Making a family out of strangers

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Mary's Runwell this morning:

Jesus was deliberately rude to the Syrophoenician Woman – a woman from another race and culture – that he encountered in today's Gospel reading (Mark 7: 24-37). He began by making it clear that she was not one of the chosen people for whom he had come and continued by insulting her and her people in calling them 'dogs'.

Why was he so uncharacteristically rude? We read elsewhere in the Gospels that his disciples had wanted him to send the woman away; ostensibly because of the fuss she was making but, more probably, because she was not one of 'them'. Therefore, Jesus threw all their prejudices at the woman both as a way of confronting his disciples with the ugliness of their prejudice and as a provocation that revealed the faith within this woman.

In the face of seeming denial and insult, she persisted in her request and in her faith in Jesus' ability and willingness to heal. On the back of this tangible example of faith, Jesus was then able to challenge the prejudices of his disciples (as I think was his intent from the outset) by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith.

We can see these same issues recurring in our own day and time in the way in which the debate about immigration has changed over the years enabling the whole apparatus of the state to become bent towards stopping immigration and sending migrants away, despite such people being amongst those most disadvantaged in the world today. The Archbishop of Canterbury rightly said, for example, that the previous Government’s Illegal Migration Bill was morally unacceptable and represented a “dramatic departure” from Britain's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Several years ago, the then Bishop of Dover accused senior political figures, including the then prime minister, of forgetting their humanity and attacked elements of the media for propagating a “toxicity” designed to spread antipathy towards migrants. He said, “We’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.” We can see, therefore, that this parable speaks into issues of our own day and time challenging the prejudices of our Governments and, maybe too, ourselves.

Seeing this story of the Syrophoenician woman as a deliberate challenge to the prejudices of his disciples is also consistent with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37) where Jesus tells a group of God's chosen people a story in which one of their own receives help, not from his own people, but from a man of another race, culture and faith. In that story, Jesus went further than his already radical teaching of love for our enemies by telling a story in which a member of God's chosen people received God's love and help from a person that he considered to be outside the people of God and an enemy of his own people.

However we choose to draw the boundaries of who is and who is not one of God's people, Jesus breaks through those boundaries with his love for all people, his sacrificial giving for all, and his recognition of all that those who are excluded actually have to offer to those who exclude. The strapline of St Michael’s Church in Camden Town - 'Making a family out of strangers’ - is a very good summary of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching and ministry.

It is a helpful practice, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, to try to place ourselves fully within a story from the Gospels by becoming onlooker-participants and giving full rein to our imagination. If we were part of this story, would we be with the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send the Syrophoenician woman away because she was not one of 'them', or would we be with Jesus, who challenged the prejudices of his disciples by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith? Our answer to that question will determine the extent to which we seek to make a family out of strangers ourselves.

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The Brilliance - Brother.

Making a family out of strangers

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

Jesus was deliberately rude to the Canaanite Woman – a woman from another race and culture – that he encountered, as we heard in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 15. 21 – 28). He began by making it clear that she was not one of the chosen people for whom he had come and continued by insulting her and her people in calling them 'dogs'.

Why was he so uncharacteristically rude? His disciples had wanted him to send the woman away; ostensibly because of the fuss she was making but, more probably, because she was not one of 'them'. Therefore, Jesus threw all their prejudices at the woman both as a way of confronting his disciples with the ugliness of their prejudice and as a provocation that revealed the faith within this woman.

In the face of seeming denial and insult, she persisted in her request and in her faith in Jesus' ability and willingness to heal. On the back of this tangible example of faith, Jesus was then able to challenge the prejudices of his disciples (as I think was his intent from the outset) by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith.

We can see these same issues recurring in our own day and time in the way in which the debate about immigration has changed enabling the whole apparatus of the state to now be bent towards stopping immigration and sending migrants away despite such people being amongst those most disadvantaged in the world today. The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill is morally unacceptable and represents a “dramatic departure” from Britain's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Several years ago, the then Bishop of Dover accused senior political figures, including the then prime minister, of forgetting their humanity and attacked elements of the media for propagating a “toxicity” designed to spread antipathy towards migrants. He said, “We’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.” We can see, therefore, that this story speaks into issues of our own day and time challenging the prejudices of our Government and, maybe too, ourselves.

Seeing this story of the Canaanite woman as a deliberate challenge to the prejudices of his disciples is also consistent with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37) where Jesus tells a group of God's chosen people a story in which one of their own receives help, not from his own people, but from a man of another race, culture and faith. In that story, Jesus went further than his already radical teaching of love for our enemies by telling a story in which a member of God's chosen people received God's love and help from a person that he considered to be outside the people of God and an enemy of his own people.

However we choose to draw the boundaries of who is and who is not one of God's people, Jesus breaks through those boundaries with his love for all people, his sacrificial giving for all, and his recognition of all that those who are excluded actually have to offer to those who exclude. The strapline of St Michael’s Church in Camden Town - 'Making a family out of strangers’ - is a very good summary of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching and ministry. 

It is a helpful practice, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, to try to place ourselves fully within a story from the Gospels by becoming onlooker-participants and giving full rein to our imagination. If we were part of this story, would we be with the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send the Canaanite woman away because she was not one of 'them', or would we be with Jesus, who challenged the prejudices of his disciples by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith? Our answer to that question will determine the extent to which we seek to make a family out of strangers ourselves.

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Julie & Buddy Miller - Broken Things.

In the world, but not of it

Here is my reflection from today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Jesus prayed that his followers might be in the world, but not of it (John 17. 11-17). What might he have meant? The following alternative Beatitudes provide one starting point for reflection: 

'Blessed are the wealthy, because there is the Dow Jones index.
Blessed are those who enjoy a good party, for they will drown their sorrows.
Blessed are the assertive, for they will get to the top of their career.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after chemical stimulation, for designer drugs are more widely available with every passing year.
Blessed are the ruthless, because no one will get in their way.
Blessed are the cold of heart, for they won’t get hurt when relationships break down.
Blessed are those who are involved in the arms trade, for theirs are the best deals in developing nations.
Blessed are the directors of privatised utilities, for theirs are the fat cat bonuses.'

(created by Spring Harvest guests, 1997, compiled by Rob Warner)

That was a set of beatitudes for our times, a set of beatitudes which are the complete reverse of those which Jesus gave us. Wealth replacing poverty, partying replacing mourning, assertion replacing meekness; that is the way of the world - the way we are often told to live today. It is the way of selfishness, not the way of saintliness and Jesus calls us to something different. He calls to us to be in the world, but not of it.

