I mean, we saw it in this icon that, you know, it states in the scripture, water and blood poured out of him after the spear, which

I imagine these are the spears right here. This looks like a candle holder. No, that's the sponge that was held to the lips of Christ.

It was said they put a sponge on the end of a spear or on some hyssop and held it to his lips and he wouldn't drink it.

And that's when he says, to tell us that behold, it's finished. He wouldn't drink those. So that's the sponge on the spear.

Yes. Again, I spoke English. Longinus with the spear pierced the side of Christ.

And it says immediately in John's gospel, immediately there came up blood and water, which is what's being shown there.

Blood and water, the church understands as symbolic of baptism in the Eucharist. Oh, see a little gore.

We've got a little bit of it. Yes, a little bit and even more. And ooh, I wish I had,

I don't have the quotation. You'll have to find it in the epistle to the Hebrews. In the epistle to the

Hebrews, it points out that the veil in the temple that was torn in two at the crucifixion of Christ, the epistle to the

Hebrews says that veil was the veil of his flesh. So when

Longinus pierces the side of Christ hanging on the cross and blood and water pour out, at that moment, the veil of the temple is torn in two because in the icon, when the side of Christ is pierced, the heart of God is shown, is revealed.

The veil of his flesh is torn away and we see the heart of Christ there. Just like the veil of the temple is torn away and we see into the holy of holies.

It takes away the veil of separation between us and God. Ain't that wonderful stuff?

That's crazy. That is so crazy. This is what's going on here, okay?

Huge amount of stuff. Yeah, there's so much going on. You know, like I said at the beginning, this was an icon that just kind of sat on my desk as almost like it represented that I am a

Christian. This is the token icon in my room, the cross on my wall. But this is a story.

This is scripture coming to life. This is everything intersecting in one moment. That kind of lives on.

At the beginning, you were mentioning, you know, this is something that does not change over time. The artists of these icons don't change.

Could you, just for clarification, explain why we have three different variations right here?

Is it just stylistic? Is it different highlights? Is it simply, you know, I asked this before, is it simply because some walls have more space than others?

Yeah, actually all of those reasons. Yeah, in this case, if you hold here for a moment, you see the bottom frame on the lower right corner, sort of the red frame around the icon is up at an angle.

This is a wall. This is apparently a wall fresco. So they're fitting in the scene of the crucifixion into the available space.

So sometimes it's, especially for wall frescoes, you know, maybe you have a huge swath of empty space you need to fill up, you know.

For example, at my last parish, we just finished the crucifixion icon and it was on a huge, it must be 20 feet wide, almost 20 by 20, this huge expanse of wall up high.

So we have the repentant thief and the unrepentant. In fact, we've got like a whole garrison of Roman soldiers off on one side because we got a lot of wall.

We got a lot of acreage up there that we need to fill up with figures. And sometimes it's simply that.

If you go ahead and advance the image again, if you would please. See, this is just a little, probably just a little wooden panel icon that's probably, you know, 10 by 12 inches or something like that.

So there's not a lot of room. This is clearly a wall fresco. And in fact, Jesus looks kind of fat relative to the other figures.

I'll bet that the wall is curved, that this is in fact on some curved, it's some wall fresco in a church.

And so trying to render a curved image flat makes the middle of it look a little bulgy here. So, you know, if you saw it in person, it would probably be a little more proportional.

But again, it's probably a wide piece of wall space, which is why there's even more background to it, why we have a little bit of mountain over here on the left -hand side.

They're just sort of filling in the space. Wow. I mean, now that we've kind of understood some of the elements that are,

I don't want to say like hidden, but like that were there within the icon, you mentioned that there's prophecy also that's hidden.

So tell me about some of those prophecies that you see come to life through the icon. Okay. I mean, first of all, there are the ones that are, you know, kind of typically, you know, that we typically know of.

There are direct prophecies, verbal accounts, you know, Psalm 22, my God, my God, where have you forsaken me?

You know, verses 14 and 18 of that Psalm, they talk about, you know, you have pierced my hands and my feet, you know, my bones are out of joint.

You have, they divided my garments by lot. You know, this was said by David in the Psalm centuries before the crucifixion.

Okay. What does that mean? Nobody understood it until Christ hung on the cross. Now, like I say now in light of looking back through the crucifixion, suddenly the real meaning of the scripture is revealed.

So Christians have always read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament.

Okay. Okay. And you may remember also, when we were talking about the nativity icon,

I think we compared the icon of the nativity and we looked at an icon of the resurrection.

