I bring greetings and congratulations from St Martin-in-the-Fields on your 90th Anniversary. It is a joy to us that we have shared in partnership during the latter period of those 90 years and a pleasure that the partnership has been revived and renewed since Dean Xolani began his ministry here. I am thrilled personally to have this opportunity to visit and learn from you and those you have given me the opportunity to meet in Johannesburg, here at the Cathedral and in Alexandra, Sophiatown and Soweto.
For my curacy, I was at a church in East London (UK, not South Africa!) which, because of its history, was full of images of white people although it had a large black majority congregation. The historical development of the church had created a disconnect between its past heritage, which was mono-cultural, and its current congregation, which was diverse. We realised that this disconnect couldn’t continue and had to be addressed. So, we commissioned an artist to create a painting as an altarpiece in one of the side chapels and took Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance cooking breakfast for his disciples beside Lake Galilee as the image for this painting. We stipulated that Jesus should be black and his disciples’ multi-ethnic. When the image was unveiled Eileen, our black churchwarden, shed tears of joy that the diversity of our congregation was now reflected to some degree in the imagery and story of the church and that she and others from the Black and Minority Ethnic communities in that place could see themselves in the story of faith depicted within that church.
I learned that this image became a sign of the kingdom in the church and changed our culture for the better. Signs show what is in front of us, so reflect where we are and direct us somewhere else, so point us to the future. The creation of this image revealed our lack of diversity in the past and created a greater appreciation for the diversity we had found in the present. The image provided a way of affirming that such diversity is our future in God’s kingdom. Similarly, the visual art which is here in St Mary’s or which has been here over the years provides one way to tell the story of your 90 years as the Cathedral for Johannesburg, as well as indicating possible areas of development as you begin your next 90 years.
In 1936 Ernest Mancoba’s African Madonna, which is now held by the Johannesburg Art Gallery, was displayed here to raise funds for those in need in the drought-stricken Limpopo. This sculpture seems to be the earliest South African interpretation of the Holy Virgin that is not European in appearance. Unlike most church sculptures in South Africa for which imported oak or teak was favoured, Mancoba carved his figure of indigenous yellowwood. Mancoba’s ‘sculptures Africanized the prevailing Western norms of iconography and aesthetics.’ (Elza Miles)
So, here at an early stage in the life of the Cathedral was a black artist using indigenous materials to create a genuinely African image of a central figure in the Christian faith. Mancoba trained as a sculptor at the Grace Dieu Mission near Polokwane, where artists such as Gerard Sekoto and Job Kekana also trained. Grace Dieu Mission was Africa’s first modern art workshop and developed a trademark style of wood carving that won considerable critical acclaim in the 1930s and allowed the school, through commercial activity, to support and promote the first professional black artists in South Africa.
Job Kekana carved relief panels of the lives of the saints for your pulpit in the 1940s. He was a skilled sculptor who undertook all manner of carvings for churches, from pews to pulpits. He spoke of wanting his religious carvings to be ‘true’ historically, and therefore usually only depicted Biblical figures as Africans in African settings if specifically requested to do so. His relief panels here were designed by Martinus Moolman, a teacher at Grace Dieu, and depict European figures in traditional drapery. Those depicting St Ambrose, Thomas Aquinas and St Chrysostom show these saints in architectural settings which required Kekana to use elaborate perspective. So, under the influence of Grace Dieu’s teachers, Kekana’s work primarily followed the conventions of European church art.
Above the chancel steps and dominating the whole church is your famous hanging rood, an almost life-size wood-carving of the Crucifixion that was hung in 1957 as a memorial to William Palmer, Dean from 1924 to 1951. Palmer had been part of the Campaign for Right and Justice which called for full and direct representation of all sections of the community, irrespective of race. By the 1950s, the Cathedral had become one of the few racially integrated churches in downtown Johannesburg, yet it was decided that your rood should be made in England. The artist was George Baden-Beadle, who was Secretary, then Managing Director of Faith Craft; a business, set up through The Society of the Faith, that successfully and creatively produced church furnishings, vestments and other ecclesiastical artefacts from 1921 – 1972.
