VCS Bible & Art Daily - Fishman in Excelsis, Artwork by Paul Thek

The Visual Commentary on Scripture offers a daily email exploring the Bible through art. Through concise but vivid day-by-day encounters, Bible and Art Daily will take you on a series of journeys through the world of Scripture and the history of art. The VCS have brought together experts in theology and art history to carefully curate a treasury of week-long series, each exploring a particular theme, an artistic medium, or a biblical character. Find out more and subscribe here.

My most recent commentary to feature in Bible and Art Daily came in the Series: Fish - Episode 7 of 7: Fishman in Excelsis, Artwork by Paul Thek

About this Series: Fish - There are a lot of fish in the Bible. They are often signs or instruments of God at work. Indeed, large quantities of fish are one of the ways in which Jesus reveals his power and teaches his disciples what their role must be when they begin catching people in their ‘nets’. Artists have enjoyed making signs of fish, too, ever since the ‘ichthus’ became one of the very first Christian symbols. This group of commentaries highlights some of the key appearances made by fishy creatures in the Bible and Christian art.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

My first exhibition for the VCS was 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

My third exhibition was 'Fishers of People'. This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

My fourth exhibition was 'Before the Deluge', a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

My fifth exhibition reflects on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12. It is called 'Establishing the Heart' and includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer.

For more on the artists included in these exhibitions click on the following links: Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly, Stanley Spencer, William Blake, Arthur Boyd, Peter Howson, Colin McCahon, Damien Hirst, John Bellany, and Paul Thek.

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Sweet Honey in the Rock - Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.

Visual Commentary on Scripture - Lent Stations: Community

For the season of Lent the Visual Commentary on Scripture will share 14 selected artworks and commentaries on the theme of Community, introduced below by VCS Director Ben Quash.

Click below to visit the first Lent Station, titled 'You Shall Eat the Plants of the Field':
Station 1: You Shall Eat the Plants of the Field

Lent Stations: Community

One of the traditional Christian practices in Lent, along with prayer and fasting, is almsgiving. It’s easy to read the giving of alms as a mere financial transaction; more specifically (and worse) to see it as nothing more than rich people patronising poor people with their money. This has also infected some of our reactions to the word ‘charity’. We hear this in the understandable protest: ‘I don’t want your charity!’. Surely justice would be better; a fair chance for all.

But the full sense (often forgotten) of charity has its roots in the Latin word caritas, and this means something to which justice is just as central as mercy. Properly understood, charity means living in love and in right relationship with one’s neighbour. It means being in community. The Lenten practice of almsgiving sits in this wider context of practices that strengthen the bonds of community.

Indeed, in some cultures, the giver of alms is required to deliver their gift upwards into the hand of the recipient—a hand which is held over theirs. This makes the giver humble and dignifies the recipient. It opens a whole new perspective on ‘giving up’ something for Lent!

This year’s VCS Lenten series of artworks and associated commentaries is centred on the theme of community, something as urgently needed as ever in a fractured world.

Anyone subscribed to the VCS 𝐄𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝗪𝐞𝐞𝐤 will receive Lent emails twice a week, directly to their inbox. Click on the link to sign up now: https://thevcs.org/sign-vcs-emails

My first exhibition for the VCS was 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

My third exhibition was 'Fishers of People'. This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

My fourth exhibition was 'Before the Deluge', a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

My fifth exhibition reflects on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12. It is called 'Establishing the Heart' and includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer.

For more on the artists included in these exhibitions click on the following links: Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly, Stanley Spencer, William Blake, Arthur Boyd, Peter Howson, Colin McCahon, Damien Hirst, John Bellany, and Paul Thek.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

The VCS has a daily email exploring the Bible through art. Through concise but vivid day-by-day encounters, Bible and Art Daily will take you on a series of journeys through the world of Scripture and the history of art. The VCS have spent the last year bringing together experts in theology and art history to carefully curate a treasury of week-long series, each exploring a particular theme, an artistic medium, or a biblical character. Find out more and subscribe here.

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Forty Days and Forty Nights.

The time is now

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

The famous passage from Ecclesiastes that we have just heard read (Ecclesiastes 3. 1 - 15) is often understood as meaning that God orders our time and allots particular events to particular times and seasons. However, it can also be understood in terms of one of those phrases like ‘stuff happens’, ‘life happens’ which mean simply that what happens happens. The reality it says is that all our lives will contain enough time for births and deaths, tears and laughter, mourning and dancing, conflict and peace to occur. There is time enough in each of our lifetimes for all these things and it is inevitable that we will experience them.

While it is inevitable that the highs and lows of life will occur over the course of our lives, we don’t know when these things will occur or how long our lives themselves will be, and so inevitability is combined with uncertainty. We often respond to this by trying to impose order either by detailed planning on our own part or by asking that God will order our days. When we do so, we can end up preoccupied with the future, instead of experiencing the present.

As we don’t know how much time we have, it is imperative that we must use the time we currently have wisely. We do so by savouring and appreciating the time we have whether that is: time at home - growing together as a family; time at work – completing tasks and supporting colleagues; time at church - in worship, fellowship and prayer; or time alone with God - praying and reading the Bible.

