The mission of Being With

Here's the reflection I shared in tonight's Bread for the World service at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The Mission Summer School is a new initiative from HeartEdge and St Augustine's College of Theology exploring mission using the 4 Cs of commerce, culture, compassion and congregation and enabling a deeper engagement with the theology of mission by exploring how it relates to participant’s own practice.

Each morning of the Summer School we are using this passage (Luke 10.1-12) for our sessions of Dwelling in the Word. With Dwelling in the Word we stay with the same passage throughout our time together on the basis that we can always go deeper into the passage and that our shared reflection, inspired by God's Spirit, will always bring new insights.

The passage we have chosen is one which in the church traditions among which I grew up was used as a rallying cry for mission, a call to go forth and tell the good news because the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. The challenge was always for you or I to swell the ranks of those scarce labourers by sharing the gospel with others, whether here or overseas.

I now think that the emphasis such appeals placing on telling the good news to others is an example of the way in which we often overlay our preconceptions on Bible passages and see what we expect to see instead of paying attention to what is actually there. There isn't actually a lot of telling in Jesus' instructions to his disciples, instead there is a whole heap of being with.

So, let's journey with the disciples for a moment through the directions that Jesus gives for their mission. First we should note that he asks them to travel lightly taking nothing unnecessary with them, not being distracted by small talk along the way, welcoming hospitality when they receive it but simply moving on to the next place and the next person whenever they were not made welcome. So, no distractions, just a clear focus on their task.

By sitting light to possessions and by accepting hospitality as it was offered to them they also imposed as little as possible on the people, villages and areas through which they travelled. In our society, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, we have done anything but. Our footprint has been heavy on our world as we have exploited its resources for our own gain and we are only now beginning to realise the consequences. So, for ourselves, we will do well to reflect deeply on powerful slogans, such as ‘live simply that others might simply live’ and ‘touch the earth lightly,’ which challenge us about the footprint we leave on the earth and its inhabitants.

Travelling light didn’t mean travelling alone. Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs. 'By travelling together we bear one another’s burdens, share joys, and lighten the load of our journey.' Jesus’ expectation was also clearly that his disciples would find open doors and receive hospitality in many of the places to which they travelled. So, Jesus envisaged an evolving mission where they would knock on doors and enter wherever those doors were opened to them.

A key aspect of this approach was to find people of peace in the places to which they travelled. He asked this of his disciples in a context of hostility and challenge where they would be going out like lambs among wolves and yet, among the wolves, he was confident that they would find people of peace. Jesus also calls us to look outside our group or congregation to find people of peace within wider society. He calls us to do this however fractured or secular our communities may be because he is confident that such people can always be found. Ultimately, that is because God is always at work through the Spirit in the world and our task is to see where that is happening in our communities and networks and get involved.

In my previous parish in East London we found allies in those who were lobbying for improved facilities in the local area and those who were interested in setting up green businesses. Through those relationships we brought a library back to the area and step-free access to a local station but also drew new groups into hiring and use of the church centre and set up a social enterprise support service in that same centre. Finding people of peace in our area and joining with them brought much benefit to our church and the wider community.

What Jesus asked next of his disciples was that they spend time being with the people of peace they found, including sharing meals with them. Here at St Martin's, we have much experience of being with others in this way through our Sunday International Group which offers hospitality to those who have no recourse to public funds. In the International Group people are either hosts or guests but the distinction becomes increasingly blurred with guests becoming hosts as both groups come to know each other and as hosts receive insights from and understanding of those who have come as guests. At St Martin's many of those who first came as guests to the Sunday International Group have become treasured members of our community, congregation, Nazareth Community, PCC, volunteers and staff team. We have been renewed, revived, challenged and changed by their presence with us. It has truly been a case of renewal from the edge. The basis for this has been sharing a meal together.

When he introduces the concept of being with, Sam, our Vicar, often uses the example of a soup kitchen where all the time and effort goes into preparing the meal to the extent that those doing so never sit and eat with those for whom the meal is prepared. That ignores the deep need that each of us have for connection and the extent to which shared meals, being signs of heaven, enable us to live God's future now.

When we experience a depth of relationship over a shared meal not only are relationships deepened but misunderstandings and hurts can be healed, and a greater sense of integration and wellbeing can come into existence. That is why Jesus can then, in this passage, speak of healing occurring at this stage in his missional process. In thinking about healing it is vital to remember that, in the society of which Jesus was part, healing was the route to inclusion for many who had been excluded from the social and spiritual life of his society. It is that focus on inclusion and integration as the source of wellbeing that we need to mirror and emulate today, rather than notions of supernatural healing or cure.