In this same period the artist Cecil Skotnes was employed as the cultural Recreation Officer at the Polly Street Recreational Centre here in Johannesburg. Under his guidance Polly Street came to be identified as an Art Centre and a significant training ground for a new generation of artists who were able to experiment and make work, developing and honing their skills to the point where they too were recognized as professional career artists. Skotnes was able to put the Centre and the students in touch with an array of contacts including many foreign visitors and dealers, as well as acquiring commissions from churches and the City Council. This continued until the apartheid authorities effectively shut down Polly Street. Skotnes also undertook commissions himself and, in 1983, created Stations of the Cross for this Cathedral in memory of Fr. Neville Jarvis Palmer. With his woodcuts, in particular, Skotnes is reckoned to have developed a genre and a style that was uniquely South African.
More recently the sculpture 'Sinethemba' by Chaim Stephenson was installed in 2015. This was almost twenty-one years after the arrival of democracy in South Africa and the dedication by Archbishop Desmond Tutu at St Martin-in-the-Fields of the sculpture of which 'Sinethemba' is a twin, our ‘Living South Africa Memorial’ to victims of injustice and violence. The sculptures were inspired, as you know better than I, by the iconic image of the shooting of Hector Pieterson in Soweto in 1976. Sam Wells, the vicar of St Martin’s, said, in a sermon here, that, ‘In 1976, [this] was a picture of the brutality and injustice of the apartheid regime, and the solidarity and resilience of the struggle to bring democracy and the rule of law to South Africa’. By 1994, the sculpture portrayed the burden the anti-apartheid movement had carried for so long. Then, in 2013, ‘when we at St Martin’s gathered with so many South African friends to mark the passing of Nelson Mandela, the image asked a question: Mandela had carried South Africa in his arms for so long; who would carry South Africa now?’ Now, he suggests, ‘it may be that this statue is a declaration of faith that the God who in Christ has brought forgiveness, is in the business of bringing resurrection too’. All this Christian reflection initiated by a Jewish artist was was inspired by stories from the bible, despite not practicing religion himself.
The story told by your artworks demonstrates the power that the visual arts possess in reflecting and shaping culture. Culture is a key aspect of the model of mission – culture, compassion, commerce and congregation - with which St Martin’s has worked over the past 30 years and which we have made the basis of HeartEdge, the international ecumenical movement of churches of which St Martin’s and St Mary’s are both part. That is because, as human beings made in the image of God, we are culture-making people who create communities, fashion environments and shape societies.
Our Bible readings today (Genesis 2. 4b-8, 15, 18-23; Philippians 4. 4-9; Matthew 13. 31 & 32) begin with God’s creativity in fashioning our world and our own creativity experienced because we are made in God’s image. The world that was fashioned through creativity God called good, and God gave to us, as human beings, the task of caring for and cultivating this world using our own creativity. Adam and Eve’s task of tending the garden, the primary task of agriculture, represents the beginnings of cultural life on earth.
One of the formative aspects of this creative culture-making is to name the good that we see in the created world - the creatures, people, artefacts and cultures around us - and, by naming these things, to increase our understanding of the world and cultures that we inhabit. Of course, our creative culture-making can be used both for good and ill, as you know only too well in this country. Indeed, this passage from Genesis has been used to justify the oppression of patriarchy. God’s intent, however, is that we use our creative abilities to see and name the essence of all that is around us and use that knowledge to support our mutual flourishing. St Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, revived this understanding with his injunction to look for what is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent and praiseworthy in that which is around us. Jesus called us to use our creativity in creating signs of the kingdom of God which start small and then grow in ways that provide shelter and support to others.