Did we do that? Showing, yeah, the women at the tomb, the murdering women come to the tomb because in both cases, there were angels at the tomb.

There were angels at the cave in Bethlehem. The tomb was a cave. Bethlehem was a cave. There were murdering women and there were the midwives.

And there was the swaddling cloths that wrapped Jesus when he was a baby lying in the manger. It's the same thing they wrapped

Jesus in lying in the tomb when they buried him. And so what the church has done is looked at the birth of Christ through the lens of his death and resurrection.

Okay. And so we always read the Old Testament through the lens of the

New Testament. That's why the Old Testament makes sense to us in ways that it cannot make sense to the

Jews. And again, I think it's an epistle to the Hebrews. It says, you know, there's the veil that's over their understanding because they don't have

Christ so they can't see. And we remember also that when Christ, after Christ's resurrection, he spent 40 days with his disciples before his ascension.

And it says, and he opened their mind to understanding the scriptures. You know, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us by the way is why he opened to us the scriptures.

That's from the scene on the way to Emmaus. You know, and it concludes, I think, it's either in Acts or in Luke's gospel, where it says, and thus he explained, he explained to them why in Moses and in the law and the prophets says, this is why the son of man had to suffer and die, suffer these things and so enter into his glory.

And so Christ himself interpreted the Old Testament in light of his own saving work, what we call the economy of salvation, his own work in saving us through his birth, passion, death, resurrection, and everything else that he did.

So, so is, is there an icon that helps us understand the crucifixion better, maybe like from the gospels or even?

If there is nothing really comes to my mind, there's typically kind of just, just sort of the one or just like parallels and maybe some of the work that the gospels did.

Or would you say, this is a good question. Do you, would you say all icons only feature Jesus? No, no, they don't.

No, because there are, there are icons of saints. There are, well, like again, you know, the icon near the Joan and the whale, you know, up there in the corner, you know, so not all like, you know, there are, there are icons of all kinds of persons and, and biblical events.

You know, I've seen icons, like I say, the three holy children of the fiery furnace, seen icons of Melchizedek, of the expulsion of Adam and Eve.

You know, I'm curious if any of those icons help, you know, see some of the, like the symbolism that we see with the crucifixion.

Or is that just, am I making up things? Well, with regards to the event in question, you know, like the icon of the transfiguration,

I mean, you, you know, you may see, it's largely just what was described in the gospel. There's Jesus in glory, and there's a particular way that his glory is manifest.

We could talk about that. There's Moses and Elijah, and there's Peter, James, and John kind of fallen backwards in, in awe, you know, covering their faces because it's too much for them.

You know, and I mean, okay, that's simply the biblical account, but when you start massaging the text of what's going on there, see,

Elijah went to heaven in the fiery chariot. Moses died and was in Hades. So we have a representative of heaven, a representative from Hades, as well as the law and the prophets, in addition to Peter, James, and John who are there in the, in the present world.

So you have heaven, Hades, and, you know, this world all present witnessing to the transfiguration of Christ.

I mean, there's depth to all of these things, you know, and again, it's, it's more difficult when you take them out of the context of the whole lived tradition of the church.

When these events find their places, like on the calendar and show up, like the transfiguration, for example, every

August 6th is the Feast of Transfiguration. We read Old Testament prophecies about the glory of God.

We read about Moses and Elijah. We read the gospel account, you know, the hymnology, you know, weaves all of these themes together and draws them all out.

So when you stand in church, you see the icon, you hear the hymns that are sung, you, this is where, you know, the full understanding of what this stuff, this is where it all takes place.

Is there an icon of the transfiguration? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I did a whole episode on that.

So everything you just said, like, really resonates. Oh my gosh, we should talk about that next. I, because - No, we can do that next.

I don't think that's as big a discussion as the crucifixion, you know. Is there any prophecies that we haven't discussed yet?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'll go through them a little quickly because I've got, there's close on a dozen. But I mean, we sort of know the ones from Isaiah 52 and 53, the suffering servant, you know, that he was broken, despised, stricken, pierced for our transgressions, silent before his accusers, as a lamb before his shearers is slain, so he opened not his mouth.

He was numbered - So when Isaiah said that, people were like, what are you saying? And then they saw the cross and they're like, oh, that's what it's -

Well, what they, what in Isaiah wrote at the time of the Babylonian captivity, so what they saw was

Israel was the suffering servant of God that had been humiliated by being defeated by the

Babylonians and the temple destroyed and all of the wealthy and the king killed and all, everybody sent in exile to Babylon.