Jesus turned the received norms of his culture - his day, his time, his world - upside down. He rejected the temptations of wealth, power and celebrity. He taught that those who were blessed were the poor, the merciful, the persecuted. He reinterpreted the Mosaic Law in unexpected ways. He laid down his life in service of others. He died that others might live. He was in the world, but not of it.

Some of the greatest examples of his call to be different are found in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes give us a sense of the radical kingdom lifestyle to which we are called by Jesus. It is as if Jesus has crept into the window display of life and changed the price tags. It is all upside down. In a world where ‘success’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are applauded, and ‘the beautiful people’ are ambitious, accomplished and wealthy, Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Our culture encourages us to discard guilt and the sorrow that accompanies pangs of conscience. Happiness is everything, entertainment is king but Jesus teaches: “Blessed are those who mourn.” In our competitive world, self-help seminars teach assertiveness and power is to be sought and used but Jesus teaches “Blessed are the meek.”

The Kingdom of God is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires.

So, for Jesus, the world is all that he turned down when he rejected the temptations to accumulate power, wealth and celebrity. When we live life as though its purpose is our personal gain or that of our people or tribe or nation, then we are in the world and of the world. It is when we renounce such claims that we are in the world, but not of it.

Lyrics from a song written for the alternative worship service in West London called grace sum up what it means to live in the world but as though we are not of it. We do this by living counter to the culture, going against the flow, finding new directions because the kingdom of God is upside down.

In today’s world for us here at St Martin’s this may mean praying that our nation comes to find a kinder, gentler way of talking about immigration. But even if it does not, praying that St Martin’s may remain a place of hospitality and belonging to those on whom our society has turned its back. It may mean praying that the UK returns to a place of seeking to become a model of tolerance, diversity, and respect, but even if it does not, praying that St Martin’s continues to be a place that seeks to be a blessing to all in our country. It may mean praying that our democracy discovers a way to vote not in fear and self-interest but in hope and pursuit of the common good, but even if it does not, praying that St Martin’s continues to be a community that judges democracy by how safe it is to find yourself in the minority. It may mean praying that the church in this land will come to be regarded by all as a home for the outcast and a refuge for the least and the lost, but even if it does not, praying that here, at St Martin’s, we continue to worship a God who in Christ is made known in the hungry and the stranger.

Jesus’ prayer for us is not that we will be taken out of the world, but that we can be in the world and yet not belong to the world; that we are in the world, but not of it.

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Grace - God In The House.

Artlyst - Sam Ivin: Physically Scratched Portraits Of Asylum Seekers Exhibited

My latest piece for Artlyst reviews Sam Ivin’s Lingering Ghosts exhibition at St Martin-in-the-Fields until 31 August which offers a space in which to contemplate the often underreported plight of those who wait for the possibility of asylum in a place of limbo; without work, with little money and in temporary accommodation:

"Such a simple idea, yet one which combines prophecy and emotive impact as it speaks truth to power – Sam Ivin physically scratches portraits of asylum seekers erasing their eyes in order to convey the frustration engendered by the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, introduced by Theresa May as Home Secretary, which blights lives and erases the identities of those detained in its clutches."

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:

• The London Group Announces Three Exhibitions For Waterloo Festival
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Polish Art In Britain Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields;
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar;
• Refugee Artists Learning from The Lives Of Others;
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg;
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement;
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition;
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation;
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields; and
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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Michael Kiwanuka - Always Waiting.

St Laurence's Larder: An evening of Poems & Reflections

The wonderful St Laurence's Larder say ...

Join us for an evening of Poems & Reflection in aid of St Laurence’s Larder at Christ Church, Brondesbury, NW6 on Friday 24th November. Doors open 7:00pm, with guest poets, Ann Pilling & Caroline Smith.

Ann Pilling won the Guardian Prize for Childrens’ Fiction and Caroline Smith was shortlisted for the 2016 Ted Hughes Award for Poetry.

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Caroline Smith - The Scarlet Lizard.

Who is my neighbour? The Ethics of Global Relationships

Who is my neighbour? The Ethics of Global Relationships - September – November 2016

With the UK voting to leave the European Union and with realisation of increasing division, xenophobia, and confusion over future national and international relationships, the St Martin-in-the-Fields Autumn Lecture Series examines the crucial question: Who is my Neighbour?

What does the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbour as oneself actually means for us today. Lectures by renowned theologians and thinkers will reflect on this subject in relation to issues of ecology, immigration, fear and discrimination, the present political climate both in UK, Europe and the USA and how that the lives of our poorest neighbours may in fact be God’s gift to us as a Church and as a Nation.

Rowan Williams who gives the first lecture in this series writes:

“The way that our world works, as many people have said in recent years, seems to be a way in which the boundaries and barriers are rising higher between different parts of the human race. It is a world in which very few voices are saying that the death of a child in Africa or the suffering of a woman in Syria, diminishes the reality of the child or woman in Britain, or the other way round. And if the church is not saying that, God forgive us, and God help us. That’s unity. There is our calling to let the Son of God be revealed in us, to be a sign of a unity that brings alive that deep sense of connectedness in the human world…. Each person is diminished by the pain of another and each person is enriched by the holiness of another”

All lectures from 7.00pm-8.30pm at St Martin-in-the-Fields, and are free and open to all.

To ensure a place please book a free ticket on Eventbrite

Monday 19 September, 7.00pm
Rowan Williams: Who is my neighbour? The Ethics of Global Relationships

Monday 3 October, 7.00pm
Michael Northcott: My neighbour and the ecological crisis

Monday 17 October, 7.00pm
Sarah Teather: My neighbour the refugee

Monday 24 October, 7.00pm
Sarah Coakley: My neighbour beyond fear and discrimination

Monday 31 October, 7.00pm
Stanley Hauerwas: My neighbour, my nation and the presidential election

Monday 14 October, 7.00pm
Sam Wells: My neighbours, God’s gift

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Bruce Springsteen - How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live.

Statements on the EU Referendum result

On the St Martin-in-the-Fields website, Sam Wells states:

'We now face a new future grateful to be in a democracy where the people’s voice speaks – even when it says what many experience as horrifying. The decision means the nation will leave the EU; it doesn’t automatically mean a war on immigration or economic catastrophe; it must not be allowed to bring about a rise in intolerance and exclusion. It’s up to the whole country now to show that what we have in common is greater than what divides us.'

Angus Ritchie asks some apposite questions of those of us who voted to remain and view the prospect of Brexit as horrifying:

'By far the best piece I have read on the referendum is John Harris's extended essay in The Guardian. Harris, who voted to Remain, warns at the "deep anger and seething worry" which has gripped so much of the country, outside the economic powerhouse of London ...