Van Morrison sings that ‘These are the days, the time is now … There's only here, there's only now.’ Similarly, Simon Small has written, ‘There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.’ Each moment we are alive is unique and unrepeatable. As singer-songwriter, Victoria Williams, has put it, ‘This moment will never come again / I know it because it has never been before.’ We live in the present and can only encounter God in this moment, in the here and now, today.

We can only live in the here and now. In Deuteronomy 30. 11 - 20 we read of Moses saying to the Israelites, “today … I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses” and exhorting them to “choose life.” Similarly, in Hebrews 3. 7 - 19, the writer of that letter says, ‘Today, if you hear his [God’s] voice, do not harden your hearts …’ The emphasis of these passages is that now is the moment to encounter God, now is the moment to live.

Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 tells us that there is time, if we use the time that is available to us. All too often we do not take the time we have to be with those that are important to us. All too often we distract ourselves with unimportant tasks and fail to do the things that are truly of importance to us. Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 encourages us to use the time that we have. So, as we often pray during funerals, grant us, Lord, the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. Let us use that time to know others more completely, appreciate them more fully, love them more deeply, and, in that knowing, know ourselves more intimately. For to know and appreciate and love and enjoy each other in that way is heaven.

How much time have we got? We don’t know, so we must use it all wisely. The past is behind us, the future is yet to come, so now is the only moment in which we can live and move and have our being. This means that now is always the moment in which to encounter God, now is always the moment in which to truly come alive and truly live, now is always the moment in which we can give of ourselves in thanks for all that God has given to us. There's only here, there's only now. This moment is unique and unrepeatable. It will never come again because it has never been before. So, these are the days for encounter, for living and loving and for giving. The time is now.

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Van Morrison - These Are The Days.

The Incarnation - entry into every detail of human life

Here's the sermon I shared this morning at St Mary's Langdon Hills and St Catherine's Wickford, and will share again at St Peter's Nevendon this afternoon:

A former curate of mine hadn’t sung ‘Unto us a Son is born!’ before coming to our then Parish and got quite a shock when he was out carol singing round the parish and realised what he was singing in the third verse:

“Herod then, with fear was filled:
‘A prince,’ he said, ‘in Jewry!’
All the little boys he killed
At Beth-lem in his fury,
At Beth-lem in his fury.”

You can see why, as in a few short phrases ‘Unto us a Son is born!’ graphically brings home to us the horror of the genocide which the Christmas story contains.

I once heard Giles Fraser talk about this story (Matthew 2. 13-end) in a BBC Four programme on ‘Ten Best Sacred Christmas Classics.’ He was talking about ‘The Childhood of Christ’ by Berlioz and spoke about the way that this piece of music associates Christmas with fear by including the story of the massacre of the infants.

Why should Christmas be associated with fear? He was arguing that people had traditionally associated God with protection. God was the all-powerful, the omniscient, the all-seeing, all-knowing one who could always be there for you in every situation and circumstance. But the Christmas story is of God becoming the weakest, most vulnerable, most dependent thing that a human being can be and that is a new-born baby.

The Christmas story is that the God who we think of as being an all-powerful protector actually becomes wholly dependent on human beings for his own protection. Fraser argues that that is frightening because it removes our sense of being protected at the same time that it makes God weak and vulnerable. And the point in the Christmas story when this realisation comes rushing in on us like a freight train is the massacre of the innocents because we realise that God is now in a place and position where he can be killed; not just through the malevolence and wickedness of Herod but possibly just through an accident or neglect. As a human baby God is wholly dependent on human beings for his protection and as we hear regularly on the news, we don’t actually have a very good track record when it comes to treating children well.

Fraser emphasises the sense of shock and fear for us in finding our protector become dependent. I want instead to emphasise what this conveys to us of God’s love. The story of the massacre of the innocents shows us that God is willing to take the risk of coming into our world; a world in which genocide occurs and in which innocent children are abused and die. He is willing to risk coming into this world unprotected as a baby wholly dependent on his human parents for protection:

“And the word became …
Wordless
Flesh
A baby with no words
And the voice of the maker became a hungry voice
A cry for food
A cry for milk
The voice that made gravity cried out for fear of falling
The voice that made women cries for a woman’s breast and screams with disappointment when it is denied …

Then now God is this small thing
Is a baby
Is a baby that can be dropped or hurt or left unfed, left unchanged, left wet and smelly
Or be child-abused.” (‘Image of the Invisible,’ Late, Late Service)