That was the contemporary interpretation of that. It wasn't until we saw

Christ that we understood, oh, that meant a whole lot more. Again, you have to read it backwards to see the significance of it, okay?

I don't think anybody in Isaiah's day, you know, necessarily saw him. Occasionally, occasionally you saw it because you'll see, like I mentioned in the nativity icon, that prophecy of the pagan

Balaam, I see him, but not yet, a star coming out of Jacob. So Balaam, the prophet, saw the coming of Christ, but nowhere near, okay?

All right, I'll go on. Zechariah 1210, they look on him whom they have pierced.

Psalm 6921, he was offered gall and vinegar to drink. Psalm 3420, he kept all his bones, not one of them is broken.

That's cited in John's account of the passion. Then what Christ says on the cross, into your hands

I commit my spirit, Psalm 31 verse five. Isaiah 50, few chapters before the famous suffering servant passages,

I gave my back to those who strike my cheeks, to those who pluck out the beard. Those are fulfillment of the passion prophecies.

And then there are the types, which I mentioned even. So the tree of life standing in the middle of the garden of Eden, you know, is an image of the cross of Christ, which itself is the tree of life, you know?

And I think I've got it here. I'll move my cross. It's not that one. Where did I put the little cross?

Yeah, I got all sorts of sweet stuff. Yeah, over there next to the icon of Jonah, you see there is a cross there.

It's a little Armenian style cross. It was given to me by somebody. But you see the edges of the cross are blossoming out here.

I'm gonna go get it. Hold on a second. This is silly to do it this way. When I can show you like this,

I can take it off. Okay, so here is this cross and you see what's happening in it is that it's budding.

You see it's got leaves that are coming out because the tree of life is budding. Like you remember

Aaron's rod when Aaron's authority was questioned when they were in the wilderness.

And they said, okay, all of you leaders of the 12 tribes, bring your staffs.

We'll lay them before the ark. Aaron, lay your staff before the ark. And they go out. The next morning they come in.

Aaron's staff is budded and blossomed and brought forth ripe almonds. Okay, so the budding out.

This is the cross is the tree of life. Okay, so it's got buds. It's about to bloom. Okay, it's living.

It's not dead wood. Okay, that's the symbolism there. So the tree of life in the center of paradise, the cross is at the center of the church.

In fact, in an Orthodox temple, there is an icon of the crucifixion. An icon of the cross that stands right in the middle of the altar area, immediately behind the altar, right in the center.

Because it's the center from which everything is oriented. Okay, and medieval maps of the world always had

Golgotha, the church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the center of the map. Yes, it's the center of everything.

Because Christ is the axis mundi. He is the center of everything. That's where meaning flows.

That's where heaven and earth came together. And so, you know, onward

Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus hid behind the door. I'm sorry, all of y 'all in the

Protestant world that are ashamed of the cross of Christ and won't put it on your churches or in your churches. I think you have something to answer for.

I really do. I mean, you know, I mean, I wear a great big hunk in one, you know, in public. And it's not just ornamental.

It professes my faith and my station as a minister of the gospel. You know, and the cross says it's something of which we should not be ashamed.

St. Paul says that as well. So anyway, enough of that. I could go on and I'm not here to insult your listeners.

The Akedah, the sacrifice of Isaac. Do you remember the story when Abraham was told to sacrifice his son

Isaac? They got near to Mount Moriah. What does Abraham do with the wood for the sacrifice?

He takes the wood and he lays it on the shoulder of Isaac. So Isaac carries the wood of his own sacrifice, just like Jesus carries the wood of his own cross.

Ain't that swell? And Isaac was spared at the end, but Christ was not spared because Isaac was only a type, a symbol of the crucif-, the sacrificed son.

And God doesn't ask us anything of us that he does not, he's not willing to do for himself. So God spares

Isaac, but he doesn't spare his own son. But in both cases, they carried their wood. Ain't that sweet?

Whoa. See, that's good. That's good stuff. Yeah. And then, I mean, there are even little things where Jacob in Genesis chapter 48, he gives the blessing to the two sons of Manasseh, crosses his hands when he lays his hands on their heads.

The son says, no, no, no. This is the other, no. Jacob says, no, I'm going to cross my arms. The blessing goes on the younger one there.

So he crosses his arms. Again, a symbol of the cross and a symbol of blessing. Okay. At the

Passover, you don't find this in script. Well, you do find it in scripture. It's not explained. But when the

Jews mark the lentil of their doorway with the blood of the Passover lamb, they marked it with a

T shape. The tav or tav was a T shape. Okay. Like the cross.

