Between: sacrament

Showing posts with label sacrament. Show all posts

Sunday, 19 April 2020

Artlyst: Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith

My latest article for Artlyst explores the enigmatic faith of Salvador Dali:

'Amidst these confusions and contentions, Salvador Dalí created some of the most popular yet controversial religious paintings of the twentieth century; ‘The Sacrament of the Last Supper’, from 1955, being one example. Theologian Paul Tillich considered the work’ junk’ and said he was horrified by the depiction of Jesus as ‘A sentimental but very good athlete on an American baseball team.’ By contrast, both Paul Myhre and Michael Novak identified the Eucharistic character of the painting as an answer to the many theological critics who have reviled it. Novak claimed, ‘Dalí gives us the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.’

How to understand this degree of contestation and confusion? I want to suggest that Dalí himself provides a means to understand through his two key concepts of the paranoiac-critical analysis method and Nuclear-Mysticism.'

My other Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:

Articles:

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The Blind Boys of Alabama (featuring Justin Vernon) - Every Grain Of Sand.

Sunday, 13 January 2019

Artlyst - Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation

In my latest feature article for Artlyst I explore the extent to which Bill Viola’s works, which can be seen at the Royal Academy from 26 January alongside drawings by Michelangelo, reveal the essentially contemplative nature of art and of the viewing of art.

In the piece I explore Viola's use of slowness, stillness, silence and sacrament noting that prayer and meditation in religious traditions also use these same elements suggesting that there is potentially much fruitful exploration possible between the forms of contemplation found in the Arts and in religion:

'Viola has said that the form his interest in the spiritual side of things has taken has been, in a tranquil way, to merely look with great focus at the ordinary things around him that he found wondrous. His works ask us to do the same.'

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:

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Paul Weller - The Soul Searchers.

Thursday, 15 March 2018

The Nazareth Community at St Martin-in-the-Fields

Here's news of an exciting new initiative at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

This weekend, on Sunday 18 March 2018, 45 people will make their promises and be blessed by the vicar, Revd Dr Sam Wells, as a new intentional community is formed at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The Nazareth Community is an experiment in being with God, with one’s neighbour and with oneself in the centre of London. The community offers a structure and a framework to grow in prayer and compassionate discipleship. It is a dispersed community that joins together in five shared disciplines:

Silence
Sacrament
Service
Sacred Study
Sharing

The Community’s way is to live prayerfully, simply, attentively and mercifully in the midst of often busy lives. It believes that sacred space is needed at the very centre of our city and aims to deepen a life of contemplative prayer realised in compassionate face-to-face service. The Nazareth Community is rooted in, but not exclusive to, the congregation of St Martin’s. The 45 who will make their promises come from many different walks of life, including those who have known homelessness and those who are refugees. Each new member of the community receives a small Lampedusa Cross. Each cross is made on the island of Lampedusa from the wreckage of migrant boats washed ashore. This is a sign of resurrection born in the pain and the hope of the cross.

Revd Richard Carter, who will lead the community, spent many years of his life as the Chaplain and Brother in the Melanesian Brotherhood, a community that models a similar sense of living in the spirit of the Beatitudes. He writes: ‘The Nazareth Community is about learning to listen again, as St Benedict said, “with the ear of the heart.” We sense the need in this city for sacred space for people to come and replenish tired, stressful or simply busy lives. At the heart of our community we want an oasis of the Spirit - the Spirit that leads to compassionate reciprocity, service, healing and joy. We are not simply managers organising resources and events but those who seek God: women and men of prayer, who know our utter dependence on God’s grace and know this city’s need of God’s forgiveness and love.”

Revd Dr Sam Wells writes: ‘Being with God and one another and ourselves is how we shall spend eternity. The Nazareth Community is a group of people who are saying, ‘Why not start eternity now? Why wait?’ In their living eternal life now we see hope and inspiration for ourselves, our church, our community and our city.’

For further information email Richard.Carter@smitf.org or visit www.smitf.org

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John Tavener - The Lord's Prayer.

Saturday, 26 August 2017

Latest Artlyst article: The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art

My latest article for Artlyst is on the sacramental and liturgical nature of conceptual art taking Rose Finn-Kelcey: Life, Belief and Beyond at Modern Art Oxford as its inspiration.

In the article I note that Michael Craig-Martin has argued that:

'conceptual art, even art itself, is at its heart about the belief of the artist in re-presenting an object or idea in the form of something other. The artist is, therefore, doing with her or his art what the priest does with the sacraments.'