This is the reality of the incarnation and of the Christmas story. This is what it means for Jesus to be born. It is the ultimate identification. God becomes flesh and blood and moves into our neighbourhood with all that that involves, not just at the beginning of his life but throughout:

incarnation

knew what it meant to be born into poverty
knew what it meant to survive genocide
knew what it meant to be forced to live as a refugee
knew what it meant to grow up disadvantaged
knew what it meant to experience the stigma of illegitimacy
knew what it meant to go to school and to learn a trade
knew what it meant to turn to God in prayer, faith and hope
knew what it meant to offer up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears
knew what it meant to be hungry and thirsty
knew what it meant to be tempted and tested
knew what it meant to share food and drink with friends
knew what it meant to be feted and praised
knew what it meant to feel compassion
knew what it meant to meet people’s needs
knew what it meant to be criticised for doing good
knew what it meant to shed tears at the death of a friend
knew what it meant to be questioned and rejected
knew what it meant to wrestle with God
knew what it meant to be arrested and imprisoned
knew what it meant to be put on trial
knew what it meant to be beaten and tortured
knew what it meant to be scarred
knew what it meant to be abandoned by a father
knew what it meant to learn obedience from suffering
knew what it meant to die

Emmanuel – God with us
made like his brothers and sisters in every way
tempted in every way, just as we are
able to sympathize with our weaknesses
Emmanuel - became flesh and blood
moved into our neighbourhood.

Why does God do this? Why does he take the risk? It is all because of love and it is perhaps best explained in some words from Hebrews 2. 14-18:

“Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it's logical that the Saviour took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil's hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.

It's obvious, of course, that he didn't go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That's why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people's sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed.”

Hebrews 4. 14-16 then goes on to says: “Now that we know what we have — Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God — let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”

This Christmas let's do just that - walk right up to him and get what he has demonstrated that he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help, receive the love, embrace the risk. May it so for each one of us. Amen.

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Berlioz - L'enfance du Christ, Op 25, Hol 130

Visual Commentary on Scripture - Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love & Bible and Art Daily

This Autumn, the Visual Commentary on Scripture launched Bible and Art Daily, a new daily email exploring the Bible through art. Through concise but vivid day-by-day encounters, it takes you on a series of journeys through the world of Scripture and the history of art. The VCS have spent the last year bringing together experts in theology and art history to carefully curate a treasury of week-long series, each exploring a particular theme, an artistic medium, or a biblical character. Find out more and subscribe here.

Two of the commentaries I have written for the VCS have featured in a Bible and Art Daily episode so far. The first, 'Yet To Come', featured in the series on 'Picturing the Trinity'. This commentart comes from my exhibition 'A Question of Faith' which explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

'Picturing the Trinity' is described as follows: 'There are perils and peculiarities involved in visually depicting the Holy Trinity. Christianity insists that divinity is invisible, even if Jesus in his humanity reveals God’s purposes and presence. And the Bible’s multiplicity of images of what God might be ‘like’ forbid settling on any one as descriptively adequate. Some visual art has risked anthropomorphizing God; some has experimented with oblique or abstract modes of signification, recognizing that God ‘dwells in unapproachable light, whom [no one] has ever seen or can see’ (1 Timothy 6:16).'

The second commentary used that I have written has been included in the Series 'Trees of Life'. Episode 7 of 14: 'The Ground of Rebirth' has artwork by Arthur Boyd from my 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4. The image included is 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree'. The 'Trees of Life' Series is described as follows: 'The Christian story of salvation begins and ends with trees. The forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, once eaten, initiates a long pilgrimage through time, which will culminate in a heavenly city with a tree at its heart, whose leaves are ‘for the healing of the nations’.'

This year, the Advent programme from the VCS has had a slightly different look than those from previous years. Instead of daily emails for the duration of Advent, they have sent their Exhibition of the Week subscribers an email every Monday from December 1st, with links to seven different works of art and commentaries for each day of the week. The idea is to think of it as a traditional Advent calendar! Each of the four weeks has had a different theme, starting with Hope, then Peace, followed by Joy, and ending with Love in the week of Christmas.

Anyone subscribed to their Exhibition of the Week receives the weekly Advent emails. Their hope has been that we enjoy journeying towards Christmas with the help of these works of art. Sign up here for their Exhibition of the Week email.

The first week's commentaries included 'To Our Hopes', another of the commentaries from my exhibition 'A Question of Faith'. The most recent email reveals that the image chosen for Christmas Day is from my most recent exhibition for VCS.  Reflecting on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12, the exhibition is called 'Establishing the Heart' and includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer. The image chosen for Christmas Day is John Reilly's 'Holy Family'.

John Reilly’s ambition was "always been to paint a picture which perfectly weds form and content” in order “to express in visible form the oneness and unity of [the] invisible power binding all things into one whole.” I was fortunate enough to meet him at his home on the Isle of Wight, while there on a family holiday. I didn’t know of his work before going on that holiday but found cards and prints of his amazing work in some of the shops there and had to find out more. He was kind enough to invite me into his home and show me his work and works in progress.

He has said: "My paintings are not concerned with the surface appearance of people or things but try to express something of the fundamental spiritual reality behind this surface appearance. I try to express in visible form the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole. I try to express something of the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible.”

So, for Reilly, the unseen reality manifests itself both through pattern - “the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole” - and through story - “the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible”. He has also used the greater freedom of expression that modern movements in art have given to artists to develop a visual language of forms and colours which he hopes expresses “something of their deeper spiritual significance.” His work draws on cubism, fauvism and orphism in particular.