Harris demands that we listen to a world beyond the metropolitan and middle-class. It is easy to denounce the "bigotry" of the Leave campaign without acknowledging one's own social and economic location. Remainers need to be careful not to fall into our own Pharasaism, for we have sins which require repentance. We speak of social solidarity now, but how much has it inspired us to action on behalf of those in our own land who have been left behind by capitalism? And, when we have acted, have we been motivated by a genuine desire for change or by a shallow self-righteousness - more interested in signalling our virtue than in achieving genuine change?

It is tempting to respond to this week's vote with shrill denunciations, flattering ourselves that this counts as a "prophetic" response. But Harris's essay suggests a more appropriate reaction. We need, first of all, to listen - and to listen in particular from the Nazareths of England and Wales; the unglamorous, left-behind places, which modern capitalism does not value.

For, as these areas will soon discover, the triumph of the Leave campaign is unlikely to address their plight. The challenge for Christians (however we voted in the referendum) is to listen to their genuine and justified grievances, and to help them organise for justice - making common cause with the migrant communities which the worst of the Leave campaign encouraged them to scapegoat.'

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Beth Rowley - Nobody's Fault But Mine.

If you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream, somebody will get sick

Jonathan Freedland has written an apposite comment piece in today's Guardian which connects the killing of Jo Cox with the "violence in France involving English football fans", the "loathing of the European Union and a resistance to immigration that is clearly heard by many as nothing more than hostility to foreigners."

Freedland's argument that if 'you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream' (the abuse and loathing of politicians which has become commonplace), 'somebody will get sick,' is essentially an illustration of René Girard's theory of mimetic violence. 

Giles Fraser has written that no modern thinker has done more than Girard 'to understand the self-repeating patterns through which violence flows.' 'And there can be no more disturbing conclusion than his, especially now: that violence is a form of copying, that violence is contagious, and that, as he put it: "Violence is like a raging fire that feeds on the very objects intended to smother its flames."'

'Girard’s answer to mimetic violence is that we must break the cycle by refusing to mirror our enemies. Indeed, his rejection of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is not hand-wringing pacifism – it is bloody-minded, hard-nosed defiance; a refusal to be defined by the violent other, a refusal to answer back in kind.'

'Girard goes on to argue that the most vociferous critic of religion turns out to be a Jewish prophet called Jesus of Nazareth. Girard understands the ministry of Jesus to be that of deliberately standing in the place of the innocent victim thus to reveal the profound wickedness of the whole scapegoat mechanism. And as he is strung up to die, the violence of religion is exposed in all its gruesome destructiveness.'

The argument made by Freedland and Girard applies equally to the scapegoating and targeting of the LGBTI community in Orlando, therefore I pray for all impacted by the scapegoating of others that has been so clearly seen this week using words prepared by Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Grieving God,
in your son you experienced the agony of the pointless,
savage, premature end of life.
Hold the hand of those who have lost loved ones in Orlando [and in Birstall];
restore the confidence of any who fear if ever they can relax,
or have fun, or enjoy themselves again;
calm the fears of all whose identity makes them subject
to the perverse hatred and grotesque violence of others;
and hasten a world where all are celebrated
for who they are as your children,
where difference is a sign of your diverse abundance,
and where there is no use for guns.
Through the wounded yet ascended Christ,
your personification of solidarity and embodiment of hope.
Amen.

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Prince - Sign O' The Times.

For Refugees events in a hostile environment for immigrants

The Diocese of London's For Refugees events are particularly necessary in the light of 'a home secretary intent on incorporating a “really hostile environment for illegal immigrants” ([Theresa] May’s own words)':

'When MPs voted, last October, to give the immigration bill 2015-16, currently going through parliament, a second reading, Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, protested that there had already been seven immigration bills in the last eight years and 45,000 changes to the immigration rules since Theresa May became home secretary in 2010. Specialist lawyers such as Giles, who argue that even they can barely keep up, also point to the fact that in 2013, the coalition government cut the legal aid budget by hundreds of millions of pounds. At the same time it limited availability of financial help for immigration cases to judicial reviews, persons seeking asylum, victims of domestic violence or trafficking, and those in immigration detention centres seeking bail. This means that anyone applying to remain in this country, on any basis apart from asylum or domestic violence – be it length of residency, a job offer, investment, marriage or family – must be able to afford a lawyer (and the rapidly increasing visa application fees) or navigate a near-impenetrable system unaided.

Since the Immigration Act 1971 came into force, any migrant caught without the correct papers has been subject to removal from the UK. However, to those for whom it is politically expedient to be seen to be tough on foreigners, this is apparently not enough. The 2015-16 bill, the first since the Tories achieved their majority, received its third reading in the House of Lords on 12 April. The bill is striking for the range and ingenuity of its criminalisation of those who fall foul of the ever-shifting rules: working illegally or hiring illegal workers; renting accommodation while illegal or renting accommodation to someone who might be illegal; driving or having a bank account while illegal – all would carry the possibility of substantial fines or even prison sentences. The government would be given the power to seize the earnings of illegal workers under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The bill would allow immigration officers to search homes and people and to seize payslips, timesheets and nationality documents. It would also allow police officers who stop vehicles to check immigration status, and proposes that employers who want to hire non-European migrants would have to pay an “immigration skills charge” to do so. More than one observer – Doreen Lawrence among them – has pointed out that some of the powers in the immigration bill, specifically right-to-rent and the right to ask motorists for immigration papers, are effectively permission to discriminate on the basis of colour.'

In this already difficult arena, as explained in yesterday's 'The Long Read' in The Guardian, Tom Giles specialises in defending some of the most difficult and unpopular cases of all: those subject to deportation, and foreign nationals imprisoned in British jails.

Click here to read this shocking and eye-opening article about the reality of our Government's immigration policies and plans. As conference chairwoman in 2002 Theresa May gave a 'Nasty Party' warning to the Conservative Party but, with her immigration policies, has gone on to become 'poster girl' for the 'Nasty Party'. 

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Refugees Welcome - Moving.

A Statement on the Migrant Crisis

The following statement was issued by St Martin-in-the-Fields earlier today:

A Statement on the Migrant Crisis
Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields

The plight of those entering Europe in large numbers seeking safety, hope and a future is distressing and stirring. As a community we are made up of people who are themselves refugees, many who have known oppression, several who have themselves migrated to make a living in a new country, and a number, including myself, whose parents or grandparents came to this land fleeing persecution.