I was reminded of Craig-Martin's An Oak Tree 'by the statement, in the exhibition notes for Rose Finn-Kelcey: Life, Belief and Beyond (Modern Art Oxford), that Finn-Kelcey’s ‘finished works often invite a leap of faith as ideas are transformed into images and materials.’ She herself stated that she worked in the belief that she could continue to reinvent herself and remain a perennial beginner. Faith was therefore not just among her recurrent themes but also informed her creative practices, as, Craig-Martin argues, is the case for all artists.'

My other Artlyst articles are:

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PVRIS - Heaven.

Tuesday, 22 August 2017

Start:Stop - Praise the Lord

Bible reading

‘… whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ Philippians 4. 8

Meditation

The artist Paul Thek once wrote 96 Sacraments in one of his notebooks. By doing so, he celebrated everything around him and everything that was present to him, especially the small and everyday things.

‘To wake up. Praise the Lord
To breathe. Praise the Lord.
To touch the earth. Praise the Lord
To wash. To comb your hair. Praise the Lord.
To prepare breakfast. Praise the Lord.
To eat breakfast. Praise the Lord
To do the dishes. Praise the Lord.
To clean up. Praise the Lord
To write a letter. Praise the Lord.
To mail a letter. Praise the Lord.
To go out. Praise the Lord
To see the sun. Praise the Lord’

The things he celebrated can seem banal but, as our reading, suggests it is a godly thing to do to develop an attitude or habit of looking for the good in what is around us, the people we meet and the things we do. As the Carmelite lay brother, Br Lawrence stated: 'we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment.'

Nor need we worry if the things we celebrate are small or mundane. Again, Brother Lawrence has a helpful reminder for us when he says: 'We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.'

I wonder whether our view of our day and those we are with would change at all if we were able to simply say ‘Praise the Lord’ in respect of each thing we do, each person we meet and each place we go to.

Prayer

Walk to work. Praise the Lord.
Greet the receptionist. Praise the Lord.
Get in the lift. Praise the Lord.
Acknowledge others in the lift. Praise the Lord.
Exit the lift. Praise the Lord.
Greet colleagues. Praise the Lord.
Find our desk. Praise the Lord.
Sit at our desk. Praise the Lord.
Turn on the computer. Praise the Lord.
Open emails. Praise the Lord.
Read emails. Praise the Lord.
Compose and send emails. Praise the Lord.
Answer the phone. Praise the Lord.
Attend meetings. Praise the Lord.
Begin tasks. Praise the Lord.
Complete tasks. Praise the Lord.

As we praise you, Lord, this morning,
We recognise that the world you created
contains much that is true, honourable, just,
pure, pleasing and commendable.
Keep us looking for these things
in the ordinariness of life
and praising you when they are found.
And may that blessing of God almighty,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Rest upon you and remain with you always.
Amen.

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Morten Lauridsen - Prayer.

Wednesday, 9 August 2017

I wandered lonely as a cloud. Or not.

I wandered lonely as a cloud.
or not, as I was with my sister
when I first espied those dancing or golden daffodils.
I wandered lonely, therefore, in imagination
or in conflation of two separate occasions.
Whatever, in the retelling, the poeticising,
something changed and some things remained.
There was a trigger event I recalled
two years after, when re-reading my sister's journal.
The event was real but mediated through memory,
imagery, mastery of descriptive language,
becoming magnified with meaning
to live and breathe beyond the page
as re-enacted sacrament in which you now accompany me
on hills, no longer lonely,
for you are with me
as you imaginatively recreate
this speech-act-event, this poem.

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William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.

Monday, 12 June 2017

Discover & explore - The Lord's Supper

Discover & explore services at St Stephen Walbrook features music and liturgy with the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields. These services explore their themes through a thoughtful mix of music, prayers, readings and reflections:

“A perfect service of peace in our busy lives.”
“Spiritual food in the middle of the day.”
“Beautifully and intelligently done.”

The current series of these services of musical discovery is exploring Reformation 500 themes and continued today with the theme of 'The Lord's Supper'. The service featured the Choral Scholars singing: Ave Verum Corpus – Byrd; Agnus Dei from Cantus Missae, Op. 109 – Rheinberger; O salutaris hostia – Rossini; and Author of life divine – Wesley.