Reilly has made a profound use of the circle in his work in order to depict the wholeness that he finds in the world and the life that God has created. He frequently bases his works on a central circle (often, the sun) from which facets of colour emanate, like ripples on the surface of a stream. The painting’s imagery is then set within these facets, each figure or object being embedded in the overall patterning of the painting and related to the environmental whole that Reilly creates.

By these means fragments of form and colour (the facets of the painting’s patterning) and the images that they contain are united to circle harmoniously around and within God, the central life and intelligence which is the light of the world. Works such as ‘Life Eternal’ utilise these methods and meanings and both contain and convey huge energy and resolution as a result.

His technique of colour fragments emanating from a central source enables him to suggest that his archetypal images of creation and the landscape are both, filled with the emanating rays and linked by them into a unified circle. His paintings (including 'Life Eternal’) therefore suggest the way in which we are linked both by being the creation of God and by being indwelt by his spirit.

The obituary I wrote for Reilly and my review of 'The Painted Word: Paintings by John Reilly' can both be found in the 'Church Times' Digital Archive.  

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

My exhibitions for the VCS are:

'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

'Fishers of People' which uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

'Before the Deluge', a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

Reflecting on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12, 'Establishing the Heart' includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer.

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Arvo Pärt - Christmas Lullaby.

Advent Meditation: The Prophets

Here's the meditation on The Prophets that I shared during Advent Night Prayer at St Andrew's Wickford this evening:

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of Bethlehem.
Of Bethlehem of Ephrathah, one of the little clans of Judah,
from whom shall come one who is to rule in Israel,
one whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.
When she who is in labour has brought forth,
then the rest of his kin shall return to the people of Israel
and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God,
and they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a sign that the Lord himself would give.
The sign a young woman with child.
A young woman who shall bear a son.
A young woman who shall name that son, Immanuel.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a child.
A child born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority grows continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom
when he will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from his time onwards and for evermore.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a shoot.
A shoot to come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch to grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord would rest on that shoot,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight would be in the fear of the Lord.
He would not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he would judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he would strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips kill the wicked.
Righteousness would be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and the little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear would graze,
their young would lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child would play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all God’s holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a star.
They saw him, but not then;
they beheld him, but not near.
They saw a star,
a star that would come out of Jacob,
and a sceptre that would rise out of Israel.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of Egypt.
As, when Israel was a child, God loved him,
and out of Egypt he called his son.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of the Temple.
The temple to which the Lord who is sought will suddenly come.
The messenger of the covenant in whom we delight,
the messenger is coming,
coming to be like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap;
to sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,
and to purify the descendants of Levi
and refine them like gold and silver,
until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.
Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord
as in the days of old and as in former years.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of people,
people who walked in darkness
seeing a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shone.

The prophets dreamed.
They saw from a distance and greeted their dreams.
They died in faith without having received the promises.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem,
a census requiring Jesus’ birth in Joseph’s home town.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the sign given
in the child Immanuel, God with us.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the child born for us,
the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the shoot
coming from the stock of Jesse
on whom the spirit of the Lord did rest.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the star,
the star that led the Magi to worship Israel’s star.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of Egypt,
where our Saviour fled and from where he returned.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the Temple,
where Simeon and Anna see salvation
in the young Christ unexpectedly come.

Therefore, since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses and prophets,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,
and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
the one from of old, from ancient days,
the son who is named Immanuel,
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,
the one on whom the spirit of the Lord rests,
the sceptre that rises out of Israel,
the one God calls his son,
the one who refines like gold and silver,
until we present offerings to the Lord in righteousness,
that our offerings will be pleasing to the Lord
as in the days of old and as in former years. Amen.

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G.F.Händel - The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who humble themselves will be exalted

Here's the sermon that I have shared at St Mary's Runwell and St Peter's Nevendon today: 

One of the things I did during my holiday was to watch a film about the life of the guitarist and rock star Eric Clapton. In part, this was because he experienced a conversion to Christ, about which he has written in some of his songs.

Clapton knew significant trauma in his life being brought up by his grandparents as his mother was unable to look after him as a child and did not bond with him later in life. Additionally, later in life, his four-year-old son, Conor, died in a tragic accident when he fell from a window in a high-rise apartment. The film was particularly interesting because of a radical difference in the way he responded to the painful issues he experienced in his life in his early and later years.

Clapton found fame, wealth and adulation as a young man because of his musical talents but finding those things, when combined with his early traumas did not bring joy and contentment. Instead, they led him into drug and alcohol addition which was focused on his own desires, needs and wants, including desiring a relationship with Patti Boyd, the wife of his best friend, the Beatle George Harrison. Once out of control, through excessive drinking, he also found himself making racist statements on stage that he later regretted because his career was actually based on discovering the blues, the music of Black America.

So, his selfish and self-centred behaviours, which derived in part from early experiences of pain and hurt as a child, had the effect of destroying his and other’s relationships while leading him to say and do many things that, when sober, he regretted. At a key moment in his attempts to kick his addictions, he cried out to God for help and felt that he was answered. Getting sober and finding faith meant that when the rebuilding of a new life was rocked by the tragic death of his young son, he didn’t revert to his former absorption in drink and drugs instead he committed to living in a way that honoured his son. The film ended with Clapton as a happy family man who has set up a charity providing support to those who could not otherwise afford the help needed to get free of their own addictions and using his talents and those of his friends to raise funds to support that vital work.