When all this has happened - the recognition of people of peace, the being with people of peace, the sharing of meals, the welcome and integration of all - then we have something to say. What can then be said is that the kingdom of God has come near. That in our relationships, sharing and mutuality we have experienced together a taste of heaven. That is not something that we have brought or that is about something only we can offer to others. Instead, it is about real communion, a real sharing, a mutual sharing of selves that is welcoming and inclusive one of the other. In heaven there is only relationship with God, with ourselves, with one another and with the whole creation. It is only as we enter into real and deepening relationships with those who are other than ourselves that we anticipate heaven in the present and live God's future now.

All the talk in my past experience, of church of going forth to tell good news to others who were in need of the news that only I could bring to then if they were to be saved and go to heaven only served to obscure the relational mission to which Jesus called his disciples when sending out the 70 and to which he calls each one of us.

It's not a guilt inducing call that makes the salvation of others reliant on our response. It's a relationship affirming call to live in community, to form partnerships, to deepen relationships, to experience communion, and to live God's future now. As Rachel Held Evans once said, “This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.” 

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The Brilliance - See The Love.

Seeing is Receiving: The art of contemplation (3)

2. Sustained

Hidden away at the end of a lane leading from Five Oaks Green Road, set among fields and Kentish Oast houses, is a pretty, compact country church which dates to the beginning of the seventh century, although most of what can be seen today is from the 18th century.

The brick tower and marbled ceiling of All Saints’ Tudeley date from around 1765 while the North aisle was added in 1871. The interior was substantially re-ordered in 1966, creating a greater sense of space and light. It was what came next, however, that created a wow factor; something that is astonishing both in its physical impact and in the uniqueness of its nature.

On my sabbatical pilgrimage I’ve arrived at a church which is one of the UK’s finest examples of religious art and a moving example of the crucifixion as a conduit for a very personal tragedy. As I walk into Tudeley Parish Church I am immediately immersed in intense colours – ‘rich and deep marine blue, with blends of burgundy and bottle green’ – because, as James Crockford has described, every window in the church ‘from great big panes of light, to tiny peep holes’ was designed by the Russian-Jewish artist Marc Chagall. Chagall’s designs swirl with emotive colour and evocative movement. This is stained-glass that shines and glows ‘with a glory that hits you’ through ‘the energy of light and life that bursts or glows through.’[i]

These windows were installed between 1967 and 1985; the east window being followed by the five north windows and two south ones dedicated in 1974 and then finally the four chancel windows installed in 1985. Chagall was initially reluctant to take on the commission, but was eventually persuaded, and when, in 1967, he arrived for the installation of the east window and saw the church, he said, 'It's magnificent. I will do them all.' Over the next 15 years, he designed all the remaining eleven windows, collaborating as usual with glassworker Charles Marq of Reims.

This sustained series of stained glass – inspiration sustained over 15 years and filling all 12 windows in the building - was inspired by Psalm 8, especially verses 4—8:

‘What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.’

There’s a dilemma on entering as the East window draws your attention but the surrounding windows lead up to it. That’s where the flocks and herds, beasts, birds and fish of creation from the Psalm are to be found, so do you begin with the culminating experience - the east window with its depiction of crucifixion and drowning – or the preparatory experience of the Psalm inspired windows? Wherever you begin sustained viewing of this series, which sets death in the context of creation while brightly bathing the building in vibrant colour, is to have an experience of profound spirituality.

The east window is a magnificent memorial tribute to Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid who died aged just 21 in a sailing accident off Rye. Sarah was the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady d'Avigdor-Goldsmid; the family then lived at Somerhill, a Jacobean house situated nearby. As Sarah had shown an early interest in contemporary art and had, with her mother, seen Chagall’s designs for windows in the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem. Sir Henry and Lady d'Avigdor-Goldsmid commissioned Chagall to design the east window.

Crockford has reflected on what Chagall offers to us through sustained viewing of this visionary series: ‘What I think Chagall offers us so well is a vision that holds together the devastation of a painful tragedy with a vision of hope and renewal. He suggests the real possibility of the transformation of human loss, a loss that seems pretty integral to humanness; yet there is no glimmer of forgetting or diminishing the gravity and depth of that suffering. We see here an invitation to let our suffering be a sharing in his [Christ’s] sufferings, a way of becoming like him, just as, in suffering, he becomes like us. The stories of our lives are drawn up into the reality of Christ: that includes our death and our life, our fear and our freedom, our shame and our glory.’[ii]

Tudeley’s remoteness necessitates giving time to visit and Chagall’s art rewards slowing down to look and linger, to sustain our looking in order that we truly see. As with the art historian who went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician staying for about 10 minutes before then repeating the exercise twice. The art historian’s looking was sustained, just as Chagall’s creation was sustained, yet, as adults, we rarely look in a sustained manner.

Sister Corita Kent suggested that children can give adults lessons in looking:

‘Ask [a] child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child’s eyes won’t leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery.

It does not matter that his is all familiar territory – the same house, the same rug and chair. To the child, the journey of this particular day, with its special light and sound, has never been made before. So the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.