We recognise and affirm the actions many congregations and communities are taking to befriend and support migrants. Our own ministry with asylum-seekers has been a source of growth and discovery and a blessing to our whole community. We celebrate the warmth and welcome that migrants have received in several parts of Europe.

We wish to challenge some of the widely-stated assumptions surrounding the migrant crisis.

• We challenge the notion that efforts must be entirely focused on addressing conflict in the countries of origin. Intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya didn’t work; non-intervention in Syria didn’t work either. There is no simple off-shore solution.
• We challenge the conviction that Britain is ‘full’ and there is neither space nor employment for newcomers. Our own community of staff and volunteers is immeasurably enriched by people from all over the world who have made our city their home – some junior, others who have risen to senior roles; their skills and enthusiasm are a blessing to us all.
• We challenge the way immigration is discussed as a question of duty – of whether Britain is obliged to take in people who are fleeing persecution elsewhere, how one can verify that the claim is genuine, whether one has to limit the number even of the persecuted, and whether anyone migrating largely for economic benefit has any right to be here. We maintain that migrants have always, and will always, be a source of initiative and energy, inspiration and renewal. The British population is almost entirely made up of people whose ancestors were migrants for a host of reasons: the nation’s dynamism lies in the confluence of diverse cultures.
• We appreciate the drawbacks of making migration easier and the risks of thereby exacerbating the circumstances that bring it about. But we are a nation that loves to back the underdog; we are a people whose finest hour has been in standing up in the face of oppression; and we long for our country to show its true colours today.

A prayer in the midst of the migrant crisis

Wilderness God, your Son was a displaced person in Bethlehem, a refugee in Egypt, and had nowhere to lay his head in Galilee. Bless all who have nowhere to lay their head today, who find themselves strangers on earth, pilgrims to they know not where, facing rejection, closed doors, suspicion and fear. Give them companions in their distress, hope in their wandering, and safe lodging at their journey’s end. And make us a people of grace, wisdom and hospitality, who know that our true identity is to be lost, until we find our eternal home in you. Through Christ our rejected yet risen Lord. Amen.

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Nina Simone - Ain't Got No ... I Got Life.

Migration: This is a story about humanity

'Migration is what we have done since the earliest of times, triggering growth and enlarging our circles of possibility. Whether we’re discussing the Roman or British empires, 15th-century Venice or 20th-century New York or London today, great civilisations and dynamic cities have been defined by being open to immigrants and refugees.

They are, as migration specialist Ian Goldin characterises them, “exceptional people”. Over centuries, as he painstakingly details, it has been immigrants and refugees who have been part of the alchemy of any country’s success: they are driven, hungry and talented and add to the pool of entrepreneurs, innovators and risk-takers. The hundreds of thousands today who have trekked across continents and dangerous seas are by any standards unusually driven. They are also, as Angela Merkel says, fellow human beings. To receive them well is not only in our interests, it is fundamental to an idea of what it means to be human.' (Will Hutton)

'Other than a tiny proportion of sociopaths, our species is naturally empathetic. It is only when we strip the humanity from people – when we stop imagining them as being quite human like us – that our empathetic nature is eroded. That allows us either to accept the misery of others, or even to inflict it on them. Rightwing newspapers hunt down extreme and unsympathetic stories of refugees, and we fight back with statistics. Instead, we need to show the reality of refugees: their names, their faces, their ambitions and their fears, their loves, what they fled.' (Owen Jones)

'What do the following people have in common: Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England; the former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen; Nigel Farage’s wife, Kirsten; Chelsea’s new striker, Pedro; and Sir Bradley Wiggins?

Yes, they are all migrants – or, if you prefer, immigrants. Having moved to the UK to further their careers, some of them might perhaps be described as “economic migrants”. Except that this term is reserved exclusively by politicians and the media to describe people who – unlike bankers or sports stars – they don’t like: people who, in the words of our foreign secretary, are “marauding” across Europe.

People from the UK moving abroad to pursue their career or financial interests, meanwhile, are “expats”, never emigrants or migrants.

The language we hear in what passes for a national conversation on migration has become as debased as most of the arguments, until the very word “migrants” is toxic, used to frighten us by conjuring up images of a “swarm” (as David Cameron put it) massing at our borders, threatening our way of life.

As Prof Alexander Betts, director of the refugee studies centre at Oxford University, says: “Words that convey an exaggerated sense of threat can fuel anti-immigration sentiment and a climate of intolerance and xenophobia.”'

'Another journalist says: “They are people – men, women and children, fathers and mothers, teachers and engineers, just like us – except they come from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Why not just call them ‘people’, then list any other information we know that is relevant?”'

'Politically charged expressions such as “economic migrants”, “genuine refugees” or “illegal asylum seekers” should have no part in our coverage. This is a story about humanity. Reporting it should be humane as well as accurate. Sadly, most of what we hear and read about “migrants” is neither.' (Dave Marsh)

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Michael Kiwanuka - I Need Your Company.

Breaking boundaries with love

This was my reflection at yesterday's lunchtime Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Jesus seems to have been deliberately rude to the Canaanite Woman – a woman from another race and culture – that he encountered in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 15. 21 - 28). He began by making it clear that she was not one of the chosen people for whom he had come and continued by insulting her and her people in calling them 'dogs'.

Why was he so uncharacteristically rude? His disciples had wanted him to send the woman away; ostensibly because of the fuss she was making but, more probably, because she was not one of 'them'. Therefore, Jesus threw all their prejudices at the woman both as a way of confronting his disciples with the ugliness of their prejudice and as a provocation that revealed the faith within this woman.

In the face of seeming denial and insult, she persisted in her request and in her faith in Jesus' ability and willingness to heal. On the back of this tangible example of faith, Jesus was then able to challenge the prejudices of his disciples (as I think was his intent from the outset) by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith.

We can see these same issues recurring in our own day and time in the way in which the debate about immigration has changed enabling the whole apparatus of the state to now be bent towards reducing immigration. The effect can be vividly seen in the issues faced by and the endurance of those who come to the Sunday International Group at St Martins-in-the-Fields. These people gather once a week for food, a shower, to wash their clothes, meet others in the same cruel dilemma as themselves and to garner what legal advice is applicable to their situation.

We know from their experiences that the Bishop of Dover was absolutely correct when he accused senior political figures, including the prime minister, of forgetting their humanity and attacked elements of the media for propagating a “toxicity” designed to spread antipathy towards migrants. He said, “We’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.”

Seeing this story of the Canaanite woman as a deliberate challenge to the prejudices of his disciples is consistent with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37) where Jesus tells a group of God's chosen people a story in which one of their own receives help, not from his own people, but from a man of another race, culture and faith. In that story, Jesus went further than his already radical teaching of love for our enemies by telling a story in which a member of God's chosen people received God's love and help from a person that he considered to be outside the people of God and an enemy of his own people.