Our Gospel reading today (Luke 14: 1, 7-14) sets up similar contrasts to those we find in the life of Eric Clapton. The context is a party, something that would have been very familiar to Clapton in his hedonistic days, and the question Jesus poses is how should we enter. In his early years, Clapton would have become familiar with being the star, the one who turned heads when he walked in the room, and would have become used, as a result, to being given all he wanted and desired, even if it did him harm.

Jesus commends the reverse of entering as the star. He encourages us to be the one who takes the last and lowest place at the table. One of the problems, as Clapton discovered, with being at the head of the table is that the only way from there, at some stage, is down. But, as Jesus notes, if you are in the last and lowest place, the only way is up. Jesus is famous for prophesying that, in the final reckoning, the first shall be last and the last first. This is a part of what Clapton discovered in later life as he changes from a life centred on his own needs and wants to one centred on others – his family and those seeking to be free from addictions.

His understanding of this change shows up in his songs, particularly a song called ‘Broken Hearted’, where, in the context of looking forward to heaven, he writes:

‘there's a place where we can go
Where we will not be parted
And who alone will enter there?
Only the broken-hearted’

We live in a world where leaders are increasingly focused on self-promotion – constantly creating narratives about how wonderful they are and how awful their predecessors were – and are advocating policies based on selfishness, particularly by blaming the problems faced by nations on those who have or are migrating from issues and situations most of us can’t imagine and couldn’t cope with. Placing the blame for the issues we face on those travelling to different countries ignores all the other problems our countries face and seeks to portray those who are actually victims of violence or oppressions as invaders. The inherent selfishness that is at the heart of such policies is that of saying we must keep all our resources for those that we see as being the same as ourselves instead of being willing to share – ‘sharing is caring’, as my grandchildren are rightly taught at their school.

How should we respond to our changing and self-centred world, as those who are told by Jesus to take the last and lowest place at the table? The answer is to be found in today’s Epistle (Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16):

‘Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’

Christian love – taking the last or lowest place - involves showing hospitality to strangers, remembering those who are in most difficulty or distress as though we are experiencing the same ourselves, being faithful to those closest to us, and living contentedly with what we have, not chasing after material wealth, in order that we trust God for his presence which means more than all we might otherwise gain.

Jesus is clear that those who live self-centred lives are on the wrong path, as all who exalt themselves will be humbled. As we have seen from the story of Eric Clapton’s life that is also what he discovered as he came to see it was a path of destruction, both for himself and for those around him. He wrote in his autobiography: ‘From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for life, and most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray, and with my ego, this is the most I can do.’

Each of us, however, has to come to that realisation for ourselves, if we are as individuals or as nations are to change tack and, as Clapton also did, learn the lesson of Jesus’ parable and the value in God’s eyes of taking the last or lowest place. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Eric Clapton - Broken Hearted.

Pressing on and going forward

Here's the reflection that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Both our readings today are to do with responses to difficulties and challenges. Jesus experienced his own people turning against him in the story told in our Gospel reading this morning (Mark 6.1-6). The people in his home synagogue were astounded by him, recognising that he had been given wisdom and was doing deeds of power. But that recognition led them to question where it was that his wisdom and power came from and they became jealous that one of them, someone with whom they have all grown up, should possess wisdom and power beyond that of themselves. The result was that they took offence at him and he could do no deed of power there because of their lack of belief. However, Jesus’ response was to continue his mission by going about among the villages teaching.

In our New Testament reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews 12.4-13), the challenges faced maybe on the one hand the threat of persecution and on the other our own fallibilities and failures. Whichever challenge is faced, the encouragement given by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves down, work to strengthen our areas of weakness, and carry on living our lives as followers of Jesus. When we do so, the difficulties and challenges we face become the things that strengthen us and enable us to cope and be there for the long haul.

It can, perhaps, seem from these passages as though we, or Jesus, are on our own and have to find the willpower or internal strength to overcome the opposition or difficulties that are being encountered. However, Jesus was continually reliant on God the Father and, by this stage, was also travelling with his group of disciples around him. They often didn’t fully understand what he was teaching or doing, but they would, no doubt, have been a source of support to him in this situation at Nazareth. Similarly, the Letter to the Hebrews was written to encourage and support a group of Christians undergoing, or about to undergo, persecution. The fact that the letter was written and sent meant that there were others supporting this group of Christians with advice and prayer.

As a result, in any situation of difficulty we might face, we should look around to see who is also around to help and support. In an age of almost instant communication, it may even be that help has never been closer at hand. For each of us, then, the challenge is not just to coping and coming through difficulties ourselves, but also to looking around in order that we see those who are experiencing difficulty and challenge that we can help.