The child is quite right.’[iii]

The reason that the child is right is that things ‘constantly change and we may have seen an object only five minutes ago and thought we knew it – but now it is very different.’ Visiting Tudeley on a sunny day is highly recommended and, yet, it doesn't really matter whether the sun is shining or not because, if we really look, something new will be seen in every viewing under differing conditions of light. Such changes are only noticed if our looking is sustained. That is something which children instinctively practice.

Kent therefore describes life as a succession of moments and says that to live each one is to succeed. For us to do so we must become ‘able to adjust to these subtle differences’ which means ‘looking anew’; repeated and sustained looking ‘with what new materials we have gathered up inside ourselves – as well as noting what changes have taken place within the object.’ In this way Kent suggests, we become ‘aware of what we don’t yet know.’ Henri Matisse suggested that, to look in this way, to repeatedly look at something ‘as though you had never seen it’ requires ‘great courage.’[iv]

My colleague at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Richard Carter built the concept of steadfastness or staying with into the rule of life for the Nazareth Community he set up there. Staying with is about sustained contemplation; returning again and again to God because it is so easy and so quick to ‘become disorientated and separated from the source of our being.’[v] He used the image of a swimmer returning to the pool because, whatever the weather, the pool is there. Similarly, whether the sun is shining or not, we can return on a sustained basis to the practice of slowing down in order to see contemplatively.

Staying with - sustained looking and praying – also enables us in the context of uncertainties, mysteries and doubts. Carter notes the use of the phrase ‘negative capability’ by John Keats ‘to characterize the human potential to pursue a vision of beauty even when it leads through intellectual confusion or uncertainty.’ He argues that there ‘is an importance in staying with the discomfort of the unknown, fear and the unresolved, because it is in that place that we reach the borders of what we are and discover what we could become.’[vi] It is as we sustain our contemplation over time through a multiplicity of reflections on all that is uncertain, confusing or challenging within our world and experiences that we come to see where beauty might lie within our brokenness. That is the basis on which Tudeley’s stained glass was created, both in the tragic events memorialised and Chagall’s meditative response.

Makoto Fujimura's work is a slow art requiring sustained looking which enables us to see beauty in brokenness. Fujimura combines the traditional Japanese painting technique of Nihonga with Abstract Expressionism. Both influences prioritise surface in the work. Nihonga, as it uses ground minerals such as azurite, malachite and cinnabar mixed with animal hide glue applied to handmade paper. Abstract Expressionism, as it has no external reference existing purely as pigment on canvas.

Fujimura describes letting: ‘The layers of azurite pigments, spread over paper as I let the granular pigments cascade. My eyes see much more than what my mind can organize. As the light becomes trapped within pigments, a "grace arena" is created, as the light is broken and trapped in refraction.’[vii] His minerals, ‘when layered in the correct manner, can refract, as each individual granule acts as a prism, so the surface traps light.’ He says that this ‘subtle, quiet way of capturing light’ intrigues him.

At first glance the malachite surface looks green: ‘But if the eye is allowed to linger on the surface—it usually takes ten minutes for the eye to adjust—the observer can begin to see the rainbow created by layer upon layer of broken shards of minerals. Such a contemplative experience can be a deep sensory journey toward wisdom. Willingness to spend time truly seeing can change how we view the world, moving us away from our fast-food culture of superficially scanning what we see and becoming surfeited with images that do not delve below the surface.’[viii]

Fujimura sees ‘in the very process of painting a parable of life: how our lives, too, need to be refractive of light as people created in God’s image.’ How often, he asks, ‘do we experience grace in the midst of trial (as our lives are being “pulverized” to reveal inner beauty)?’[ix] The minerals he uses ‘must be pulverized to bring out their beauty’.

As a result, he argues that: ‘The Japanese were right in associating beauty with death … Art cannot be divorced from faith, for to do so is to literally close our eyes to that beauty of the dying sun setting all around us. Every beauty also suffers … Prayers are given, too, in the layers of broken, pulverized pigments. Beauty is in the brokenness, not in what we can conceive as the perfections, not in the "finished" images but in the incomplete gestures. Now, I await for my paintings to reveal themselves. Perhaps I will find myself rising through the ashes, through the beauty of such broken limitations.’[x]

Perseverance in prayer is commended by Jesus in the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge (Luke 18.1-8) and the Friend at Midnight (Luke 11.1-13). I wonder whether that practice, which is about sustained prayer in which we stay with the one for whom we pray, is not so much about our needing to change God’s mind and more about our coming to see the ways in which beauty is to be found in brokenness and redemption in desolation. For many of us, this is also our regular experience of the depth of scripture; that we can return again and again to the same passage or story and find something new each time. Sustained attention, praying or reading all enable to see

It may only be as we sustain our looking, praying or reading that such revelations come. Chagall looked for 15 years, the art historian looked for half an hour, Fujimura thinks ten minutes is necessary for our eyes to adjust and see the prismatic nature of his slow art. The specific length of time our looking can be sustained is not the primary issue; the issue is how we see and the extent to which we surrender to what we see.

