Few viewers will hear the phrase the burning bush and not have some mental reference to the Old Testament event in which Moses sees a bush that is on fire with, but not consumed by, the presence of God. Then God’s voice emanates from the fiery bush and directs Moses to lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt. It is a theophany that one might expect to see depicted as an icon in any Orthodox church.
Yet here, instead of Moses, we see Mary, the Theotokos, with her hands raised in the oranta position of prayer and release. We see Christ, in two different places; we see eight angels painted in the color spectrum of the rainbow; we see an eight-pointed star; and we see lots and lots of wings. What’s going on?
We can get a clue from Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who writes, “This light did not shine from some luminary among the stars, but came from an earthly bush and surpassed the heavenly luminaries in brilliance. From this we learn also the mystery of the Virgin: The Light of Divinity, which through birth shone from her into human life, did not consume the burning bush, even as the flower of her virginity was not withered by giving birth.”*
To the viewer, then, standing in front of this ornate icon, Mary’s body is the bush on fire with the presence of God, the Logos Emmanuel, who through her physical body is sending Light into the world and declaring to all who will hear the good news of God’s great love. The Theotokos, in a sense, protects and covers the altar table upon which the holy gifts, Christ’s body and blood, are prepared and given to the faithful, multiplying the seed that she carried. To extend the comparison fully, one could say that to stand in front of this icon is to become like Moses, encountering a most mysterious fire. Saint Symeon the New Theologian marvels, “O strange wonder! I am sprinkled with dew and am not burned, as the bush burned of old without being consumed.”
Note how certain details deepen and clarify the mystery: Christ, in the seed-shaped mandorla, is simultaneously within Mary, as the Logos Spermatikos, and above Mary, as the Logos Emmanuel, his wings representing the energy or action of God going out into the world. And the angels, ranged around the Theotokos in colors that form the full spectrum of the rainbow, represent the energy or Light of God incarnated, just like the angels in the earlier Synaxis icons. All eleven figures in the image gaze outward, as if waiting for you, the viewer, to respond, and even the leaves of the two “bushes” (green below and red above) unfurl. Only the pairs of wings hidden in the green star and in the gold background turn inward, withholding for our protection the unseeable, uncreated Truth of a God who yet longs to bring us to himself.