The reality in a world of conflict and change is that difficulties, challenges and even opposition are inevitable. The key to coping is linked to attitude. Jesus’ decision to continue his mission in the face of the opposition he faced and the encouragement in the passage from Hebrews to find difficulties as a testing ground – an assault course – to build up our strength in order to go on are both encouragements to look for the opportunities in our challenges. If we have a deficit mindset that is focused on all the difficulties we face, then we have lost before we have begun. If we have an abundance mindset that views God as providing resources, support and strength even in the most challenging of circumstances, then we can have hope in the possibility of moving on and overcoming the challenges we face.

When his own people took offence at him, Jesus continued his mission by going about among the other villages teaching. When the Hebrew Christians faced persecution and challenge, the encouragement to them was to lift their drooping hands, strengthen weak knees, and make straight paths for their feet in order to press on and go forward. And God was with them as they did so. May it be so for each one of too.

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Sweet Honey In The Rock - Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round.

Visual Commentary on Scripture: Fishers of People

I'm delighted that my third exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture has just been published and can be found at Fishers of People | VCS (thevcs.org).

This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

My first exhibition for the VCS was Back from the Brink on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition is A Question of Faith and explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

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Newsboys - Fishers Of Men.

Made complete in everything good

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

The writer to the Hebrews ends his letter with a Benediction: Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13: 16-21)

What does it mean, I wonder, for us to be made complete? Following the feeding of the five thousand (John 6.1-14), Jesus asked his disciples to gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. Similarly, through our offering of ourselves to God, Jesus provides a means by which what is disparate and fragmented within our lives can gathered up, unified and completed.

That was certainly my experience in offering for ordained ministry. In my working life I had experience of partnership working to create employment opportunities, with a particular focus on assisting disabled people in finding and keeping work. In my church life I had involvement in setting up a church-based day care business and a detached youth work project reaching out to disaffected young people. In my personal life I was writing and painting and finding a limited range of opportunities to share my creative work.

I realised, as I went through the selection process for ordination and then my ministerial training, that ordained ministry could hold and utilise all these disparate experiences and, as a result, could provide a frame within which all these disparate fragments of my life could be gathered up, held together and unified. And so it has proved, as each context for my ministry to date has provided unique opportunities to make connections between faith, work, art and social action through partnerships and projects. That has, of course, been even more the case since discovering the HeartEdge mission model which integrates congregation, culture, commerce and compassion.

Through HeartEdge, I have also experienced the way in which mission and ministry in, from and outside the church provides a framework, forum or context in which all of our skills, experiences, interests and failures can be gathered up, integrated and used for God’s glory and in God’s service. My personal experience of that reality has been in relation to ordained ministry but, again, the HeartEdge model of mission is clear that this gathering up of all that we offer applies to us all, whether lay or ordained.

Later in John 6, Jesus gives a cosmic or eschatological twist to this phrase we are considering when he says it ‘is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day’ (John 6. 37 – 40). These words come in the middle of Jesus’ teaching about being the Bread of Life which followed the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus gave thanks over the bread, the word used is ‘eucharistesas’, the word which gives us ‘Eucharist’. Jesus shared the bread around in communion, then, when everyone was satisfied, he instructed his disciples to pick up the fragments using that same phrase, ‘so that nothing may be lost.’ Just as none of this ‘eucharisticized’ bread was lost after the feeding, so, because ‘Jesus is the bread of life, [those who] see and believe in him … receive eternal life [and] become a fragment which he will gather up on the last day.’ (John, Richard Burridge, BRF 1998)

Christ’s was a once-for-all action that is then re-presented and re-membered in and through the Eucharist. The Eucharist being our most significant and meaningful form of Remembrance. We bring the broken fragments of our lives to the one whose own body was broken on the cross but who endured that experience out of love for us to bring us through brokenness into reconciliation and resurrection. In return we receive his body and blood into our lives through a fragment of bread and a sip of wine. Our life is joined to his. The broken fragments of our lives are gathered up and incorporated into the story of God’s saving work with humanity. The fragments of our lives are accepted – overaccepted – and unified or completed as we are brought together to form a new body - the body of Christ – in which all things find their place and where all shall be well and all manner of thing be well.

God takes us and our offerings and places them in a far larger story than we ever could have imagined by giving them a sacred story and making them sacred actions. As we retell and re-enact what Jesus did at the Last Supper, we also remember what God did to Israel in ‘taking one special people, blessing them, then breaking them in the Exile before giving them as a light to the nations to bring the Gentiles to God.’ ‘In the telling of those stories and the performance of those actions we are transformed into God’s holy people.’ That’s what the regular celebration of the Eucharist is about. When the Eucharist is served, each of us offers all that we uniquely are at the altar and we receive from God everything we need to follow him by being a blessing to others in our daily lives.

This teaching also tallies with the use made elsewhere of Harvest imagery for the Last Judgement – a sense that all can be safely gathered in - and is reinforced for us in the Letter to the Colossians where it is stated that in Christ all things hold together, as through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. Christ came to gather up and reconcile to God all the disparate fragments of our lives that none should be lost, even through death. That is why he gave us parables of lost things being found. It is why he states that there is room for all – many rooms - in his Father’s house and that he goes there to prepare places for us. It is also why St Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 13 that faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next. In other words, our deeds of faith, hope and love are not lost with our death in this life but continue into eternity where they are completed.

