Three Hours: This Is My Body

Revd Professor Ben Quash, Professor of Christianity and the Arts, Kings College London, was the preacher at today's service of reflections on the passion of Christ, The Three Hours at St Martin-in-the-Fields. 

His talks on the theme of 'This is my Body' included images by Unknown artist, Rogier van der Weyden, Stanley Spencer, Sebastiano del Piombo, Matthias Grünewald, Lorenzo Veneziano, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Unknown artist, Graham Sutherland, Gionvanni Bellini, Michelangelo, Dirk Bouts, and Norman Adams.

I made the following notes via twitter:

• Active ministry of Jesus then passive - fulcrum is The Transfiguration. Jesus's body a treasure of great price.
• Jesus' feet carry good news - beautiful. Mary Magdalene adored the feet that brought her good news.
• What makes you kneel in your daily life? Like children kneeling to play, we need to kneel more to pray.
• Spencer - Consider the Lilies. Huge + humble Christ delights in flowers for what they are. Child-like use of knees.
• Brought to our knees by life. Weight of world's rejection forces Jesus down. We are implicated.
• Hands some of the most creative parts of our body. Hand of God from Sistine Chapel raises Lazarus in Sebastiano's painting.
• Grunewald's hands of Christ violently immobilised. Baptist does what Christ can no longer do - signals life. 
• Sides of Jesus exposed on the cross; place of protection + formation. By Jesus' side the shared position of Jesus' disciples. 
• Thomas' finger touches Christ's pierced side - his preparation for new life, being born again.
• Jesus' body was and is the message - God's language of preference in The Transfiguration + Crucifixion. Our bodies compatible with glory.
• Jesus' body compatible with love - his body on the cross asks us to attend to it, to lean in to it, like the beloved disciple.
• The at-homeness of God with himself invites us to take up our abode and rest. 
• Crucifixion the most tragic event but within is salvation. Full meaning of active ministry only seen in passivity.
• Mother-Child relationship deeply formative - intimate, reciprocal relationship. Our God contracted to a span.
• God placed in our hands. Jesus' body born from Mary's. No one's heart closer to Jesus'. Her God made flesh through her.
• Difficulty of being looked at by suffering Christ - exposed by Christ's gaze. Called to seek God's face - this is heaven.
• Salvation begins with fall - creation groans. Liberation into light - Christ redeems thorns into gentleness.

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William Walton - Drop, Drop Slow Tears.