So, we have been formed by God to be creative culture makers seeing and naming the good in order that we create signs of the kingdom of God. That is what you have done here over your first 90 years in creating an inclusive community that has supported social justice and engaged with culture, commerce, compassion and congregation in order to be a sign of the kingdom of God here in Johannesburg. That was what was happening when, for example, several of your deans were deported for challenging aspects of apartheid, when the first black Dean was appointed, when land and property were developed to provide financial support for the Cathedral, and when visual art was created for or brought into this space.
Your artworks are also signs of the kingdom of God as it has been expressed here in St Mary’s. Signs, as we noted earlier, show what is before us and aspects of these artworks reflect the time in which they were made and the issues current at that time. Your art is by a diverse group of artists and shows a diversity of approaches which sometimes engage with contemporary issues and sometimes seek to show that the Christian story is for all times and all cultures. In this way a diverse set of answers have emerged to the questions of who creates, what is created, and of how cultures change depending on the answers given to those questions. Similar dilemmas were also experienced in my curacy where the image of the black Christ in our Youth Chapel was created by a white artist.
So I wonder how will these same questions be answered here in the future? Who are the artists that could create images for this Cathedral in the future? What images would create signs of welcome, community and inclusion in these times of when around our world particular groups in society are being scapegoated, targeted and attacked? Many of the artworks here come from initiatives that combined culture and commerce to provide routes out of poverty and oppression. What equivalent initiatives are needed today to provide similar opportunities in different ways? Could initiatives like that be part of your plans for the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Precinct? How can we, as inclusive Christian communities, create signs of God's kingdom today in the midst of the scapegoating and violence that surrounds us?
Signs also point forward towards a place we have yet to reach. Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God as something small in the here and now which then grows to become large in the future. What are the small seeds that you can plant in the here and now that may have similar impact in the future to that which was achieved by Grace Dieu Mission, Faith Works and the Polly Street Art Centre? Each of these began as something small but grew to have significant impact.
Speaking of the need for HeartEdge as a movement for renewal in the Church, Sam Wells has said: ‘The church … has to let its financial needs and the material poverty of many it encounters become entry-points to new adventures, new relationships, new discoveries in God’s kingdom. What are needed now are communities of ordinary virtues, but ones infused with grace: thus trust, honesty, politeness, forbearance, and respect are the bedrock of such communities, while tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and resilience are among its abiding graces.’ As an inclusive community with a commitment to the Arts, a commercial basis to your financial sustainability, and a compassionate commitment to engaging with the pressing issues of your time, over the past 90 years this Cathedral has been an example of the HeartEdge mission model lived out in practice. That is one of many reasons why we, at St Martin’s, are so proud to be in partnership with you and so pleased that you are using the HeartEdge framework of compassion, culture, commerce and congregation to review your current mission and ministry.
Christ calls us to create signs of the kingdom of God in each generation. Those signs cannot simply repeat what has gone before. They need to be creative re-imaginings of the kingdom for the present time? So I wonder, where are the artists, the dreamers, the ideas people and creatives in this congregation and community? Where are energy, inspiration and initiative to be found in the wider community, beyond the congregation, with which you can partner for the future?
As we look back to celebrate what this Cathedral has been and has enabled over the past 90 years, including its art and culture, we also need to look forward and take inspiration to go on new adventures, develop new relationships and make new discoveries which will enable us to be and become signs of the kingdom of God for this time and this day here in South Africa, here in Johannesburg. What are needed now are congregations that combine creativity with commercial acumen and compassion. Communities of ordinary virtues infused with grace; with trust, honesty, politeness, forbearance, and respect as their bedrock and tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and resilience among their abiding graces.
Let us pray: We pray for the dreamers of this life, O God, for those persons who imagine new possibilities, who long for what others cannot perceive, who spin dreams of wonder and majesty in their minds. Defend them from ridicule and harsh criticism, from self-doubt and lack of faith in their dreams, and from abandonment of this call to make things new. Grant that from their dreams may come forth blessings for humankind to enrich the quality of life and the wonderment of us all. Amen (Ashley Marinaccio)
Click here to view the sermon.
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Amadodana ka Eliya.