Explore

The Art Stations of the Cross began in 2016 in London with an exhibition in 14 iconic destinations that enabled the Passion to be experienced as a pilgrimage for art lovers. For Christians, the Stations of the Cross represent 14 moments in Jesus’ journey through Jerusalem, from condemnation to crucifixion and burial. Across the chasm of two thousand years, this tortured path resonates with current events for people of many faiths and cultures. In particular, it calls to mind the hazardous journeys of refugees from today’s Middle East.

The exhibition invited people of all backgrounds to experience London as a ‘new Jerusalem.’ It told the story of the Passion in fresh ways, provoking passions by using existing masterpieces and new commissions by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim artists. Those visiting all 14 destinations had to sustain a journey through London and let the Stations sustain them.

The project has been sustained further by being replicated in other parts of the world and through a website which collates each version of the Art Stations. Exploring this website enables sustained reflection on different aspects of each Station as there have now been five different manifestations of the project with little replication of specific artworks. The website, therefore, asks us to look at each Station from a range of different perspectives thereby offering the opportunity for sustained reflection.

Dwelling in the Word is a simple, but profound way of reading the bible in community, based on Lectio Divina while being subtly quite different from that ancient practice. Dwelling in the Word is a spiritual practice of reading and dwelling in the biblical text by listening deeply to God and to one another. Reading for spiritual formation involves patiently allowing the text to intrude into our lives, address us, and enable our being encountered by the God of mystery.

There is a significant difference between approaching God’s Word through informational reading and formational reading. Formational Reading involves: living in the same text for a period of time; multi-layered reading with depth that changes our quality of being; receiving the Word as a servant; being formed and transformed by the text; being with the Word humbly and willingly; and being open to the God of mystery addressing us.

Dwelling in God’s Word in community enables a focus on new insights and understandings through a process of sharing with others; not seeing only what we heard or read about the particular text or what we already think we know about it. As such, it involves slow, sustained and conscious reading.

Dwelling in the Word in community invites the Living Word to penetrate to the innermost being of our personal and communal lives because it is here that God desires to dwell.

Wonderings

I wonder when you last had an experience of being so captured by something that you were unable to look away.

I wonder what has been the most sustained commitment or relationship in your life.

I wonder what benefits you have found from an experience of staying with.

Prayer

All-knowing God, you look at me so intently that you can count the hairs on my head. Help me to see as you see; to look at people, creatures, and the world in which we live, with lingering gaze of love. You looked and all you saw was good. Captivate the eyes of my heart that I look and look again until I see what you see. Amen.

Spiritual exercise

Think of something in your home of which you have more than four examples (e.g. books, family photos, objects you collect etc.). Bring together a good selection of these items and spread them out wherever you can. Take time to look at and handle them. Remember why you have them, where they came from, when they came into your possession. Turn those memories into prayers (whether of thanksgiving or healing) and sense what God is saying to you about the sustained place that they have in your life.

Art actions

View the Chagall windows online at https://www.tudeley.org/chagallwindows.htm and plan a visit.

Discover more about the Art Stations of the Cross and Dwelling in the Word at https://www.coexisthouse.org.uk/stations2016.html and https://churchmissionsociety.org/resources/dwelling-word/

[i] J. Crockford, ‘Chagall at Tudeley’, Sermon preached at University Church, Oxford, 7th April 2019 - https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/sermons/chagall-tudeley?fbclid=IwAR3hxj1Lah8A5Uq2yYjggxw1rafwJlxq-4V86olsvwSdpyoLAJ11kKNvKAc

[ii] J. Crockford, ‘Chagall at Tudeley’, Sermon preached at University Church, Oxford, 7th April 2019 - https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/sermons/chagall-tudeley?fbclid=IwAR3hxj1Lah8A5Uq2yYjggxw1rafwJlxq-4V86olsvwSdpyoLAJ11kKNvKAc

[iii] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, p.14

[iv] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, p.12

[v] R. Carter, ‘The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life’, Canterbury Press, 2019, p. 219

[vi] R. Carter, ‘The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life’, Canterbury Press, 2019, p. 224

[vii] https://www.makotofujimura.com/writings/beauty-without-regret/

[viii] M. Fujimura, Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering, IVP, 2016

[ix] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-fate-of-the-arts/articles/interview-with-artist-makoto-fujimura

[x] https://www.makotofujimura.com/writings/beauty-without-regret/

Click here for the other parts of 'Seeing is Receiving'. See also 'And a little child shall lead them' which explores similar themes.

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U2 - Stay (Faraway, So Close).