However we choose to draw the boundaries of who is and who is not one of God's people, Jesus breaks through those boundaries with his love for all people, his sacrificial giving for all, and his recognition of all that those who are excluded actually have to offer to those who exclude. The strapline of St Michael’s Camden Town - 'Making a family out of strangers’ - is a good summary of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching and ministry.

It is a helpful practice, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, to try to place ourselves fully within a story from the Gospels by becoming onlooker-participants and giving full rein to our imagination. If we were part of this story, would we be with the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send the Canaanite woman away because she was not one of 'them', or would we be with Jesus, who challenged the prejudices of his disciples by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith? Our answer to that question will determine the extent to which we seek to make a family out of strangers ourselves.

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Mumford & Sons - Hopeless Wanderer.

A Common Voice on Migration

London Churches Social Action hosted an extended day seminar on the topic of Migration at St Margaret's Barking on Monday. It was a timely opportunity for London Churches to develop some key "Common Voice" messages on this topic.

We considered how the church and UK society is being blessed/challenged by migration, who is weeping about, with and for migrants today, and what, from the treasures of our faith, we can draw on towards responding to issues related to migration. Many of the presentations can be heard by clicking here.

Contributors included Susanna Snyder, author of Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church which addresses one of the most pressing issues confronting contemporary society, How are we to engage with migrants? Drawing on studies of church engagement with asylum seekers in the UK and critical immigration and refugee issues in North America, Snyder presents an extended theological reflection on both the issue of asylum-seeking and the fears of established populations surrounding immigration. This book outlines ways in which churches are currently supporting asylum seekers, encouraging closer engagement with people seen as 'other' and more thoughtful responses to newcomers.

Artist Revd Elizabeth Gray-King, sought to capture the day’s conversations in art form and shared her reflections with us. See Elizabeth's image from the day and read her reflections by clicking here: "We were reminded of the Tabernacle, the tent of God’s presence, erected wherever the people stopped to rest and worship; the two tents at the bottom of the cross show this stopping on journey, with the cross being the sign of the travelling God in Jesus. The cross also marks the reason why the good people of this seminar gathered for this discussion, Jesus having called us all to not only note our neighbours, but also to accompany and share life with our neighbours, no matter how their prior journey is coloured."

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Kerry Livgren - Seeds Of Change.

Where is God today?

People often ask, ‘Where is God today?’ That was a question asked by CBC, Radio-Canada, of their listeners in 2008. In introducing the series, they said that “For many Canadians, religion exists far beyond the walls of a church, synagogue or mosque. Faith can play a vital role in how we work, study, and interact with family and friends. But for many others, God has little or no presence.” So they asked their listeners, “Does religion play a large part in your day-to-day life? Or is God to be found elsewhere … or nowhere at all?” You can imagine the range of answers that their listeners provided but I don’t want to focus on those tonight, instead I want us to consider how this story answers that same question, ‘Where is God today?’

The answer is not one that we necessarily expect or readily accept: “I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.”

“Today, we see the face of the suffering Christ in the experience of every person who suffers from poverty or cries out for help. Christ lives among us still, sharing the pain of our destitute brothers and sisters.” (http://www.foodforthepoor.org/prayer/stations/)

As Pastor James, of the wonderfully named First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church of Newark, New Jersey, wrote (http://www.peddiechurch.org/Articles/Ministry_with_the_Homeless.htm): “He is found in the least looked for places, in the abandoned corners of society. He is present with the least, the poorest of the poor, and the most despised. He dwells with the homeless. It's not that Christ is absent from the rich and the powerful, but that He chooses the least to make His presence most fully known to the world. It is not that He rejects refined vessels, but that He chooses broken and abandoned vessels to dwell in so that His glory may be revealed in the lowliest places. As the Apostle Paul says, "God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him" (1 Cor. 1:28-29).”

Similarly, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, (http://www.cjd.org/paper/resist.html) wrote, in an article about immigration: "The suffering faces of the poor are the suffering faces of Christ." (Pope Benedict XVI, Aparecida, Brazil, August 2007). Whatever has to do with Christ has to do with the poor and whatever concerns the poor refers back to Jesus Christ: 'Whatever you did to one of these, the least of my brothers, that you did unto me' (Matthew 25:40).

"In the pain of the poor and the dispossessed, in the fear of the immigrant and those unjustly accused, we see reflected the suffering of our Crucified Lord, Who reminds us that ultimately we will be judged on the compassion and charity which we show them." For I was hungry," He will tell us, "but you gave Me no food; alone or a stranger or in prison, but you could not be bothered with me" (cf. Matthew 15:42-43).”

So, we are called to show compassion on the poor, the homeless, and those who are migrants because it is in them that Jesus is seen. But the understanding that Jesus is found today in those who suffer goes deeper than simply charity towards those who are worse off than ourselves. Again, as Pastor James writes: “Often, we interpret this parable primarily as ethics - giving aid to the needy and helping the lost. Our charity to these needy people is of such a noble quality that it is as if we are doing it to Christ. From this perspective, the needy are merely the objects of our charity.

However, I believe that this parable goes beyond such a patronizing interpretation. It is not merely about assisting the needy. It is ultimately about where Christ is and where His Spirit dwells. So when we feed the hungry, we are faced with a deeper reality beneath the surface. In bringing the food, we see not only the face of the hungry but also the face of Christ who is already there with them. We see the face of Christ in the face of a teenage boy recovering from drug addiction, in the sorrow-ridden face of a homeless woman who is also mentally ill, and in the wrinkled face of an old man left to the streets with no family. They are the very temple in which the Spirit of Christ dwells. They minister to us through Christ who dwells in them.”

It is to this that we are called. In this story (Matthew 25. 31 - end)), Jesus turns our ‘normal’ perceptions of life upside down; those who are normally looked down on and treated with condescension are those in whom God is to be found. This has massive implications for our attitudes, relationships, giving, ethics and politics.

In order that may be so, we need to pray the prayer of Mother Teresa: Dearest Lord, may I see You today and every day in the person of Your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto You. Though You hide Yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize You, and say: "Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve You.”

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Marvin Gaye - God Is Love.

Guardian articles: Marilynne Robinson and Giles Fraser

The Guardian has a brilliant article about Marilynne Robinson:

'“A question is more spacious than a statement,” she once wrote, “far better suited to expressing wonder.” Her questioning books express wonder: they are enlightening, in the best sense, passionately contesting our facile, recycled understanding of ourselves and of our world. The one thing Robinson can be counted on to resist is received wisdom. At the end of an essay called “Psalm Eight”, she wrote that we all “exist in relation to experience, if we attend to it and if its plainness does not disguise it from us, as if we were visited by revelation”. There are revelations waiting in her novels, if we attend to them ...