As a result, we have, I think, a basis for saying with Walt Whitman that: ‘Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, / No birth, identity, form — no object of the world, / Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; / Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere / confuse thy brain. / Ample are time and space — ample the field and / nature. / The body, sluggish, aged, cold — the embers left / from earlier fires, / The light in the eye grown dim shall duly flame / again; / The sun now low in the west rises for mornings / and for noons continual; / To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible land / returns, / With grass and flowers and summer fruits and / corn.’

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Walt Whitman - Continuities.

Cheering us on in our endeavours

Here is the sermon I shared yesterday at St Catherine's Wickford:

Hebrews 11 tells the stories of many people of faith who we know of from the stories contained in the Old Testament (Hebrews 11. 32 – 12. 2). These are the great figures of the Old Testament; Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. The section we have heard read this evening comes towards the end where the writer of Hebrews realises that he is running out of space and does not have room to fully tell the stories of all those that he wishes to mention.

In shorthand he asks us to picture many who because of their faith have experienced persecution, torture, poverty and ill-treatment. Finally, he asks us to picture all those who have lived lives characterised by faith as being like the crowd filling an enormous stadium and cheering us on as we run our race of faith through life. All these wonderful heroes of the faith who lived such exciting and eventful lives, they are cheering us on in our endeavours to all live lives that are faithful to God and his purposes. Not only are they there supporting us but the writer to the Hebrews says that their experiences are not complete and that only in company with us will they be made perfect.

As God’s people, we are on a journey or running a race with an end point, a destination in view. What is this endpoint or destination? It was set out for us in our reading from Isaiah 65 and is the coming new creation; the moment when God will make a new heaven and new earth fusing the two together to create a new existence for human beings in a world that is characterised by joy and not sorrow.

This is the wonderful future towards which we run, for which we minister both in our individual lives and together as a Church and towards which those who have gone before us and who now cheer us on from the stands point by the way in which their lives were lived and the inspiration that their lives provide for us.

Madeleine Channer is a lovely former nurse who was a member of the congregation when I was at St John’s Seven Kings. She wrote a book called Echoes from the Andes telling stories of those she met while nursing in Peru. Her book is, I think, imbued with this reality about which we have been speaking. In the book Maddy says that she went to Peru “with the aim of serving” but that her actual experience was that she received as much, if not more, than she gave. The Rev. Colin Grant, to whom Maddy dedicates the book, and the Doctors with whom she worked in Peru all influenced her deeply but it was the beauty of the Quechua people that influenced her most profoundly. Maddy writes:

“Things were happening in my heart and mind. I had come to Peru with the aim of serving, but I was receiving. As well as the emergence of spiritual truths, the Quechua people exemplified priceless qualities: humility, generosity of spirit, quietude, kindness and longsuffering.

Like the petals of a flower gradually unfolding to the rays of the sun, this was another unfolding, another lifting to the light. It shone into the corridors of my mind, and into the shafts and labyrinths of my soul like a searchlight. I saw and beheld; the Spirit of God was moving, spurring me on, the Spirit of life and peace.”

In this short extract from the end of Maddy’s book, we see how the examples of those around her where both an inspiration and a lesson to her and how they were used by God to move her forward in the race which had and has to run. It can be the same for us as we look for God in the people around us and as we find out about those people of faith who have gone before and who are alive today and ministering in different parts of the world.

We have this large crowd of witnesses round us and we have Jesus in front of us. We know the destination towards which we run; the joy of the new earth and new heavens. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way and let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Amen.

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David Grant - Wake Up Everybody.

Visual Commentary on Scripture - Faith: To Our Hopes

The Visual Commentary on Scripture’s Lent offering this year is based as usual around 14 ‘Stations’ which began on Ash Wednesday and continue on Mondays and Fridays until Holy Week. All the commentaries in the series have an audio feature so that you can listen to them while viewing the works of art. Their 2024 Stations share with you a series of seven works exploring, first, the seven vices most commonly included in lists of the ‘deadly sins’, and then, second, the seven cardinal and theological virtues.

The Christian practice of listing vices and virtues has a long history, going back at least to the times of the very early desert monks in the fourth and fifth centuries. As they cultivated their little patches of land in order to sustain themselves, they also cultivated their bodies and souls to make them as fruitful as they could. Later, medieval Christian manuscripts featured the motif of the ‘virtue garden’, in which the virtues (usually seven) are shown as trees, being watered by prayer.

Christianity, like Judaism, likes having things in sevens. The sixth-century Pope Gregory the Great codified what he thought of as the seven ’capital’ sins—the vices from which all other wrongdoings flow—establishing what we still commonly refer to today as the seven ‘deadly’ sins. The list has varied a little over time. Some vices have dropped out and others have been dropped in. But overall, it has been remarkably consistent.