And they made the sign of the cross on their doors to protect them. And we know that Exodus doesn't say that.

Exodus 12, verse seven simply says, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lentil of the house.

Okay. But when you get to, let me see, where was it?

It's mentioned in, I'm not going to find it. You have to look at my notes. Oh, heavens.

It's in Passover Jews. Ezekiel, prophet

Ezekiel. Chapter nine, verse six. It is said that when the angel of the

Lord was sent to punish and destroy the sinning people, it was told him not to strike those on whom the mark had been made.

So that's it. So he looked the mark. There was a certain symbol. And the Hebrew word is tav when they had the

T. So hold on. I feel like, I mean, obviously Jesus wasn't the first one to get crucified on a cross because this was like a

Roman way to kill people. So crosses kind of already in culture at that point. And then when

Jesus died on it, it added so much more meaning. But at the end of the day, people were very familiar with crosses.

It wasn't a new thing. So even like when you say they put a cross on their doorway in Passover, didn't, weren't they already familiar with that symbolic symbolism?

No, because the Romans got crucifixion from the Persians. And that was centuries after the

Passover. Oh. Yeah.

Oh. Crucifixion was not known in the Greco -Roman world. It was an import from the

Persians who were very bloody about that sort of thing. And the people were crucified because the earth was sacred to one of their two gods.

And it was blasphemy to kill someone. It would have been considered blasphemy to kill someone on the ground. So they crucify them, so they'd be up off the ground.

What? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh, but with regards to further crosses at the

Passover, the roasted lamb, this comes out, it's not, it is mentioned in the Talmud and it was also known in, to the early church,

St. Justin the Martyr, 2nd century, in his dialogue with Trifle, the Jew says, Indeed, the lamb, while being roasted, resembles the figure of a cross.

For one spit transfixes it horizontally from the lower parts to the head and another pierces it across the back and holds up its forelegs.

So the Passover lamb was skewered in the shape of a cross. So the

Passover lamb itself was crucified. Oh my gosh.

Oh, there's all sorts of stuff like that. Footnote, the crown of thorns. At the time of our

Lord, the Jewish day of atonement included, you know, selecting the

Seir HaMishtaliach, the goat of atonement. And remember they laid, the high priest laid his hands on the head of the goat and transferred all the sins of Israel onto the goat.

And then it was driven out of the city into the wilderness to die. Well, to make sure that the lamb stayed in the wilderness and didn't wander back into town with all the sins still on his head.

They wrapped red yarn around its horns. And then all of the people drove it out of the city with palm branches.

They swatted at it and drove it literally terrified out the city so that when the lamb would get out, the red yarn in its horns would help it get caught in the brambles and to where it would catch its horns and to where it could not get away.

So the scapegoat from the day of atonement for the forgiveness of sins is represented in Christ in the crown of thorns on his head.

Oh my gosh. Moses at the parting of the Red Sea. This again,

I think is, I think this is in the Talmud. The biblical description is not clear, but it appears that when he parted the waters, you know, he parted with his hands, you know, parting sideways, you know, with his staff.

And then after they had passed through to restore the waters, the motion with his staff was vertical.

So the crossing of the Red Sea was done in the shape of a cross. And of course, crossing the

Red Sea is a great symbol of baptism, as the church has always known of passing through the water and escaping death and sin, escaping the

Egyptian people. So that's also related to baptism there. Healing the waters of Mara.

They're wandering in the wilderness. They're all thirsty. They come to the pool of Mara, which is bitter, can't drink the water.

So they said, what do we drink? And the Lord showed him a tree. And it says when he cast the branches into the waters, the waters remained sweet.

So again, look for references to trees or to wood in the Old Testament. And when you do, first thing you ought to think of is the cross of Christ.

Once you begin to catch the imagery and the way that the symbols recur over and over and over again, you begin to catch the pattern.

That's such a good reminder. Like it's pattern recognition. It's huge. I feel like because I'm told, you know, when

I read the Old Testament, see how it points to Jesus. And I'm like, how? But that is such a good guide.

Yeah. Look for wood. Better think of the wood of the cross. Moses defeating

Amalek. That's an easy one. When Moses held his hands out to the side, like a cross, Israel won.

When he got tired and his arms dropped down, Israel was losing. So what did they do? Caleb and Joshua sat him on a rock and held his arms out.

So, so long as Moses stood in the shape of a cross, he won. See? Yeah.

You never made that connection. No, I never made that connection. Okay. Yeah, I already mentioned the bronze serpent, so I won't go there again.