All of Robinson’s novels require alertness and patience: they demand that we attend, in both senses of the word, that we wait, and pay attention. And they remind us that redemption may not be a comfortable experience.'

Giles Fraser is also in brilliant form when he argues that scapegoating immigrants is the oldest trick in the book:

'the real threat to Christianity on these shores is the narrow-minded provincialism that confuses religion with some chauvinistic Englishness that believes native-born people come first.'

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Van Morrison - Spirit.

Pole Position: Polish Art in Britain 1939–1989

"Pole Position is a brand new exhibition which will shed light on a neglected chapter in the story of British art.

Created from the private collection of Matthew Bateson, the exhibition showcases 60 works by Polish artists, many of whom were forced to flee mainland Europe during the Second World War. Some of these artists journeyed through many countries before settling in the UK, while others were captured and imprisoned before finding their way to British shores.

The artists’ transitory experiences are reflected in the subject of their work; from powerful depictions of their lost homeland and the horrors of war, to the landscapes and luminaries they encountered in their new lives in Britain. The striking works on show are a testament to the great adversity the artists faced, but also to the wealth of new ideas and approaches they brought with them across the channel."

Amongst the highlights of Matthew Bateson’s collection included in the exhibition are Stanislaw Frenkiel’s Descent of the Winged Men, (1973), Josef Herman’s Head of a Bergundian Peasant, (1953), Henryk Gotlib’s Christ in Warsaw (c1939) and Feliks Topolski's celebration of British war time resistance, Old England (1945).

Matthew Bateson has said: 'These works were sourced from auctions or acquired directly from the artists over the past 30 years. I was attracted to dark and challenging imagery, aware that my passion for expressionist and narrative painting was unfashionable and outside the ephemeral art market and celebrity culture that dominates our times.’

The website for the Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA) explains that "Although it is impossible to point to one characteristic which unites these Polish artists in one school abroad, if the influences upon these artists are examined, it would be right to say that they definitely belong to a 'common tradition'. The general term 'common tradition' allows us to see the influence not only of the Academies of France or Germany but also Polish Fine Arts Academies such as the ones in Cracow, Warsaw and Wilno (before the war) ... This leads towards sensibility of colour in their works, as well as painterly expression, and the belief in the work of art as a carrier of avant-garde theories. Further development of these traits in works of the artists took place in Britain."

In my Airbrushed from Art History series of posts, I referred to Polish painters in Post-War Britain as documented by Douglas Hall in his book Art In Exile. Hall wrote that the number of displaced artists from Poland coming to Britain as exiles from war and persecution before or after 1939 was perhaps greater than from any other country. In Art In Exile he told the stories of ten such artists as well as reviewing the context from which they came and their reception in England and Scotland. Hall writes that we "remind ourselves, through the experience of the exiles among us, that there have been other ways of feeling, other ways of understanding history, other ways of using creative ability for other expressive purposes."

Through Hall I discovered the work of Marian Bohusz-Szyszko and wrote a feature piece for the Church Times about his relationship with Dame Cicely Saunders. Bohusz-Szyszko and other exiled Polish artists (such as Stanislaw Frenkiel, Adam Kossowski, Henryk Gotlib, Marek Zulawski, and Aleksander Zyw) were part of a consistent but under-recognised strand of artists' employing sacred themes which runs throughout the 20th century in the UK.

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Steve Mason - Fire!

New Cosmopolitanism and Just Love

The global expansion in migration means large cities like London are becoming home to new waves of migrants. This change has instigated new ideas about social interaction, religion and cultural identity. In October, the Contextual Theology Centre will be partnering with the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies to host an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Contending Modernities project.

The New Cosmopolitanism is a conference considering global migration and the building of a common life which will be held on 14/15 October.  The conference, which grows out of CTC's work in East London, offers:

… a fresh look at a question that is dominating the headlines – how the diverse groups that globalisation brings together can discern and promote a truly “common good”;
… an opportunity to respond to the increasing focus on these issues from Pope Francis, which is catching the imagination of those far outside the Church; and
… a unique blend of academic rigour and on-the-ground engagement, funded by one of the world’s premier Catholic Universities.

CTC are also preparing a new resource for Lent 2014. Angus Ritchie and Paul Hackwood (Chair of the Church Urban Fund) are currently writing Just Love: Personal and Social Transformation in Christ which will use the Gospel readings for each Sunday Lent to explore how Jesus loved, and why this love led him to the cross.

It will draw out the implications of his transforming love – both for our individual lives and for our social and economic order.  Drawing on decades of inner-city ministry, the authors aim to show that “Christ-like love” is more than a compelling idea.  It is a powerful reality, enabling people to live out God’s just love in the most challenging of neighbourhoods.

Just Love will be written accessible language, with testimony from lay and ordained Christians already involved in social action.  Written for both individual devotion and study groups, it will include specific, realistic suggestions for prayer, reflection and action.  It will be written for use by individuals and study groups.

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Aretha Franklin - (To Be) Young, Gifted And Black.

Ramfel and the Home Office's offensive adverts

Sky News report that 'Users of the Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London (Ramfel) have told the Home Office it has until August 8 to ditch the "offensive" adverts.

If it refuses, they plan to apply for a judicial review.

The adverts are being displayed on billboards carried by vans in six London boroughs as part of a pilot scheme.

They tell illegal immigrants to "Go home, or you'll be picked up and deported" and could be extended nationwide.

Lawyers for Ramfel have written to the Home Office to warn it has broken its duty to cut discrimination and harassment and to foster good community relations.

"Our clients believe that although the Government says the campaign is aimed at migrants who are in the UK illegally, it will adversely affect attitudes towards people from migrant communities who are here lawfully," they said.

"We are instructed to apply for a judicial review after August 8 unless the Home Office agrees not to continue the campaign and to remove the offending literature from the communities."'

Ramfel does great work in this borough helping those who have fled persecution and terrible conditions in their native countries to seek refuge in the UK.

Rita Chadha, Ramfel's chief executive has quite rightly stated of the Home Office adverts: “It’s a travesty of justice, it incites racial hatred and it inflames community tension. It’s just going to scare people to think that immigration is a huge problem when it’s not ... The vans are reminiscent of the 1960s when public leaflets were telling those who were foreign that they were not welcome or to go back home.”

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The Selector - Missing Words.