There has also been variety in the seven virtues Christians have listed for special consideration and imitation. Some lists are based on Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (‘the Beatitudes’); some were developed to describe specific antidotes to each of the capital vices; and one was a combination of four ‘cardinal’ virtues, celebrated in ancient classical philosophy as well as in Jewish and Christian tradition—Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude—with the three ‘theological’ virtues outlined by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 13—Faith, Hope, and Love.

Their commentaries explore what some of the more archaic-sounding virtues, like fortitude and temperance might have to teach us in a 21st-century context. Perseverance and self-restraint are, after all, things we need as much as ever.

And because vices are usually good things gone wrong—inordinate or disordered love for something that isn’t necessarily bad in itself, but bad when desired too much or in the wrong way—then you may find the occasional surprise along this Lenten journey: for example, a ‘vice’ having more of the qualities of a ‘virtue’ than you expected.

Lent is a time for spiritual gardening. They hope you will find this year’s Lent Stations a helpful way to take stock of what you might like to weed and what you might like to nurture in your own contexts.

 
Today's Station - Station 12 Faith: To Our Hopes - uses my second exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture which can be found at A Question of Faith | VCS (thevcs.org). It's called 'A Question of Faith' and explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon.

McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

The McCahon exhibition varies the usual VCS format slightly by providing a greater focus on works by one artist than is usually the case. That is possible in this instance because all of the works in the exhibition explore aspects of Hebrews 11.

My first exhibition for the VCS was 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's Nebuchadnezzar, 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree, 1969, and Peter Howson's The Third Step, 2001.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

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King's X - Faith, Hope, Love.

Witnesses in the trial of life

Here's the sermon I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

“I have been used for many years to studying the histories of other times, and to examining and weighing the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God has given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.” Professor Thomas Arnold

The teachings of Jesus “are read more, quoted more, loved more, believed more, and translated more because they are the greatest words ever spoken … No other man’s words have the appeal of Jesus’ words because no other man can answer these fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them. They are the kind of words and the kind of answers we would expect God to give.” Professor Bernard Ramm

“Is not the nature of Christ, in the words of the New Testament, enough to pierce to the soul anyone with a soul to be pierced? … he still looms over the world, his message still clear, his pity still infinite, his consolation still effective, his words still full of glory, wisdom and love.” Bernard Levin

“Jesus was irresistibly attractive as a man … What they crucified was a young man, full of life and the joy of it, the Lord of life itself, and even more the Lord of laughter, someone so utterly attractive that people followed him for the sheer fun of it.” Lord Hailsham

“I believe there is no one lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus. I say to myself, with jealous love, that not only is there no one else like him but there never could be anyone like him.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God … however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God.” C. S. Lewis

“Brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand … For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” Saint Paul

“Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” Saint Peter

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Saint Peter

All those testimonies to Jesus that you have just heard stem from the one testimony in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 16: 13-20), the moment when Peter speaks out his belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus calls Peter ‘the rock’ and he is the rock because he was the first to testify to Jesus and all the millions of people that have followed him in testifying to Jesus have built on the foundation of the testimony that Peter originally gave.

Testimony is what is given by a witness in a trial. A witness makes his or her statement as part of a trial in which the truth is at stake and where the question, ‘What is the truth?’ is what is being argued. Lesslie Newbigin has argued that this is what is “at the heart of the biblical vision of the human situation that the believer is a witness who gives his testimony in a trial.”

Where is the trial? It is all around us, it is life itself? In all situations we encounter, there is challenge to our faith and there is a need for us to testify in words and actions to our belief in Christ. Whenever people act as though human beings are entirely self-relient, there is a challenge to our faith. Whenever people argue that suffering and disasters mean that there cannot be a good God, we are on the witness stand. Whenever people claim that scientific advances or psychological insights can explain away belief in God, we are in the courtroom. Whenever a response of love is called for, our witness is at stake.

Witnesses are those who have seen or experienced a particular event or sign or happening and who then tell the story of what they have seen or heard as testimony to others. That is what Jesus called us to do before he ascended to the Father; to tell our stories of encountering him to others. No more, no less.

We don’t have to understand or be able to explain the key doctrines of the Christian faith. We don’t have to be able to tell people the two ways to live or to have memorized the sinner’s prayer or to have tracts to be able to hand out in order to be witnesses to Jesus. All we need to do is to tell our story; to say this is how Jesus made himself real to me and this is the difference that it has made.

I want to encourage us today that this is something which each of us can do. The best description I have heard of it is to gossip the Gospel. Just simply in everyday conversation with others to talk about the difference that knowing Jesus has on our lives.

It is also important to remember that we are not alone in being witnesses. We are one with millions of others who have testified to the reality and presence of Jesus Christ in their lives. No courtroom on earth could cope with the number of witnesses to Christ who could be called by the defence. That is why the writer of Hebrews says, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

This is what Peter began by saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” We are part of the witness that has been built on that rock. So let us be encouraged today by the incredible numbers of others testifying to Christ and let us be challenged to add our own testimony in words and actions to those of our brothers and sisters in Christ because every day in every situation we face, we and our faith are ‘on trial’.

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The Mercy Seat - Let The Church Roll On/I Won't Be Back.