Same thing happened with Joshua when he destroyed the city of Ai. Joshua chapter 8.

The Lord said to Joshua, stretch out the spear that is in your hand towards Ai, and I will give it into your hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear toward the city.

Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the spear until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of the city.

Okay. Jonah, again, you know, three days, three nights in the belly of the whale. That's, you know,

Christ doing his thing in Hades. So there it is. There's a bunch of it there.

So that's probably more than enough. You've probably been, I've glutted you on scriptural imagery.

This is what this time is for. Oh, okay. Yeah, I, that is amazing.

Just a side note, I went to Madeira over like two years ago, a year ago, I don't know. And it was like where Passion of the

Christ was filmed. That's not where it happened though, right?

Madeira? In Spain? No, in southern Italy. Oh, Madeira.

Oh, okay. At the wine growing region. I remember I thought it was... It's like the oldest city in Italy, or at least

Europe. It's crazy. It's beautiful. And it, I mean, if you watch Passion of the Christ, that's what it looks like.

But this crucifixion happened in the Middle East. It wouldn't happen. In Jerusalem, outside the walls of Jerusalem.

We built the church over it. You can go there. I mean, the little hill of...

It's not my strong suit. No, it's... I mean, this is the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

It's precisely the tomb of Christ. I'm just on one side of the church. The tomb of Christ is over here.

And on the other side of the church is Golgotha. Regrettably, the Muslims took sledgehammers to Golgotha and destroyed the little hill of it in an attempt to undermine

Christian observance. But the place of the crucifixion is still there. Pilgrims come by the tens of thousands every day to venerate that.

I've seen... You can go into the... You can go into the tomb of Christ and venerate the rock where the body of our

Lord lay. And you can kiss the ground where the cross of Christ was. Got it.

People can do this. Okay, say, yeah, it's a beautiful thing to do. Thank you for letting me ask my stupid questions.

Oh, yeah. Anytime. The old... I don't know. I don't know. You're here to clarify. No, the only stupid question is the one that's not asked.

It's all good. It's all good. And as you see, one question leads to another and opens up all kinds of things which, you know...

Well, since you retired, I'm sure you have tons of free time to answer everyone else's stupid questions.

So if somebody wants to connect with you, how can they? If people want to find me, they can find me on social media.

I use a sort of a business handle or... What's the word for when you have a fake name on social media?

I forget what they call it. Title handle. Anyway, it's Average to Alpha. A -V -G numeral 2 -A -L -P -H -A.

Average to Alpha. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and God help me,

TikTok. Only because my business coach told me I needed to be on TikTok. I also have a website,

AverageToAlpha .com, where people can find me for my coaching services. And that's it.

I mostly follow Instagram and I hope to be up posting more social media before too much longer.

But yeah, I do coaching. I do retreats, conferences, you know. Yeah, pay my way and I'll come to Hawaii and talk at your church.

You know. That's the goal. That's the goal. I'll let you know if I'm in Michigan.

But Father Michael, thank you for such an amazing conversation. So much wisdom, so much clarity, and so much more appreciation

I have for the icons that I grew up with. So always welcome back on the show, maybe for Transfiguration. But we'll talk about that later.

But God bless you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. As always, thank you for having me.

And also that this episode comes out close to Good Friday, to Holy Week, and closely

Easter. So perhaps someone might find it a way of bringing them a little closer to Christ and His saving passion, death and resurrection.

And anybody that might be keen on going to an Orthodox service, when is that this year? Oh, Easter, Pascha, is one week later than Western Easter and Pascha this year.

But it's a little different than a Protestant, right? What would be your note? Someone shows up Saturday, 10 p .m.?

Uh, no. Go to the local Orthodox Church website, see when their services are. I probably would not show up for the midnight

Pascha service. The Holy Week services can be long and very intense.

I'd suggest if someone wants an introduction to Orthodoxy, I would go to Saturday evening Vespers, if the

Church offers Vespers, or to the Sunday morning liturgy, which is the regular Sunday morning service, on a day that's not a major religious holiday.

Because not only are they crowded, but the services can be very long, and there's extra stuff going on.

And I mean, people's first impression of Orthodoxy is usually a little bit overwhelming.

Not to say that it's not unendurable, but it's going to be different enough. And you don't need it to have a bunch of extra stuff going on at the same time.

Just get it as close to ordinary and normal as you can. Introduce yourself to the priest afterwards, and go with an open mind and an open heart, and stand there.

And experience it, like it says in the Gospel, what I always tell people. Just come and see. Come and see.