R. B. Kitaj: Diasporist art

Diasporist art is the art of movement, change, migration, contradiction, dislocation and dissonance. R.B. Kitaj was both an artist and theorist of such art; writing two manifestos on the phenomenon and creating paintings which cleaved to his “own uncanny Jewish life of study, painting, unthinkable thoughts and near death …”

Because Kitaj’s childhood was spent in the US and much of his adult life in the UK, he was something of an outsider to both countries. Before becoming a student at the Royal College of Art, he travelled widely as a merchant seaman. Befriending the likes of David Hockney, Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, he spent the best part of 40 years in the UK as part of the self-titled ‘School of London’ before the death of his second wife Sandra Fisher, which he blamed on negative reviews of his Tate retrospective, led to a final move to Los Angeles where he was to die in his studio by his own hand.

Kitaj defined the Diasporist artist as living and painting in two or more societies at once. It therefore seems appropriate that this retrospective is split between two venues; the Jewish Museum in London and Pallant House in Chichester.

Many of the works displayed are multilayered in their form and meaning. As works intended to provoke conversation they require our eye to roam because of the difficulty in focusing on a single part of the image. When combined with written commentaries for his Tate retrospective (inspired by the dialogical nature of Midrash) this approach in part provoked the furious reaction of some critics to the exhibition. Kitaj, however, understood his intent in terms of Diasporism:

“Diaspora is often inconsistent and tense; schismatic contradiction animates each day. To be consistent can mean the painter is settled and at home. All this begins to define the painting mode I call Diasporism. People are always saying the meanings in my pictures refuse to be fixed, to be settled, to be stable: that's Diasporism …”

Juan De La Cruz equates the uncertainty about their role and impact felt by US soldiers in Vietnam with that felt by St John of the Cross when torn between his loyalty to the church and his involvement in the reforms of St Teresa of Avila. Kitaj’s skill as a draughtsman can be seen in the wavering pose and questioning features of the conflicted African-American soldier on a transport plane around which Kitaj has collaged the crude scenes of wartime abuses which are troubling the soldier’s conscience. His name tag is the clue to the creative dissonance Kitaj introduced into the work by linking the soldier’s conflicts to those of John of the Cross.

The Church is called to be a pilgrim people journeying in the tension of the now and not yet. As a result, we have much, potentially, to learn from Diasporist art and yet our frequent tendency is to bathe in a nostalgic yearning for days of ‘glory’ past in Christendom. Diasporism is for Kitaj an engagement with the outsider; not Jews alone, but also homosexuals, women, Palestinians, Afro-Americans, and many of the Modernist artists he so admired. Such inclusivism challenges our nostalgia revealing the hidden oppression and abuse which can accompany the accumulation of authority and power.

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Lou Reed - Strawman.

Exiles, Migrations and Orientalism

The exhibition Exiles, reminiscences and new worlds currently being held at the Chagall, Léger and Picasso museums in the south of France is based on the following premise: "The twentieth century has seen increasing numbers of people living in exile, in a world in which the movement of people has accelerated at a fast pace, not only in line with trends, but also because of tragic episodes of poverty, wars and totalitarianism. Whether or not it was their choice to leave their country, these artists, although uprooted, did not give up their creative work. Indeed, in many cases their work bears the hallmark of a former world charged with meaning and feelings, unforgettable. For these artists, the return to the past - embarked upon from a sense of loss and in a mood of reminiscence - was in fact a necessary transition in the way forward to new experiences in form."

Similarly, Migrations: Journeys into British Art explored British art through the theme of migration from 1500 to the present day, reflecting the remit of Tate Britain Collection displays. Over 500 years, developments in transport, new artistic institutions, politics and economics have all contributed to artists choosing to settle temporarily or permanently in Britain. From the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch landscape and still-life painters who came to Britain in search of new patrons, through moments of political and religious unrest, to Britain’s current position within the global landscape, the exhibition revealed how British art has been fundamentally shaped by successive waves of migration, raising questions about the formation of a national collection of British art against a continually shifting demographic.

Within this, in the early 20th century different definitions of Jewish art were explored through two influential exhibitions. The first emphasised Jewish artists’ contributions to mainstream British art and the second showed a distinctive identity for Jewish art by aligning it with modernism and the avant-garde. Then in the 1930s and 1940s European artists fled to Britain to escape political unrest and persecution on the continent, strengthening existing links with avant-garde British groups and bringing with them modernist principles of art and design. Here they discovered new materials and responded to different visual traditions as well as to the conditions of exile. Important figures who marked the course of British Art included Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo and Laszlo Maholy-Nagy, who sought refuge in Britain whilst escaping political unrest and war in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Exile was a founding experience for Chagall and Picasso, who set off for the fascinating city of Paris in the early 20th century and it spurred Léger to new heights in the United States after the Second World War. The Exiles exhibition centres on these three figures, aiming to show how exile inspired many artists, particularly in the first part of the 20th century. Their migration, voluntary or forced but never indifferent, transformed their vision and profoundly altered their art. The exhibition shows how their works were affected by the abandonment of their homeland and their investment in a new country.

The musée Chagall presents some of Chagall’s reminiscent works, which hark back to his origins, alongside artists whose experience of exile was not unlike his own: Brancusi, Brauner, Kandinsky, Masson, Miró, Hantaï or Picasso. The musée Léger centres on Léger as a builder of new worlds, overcoming the past to look into the future, accompanied by artists with a similar frame of mind: Arp, Magnelli, Mondrian, Freundlich, Laslo Moholy-Nagy, Albers and Schwitters. Exile was initially a founding experience for Chagall as he set off for Paris in the early 20th century before returning to Russia to marry. Following the Russian Revolution exile became a more permanent experience as he felt forced to leave once again returning initially to Paris but then being exiled to the US as a result of World War II before making his home finally in the South of France.

The exhibition argues that these are artists whose experience of exile, like that of Chagall, remained linked to a tireless search for the past. Yet the works shown do not always seem to bear out that contention as, in composition - primarily the then contemporary styles of abstraction (Kandinsky, Léger, Hantaï etc.) and surrealism (Brauner, Ernst, Lam etc.) - and content, they seem primarily focused on their present. So, Andre Masson’s La Resistance was a contemporary encouragement from exile to those participating in the Resistance while Wols and Jean Hélion focused on close-up’s of contemporary everyday objects and Brauner wrote of letting yourself ‘go forward towards a contemplation of the unknown experience’ because there ‘you find the keys to your eternal doubting.’

Generally, those artists featured here seem to have found that their style of creating fitted their experience of exile and often, as in the Artists in Exile show organised by Pierre Matisse in New York in 1942 (of which Chagall was a part) being feted for doing so. Only in more straitened circumstances, such as Kurt Schwitters painting landscapes of the Lake District for economic reasons during exile in the UK, do we see, in this exhibition, artists changing styles as a result of exile.

An exhibition on a related theme - The Jews in Orientalism - recently ended at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme in Paris. Where Migrations explored the impact of exiles on national art and Exiles the impact of migration on artist's themselves, The Jews in Orientalism explored the world of Orientalist painting, focussing on the representation of the Jew as “Oriental” in art from 1832 to 1929, in other words perceptions of a migrant group from those who view themselves as other than the group themselves.
Orientalism, the study of the East and its various cultures, is a conflicted discipline where arguments rage about the cultural agendas underpinning the various approaches used in its study. Accusations of Eurocentrism and colonialism, differences between the familiar and the strange, and the extent to which Islam and Judaism are under discussion are just some of the areas of debate. For some, Orientalism is based on the Christian West's attempts to understand and manage its relations with both of its monotheistic Others - Muslims and Jews.

The Jews in Orientalism was not therefore simply an exhibition exploring the world of Orientalist painting from 1832 to 1929 but also a contribution by its curators to these debates through their focus on the representation of the Jew as “Oriental.” Historically, the exhibition demonstrates the extent to which Jews have almost always been present whenever occidentals talked about or imagined the East.

Artists like Eugène Delacroix in Morocco and Théodore Chassériau in Algeria filled their notebooks with sketches of Jewish figures, using them later in large pictures such as Delacroix’s pioneering Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1841). As a Romantic artist fascinated with the exotic, Delacroix was restless for adventure and was excited by the opportunity which opened to him when he was asked by Ambassador Charles de Mornay to join a goodwill mission to Morocco's Sultan Moulay Abd al-Rahman. Delacroix filled seven notebooks with drawings, watercolours and notes on the people, architecture and accoutrements of Moroccan life in order to ensure that details of costume and demeanour were as accurate as could be.

This sense of ‘truth to nature’ motivated many of the artists who travelled to the Orient, in part because their involvement in such journeys was often, as with Delacroix, in the role of official artist documenting such missions. For William Holman Hunt though ‘truth to nature’ was already a key element of the symbolic hyper-realism that was Pre-Raphaelitism.

In order to ensure that he represented “all objects exactly as they would appear in nature” (Ruskin), Hunt travelled to the Holy Land where he developed what he acknowledged to be an “Oriental mania” that resulted in paintings such as The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (from his first trip in 1854-5). The Manchester Guardian marvelled at Hunt’s scholarship and skill: ‘No picture of such extraordinary elaboration has been seen in our day… Draperies, architecture, heads and hands, are wrought to a point of complete imitative finish… this picture is replete with meaning, from the foreground to the remotest distance.” For a later engraving of the picture Hunt produced an explanation of 29 symbolic details in the image.

However, in doing so, Hunt, like others at the time, believed that the contemporary Orient would reveal what the Orient had always been and, as a result, it can be argued that in much Oriental Christian art, most Israelites are actually depicted as though they were Muslims. The reverse occurred in the work of Maurycy Gottlieb whose Christ before His Judges (1877–1879) is included here and who created two significant canvases where Jesus' shroud is a Jewish prayer shawl, the talith. In Gottlieb’s work we see then, for the first time, a genuinely Jewish Jesus.  

At the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem artists strove “to create a synthesis between European artistic traditions and the Jewish design traditions of the East and West, and to integrate it with the local culture of the Land of Israel.” Artists such as Abel Pann, Ephraim Moses Lilien and Zeev Raban created a style of Oriental arabesques, Jugendstil flowing lines and decorative flatness that, as Haim Finkelstein and Haim Maor have noted, combined biblical motifs, often in a Zionist perspective, and landscapes done in an idealist-utopian and Orientalist spirit.

It is arguable, however, that this synthesis was more independently and powerfully achieved by Lesser Ury. Martin Buber considered that Ury lived “the old sacred flame of the Orient, the hot breath, which washes over the rough earth, the gigantic figures of elemental creatures before the grand background of an immeasurable expanse.” In a letter Buber sent to Ury, he described his vision of a Jewish artist. "… who independently of outside formulas and commandments found his way through the wilderness, who has nothing in common with schools and cliques and who is led only by the laws of his own being, who was hard as metal to all external solutions, and whose art was soft and flexible as wax under the hand of the angel. Only from such an artist…can we learn that the Jewish spirit, the old turmoil over pictures is reborn to a second youth and incorporated in paintings."

Ury’s images of Jeremiah, Moses and Jewish exiles included in this exhibition amply bear out the contention that, in this letter, Buber was actually describing his appreciation of Ury and his work. By ending with the Bezalel Academy and Ury, more than simply demonstrating the extent to which Jews have almost always been present whenever occidentals imagined the East, the exhibition also reveals the ability of Jewish artists to re-embrace an oriental Jewish identity by establishing a continuity between Biblical Antiquity and the contemporary Middle East.

Fresh light is also cast on the biblical paintings of artists such as Moreau, Vernet, Tissot and Holman Hunt through this exhibition. While this focus supports the argument made by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar that one benefit of studying the Jews as a topic in orientalism involves discovery of the extent to which orientalism has been not only a modern Western or imperialist discourse but also a Christian one, it is also possible that, in doing so, the exhibition does not adequately address the extent to which orientalism has been, in the view of Edward Said, a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’).

Chagall’s work can also be understood as exploring Jewish identity by establishing a continuity between Biblical Antiquity and his contemporary experience of exile as, through his Message Biblique and other similar paintings, he engages with his Jewish heritage from the Exodus through the Pogroms to the Holocaust. Thereby, linking past and present together in experience and understanding. In Chagall’s work exodus and exile are the normal state of the Jewish people and the source of their joys, sorrows, inspirations and insights.

Surprisingly, his key symbol of faith in exile is that of the crucified Christ who featuring centrally or tangentially in numerous of the works shown here. Always visually and accurately a Jewish Christ, nevertheless Chagall uses this image in ways that have real synergy with Christian theology. In ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac’, for example, the crucified Christ appears above Isaac as the future sacrificial son. Christ becomes the embodiment in Chagall’s work of Israel as the suffering servant; an understanding which culminates in the ‘Exodus’ of 1952 - 1966 where the crucified Christ embraces both the Jews of the Exodus and of the Holocaust.

In these paintings past and present cohere allowing an experience of exile, where personal sorrow is set within a narrative of ongoing faith, to be experienced and felt, revealing exile as pilgrimage.

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Young Disciples - Get Yourself Together.