All Discover & explore services begin at 1.10pm:

Mon 19 Jun - The Cross alone
Mon 26 Jun - Forgiveness is free
Mon 3 Jul - Life of repentance

In today's service I shared the following reflection:
St Stephen Walbrook was built as a Reformation church. One of the indicators that that is so, are the relative sizes and positions of the communion table and the pulpit. The size of the pulpit indicates the importance placed on the hearing of God’s Word, while the small size of the communion tables reflects the concern of the Reformers that communion was celebrated in a way that made clear that no sacrifice was being made. For this reason the Canons of the Church of England state that communion should be celebrated from a table not an altar. This was part of Reformation debates as to what happened at communion and what was being celebrated.

The Reformation position of the Church of England was made clear in the Book of Common Prayer which states that ‘no Adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored; (for that were Idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians;) and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one.’

These issues and debates then became central to changes made to the building here at St Stephen Walbrook in the 1970s and 80s with the introduction of the Henry Moore altar and the circular reordering of the space under the dome. The Ecclesiastical Court cases regarding the Moore altar centred on the Canon which states that communion must be celebrated at a table not an altar, and revolved around the extent to which the Moore altar resembled either a sacrificial altar or a communion table. Eventually, it was agreed that the Moore altar could be defined as a communion table and agreement was given for its permanent installation.

The size and position of Moore’s altar does however change the original dynamic between in the building between the Lord’s Table and the pulpit (which was reflective of the Reformer’s theology) in favour of a more contemporary theology; that of the Parish Communion movement which successfully made Holy Communion the principal act of worship in Parish churches, instead of Morning or Evening Prayer. By carving a round altar table with forms cut into the circular sides Moore suggested that the centre of the church reflected the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac as a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and the place for the offering of the Eucharist at the heart of Christian worship. This place is now designed for people to gather as a community around the altar where God in the Eucharist can be found at the centre.

The debates initiated by the Reformers therefore continue into our current understandings and practices regarding the celebration of the Eucharist and the gathering of God’s people in worship. At one end of these debates is the understanding that Communion is a remembering of Christ’s sacrifice while, at the other, is the understanding that it is a repeating of Christ's sacrifice.

These, however, are not the only ways of understanding how Jesus is present in the Lord’s Supper and what is accomplished when it is celebrated. To my mind, it takes an artist to understand how the sacraments operate and, for me, that artist is the Roman Catholic painter and poet David Jones. A sacrament is, as St Augustine stated, 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.’

For David Jones, a key word in this regard is ‘anamnesis’, which means to re-present under an existing reality under a different mode. It is, therefore, to do with the re-calling, re-presentation and re-membering of an original act or object in a form that is different from but connected to the original act or object that is being re-called. So, remembering the Lord’s Supper is not simply recalling it to mind; instead we re-member it by re-enacting and re-presenting the original act. The original act is a once-for-all act but it can be re-created and re-presented in our Eucharistic celebrations. We use a different form to bring a past act into the present in a way that means we encounter, receive and respond to that original act afresh. We are, therefore, doing more than simply recalling that act in our minds but, at the same, are not repeating the act in its original form in the present.

David Jones developed an understanding of art based on anamnesis which viewed all art as sacramental because the signs made by artists are the thing signified under the forms of their particular art. The artwork is the original object or action that has been re-presented but in a different form meaning that it is both ‘the thing’ and a ‘different thing’ at one and the same time. In the same way, at the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine are both simply bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ at one and the same time.

In the Introduction to his long poem entitled ‘The Anathemata’, Jones wrote that ‘words like “remembrance” or “memorial” hav[e] for us a connotation of something absent which is only mentally recollected. But in the scriptures of both the Old and New Testament, anamnesis and its cognate verb have a sense of re-calling before God an event in the past so that it becomes here and now operative by its effect.’

This poem begins and ends with the celebration of the Mass in London during wartime. In between, Jones explores the elements which form this particular celebration of the Mass - the very particular political and civilizational conditions of Rome which led to the Sacrifice of the Cross combined with a resultant fusion of Jewish, Greco-Roman, Germanic and Celtic cultures. His survey of these elements eventually leads him back to the celebration of the Mass in wartime London meaning that, as Kathleen Staudt notes, the ending of The Anathemata ‘insists that there is something constant in the gestures of offering that Christ, priest, and poet have made and make “at all times,” regardless of the products of that gesture’ (Incarnation Reconsidered: The Poem as Sacramental Act in The Anathemata of David Jones, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1985), 81-82).

On this basis, the bread and wine of The Lord’s Supper is at once a “thing” in itself, part of the world of flesh and form, and a “representation” -- a “showing again” of the original act under another form. Just as in the incarnation Christ brings the human and divine together in his body, so in The Lord’s Supper, the material and the eternal are brought together in the act of making a sign and in the re-membering, re-calling, re-enacting and re-presentation of that sign we receive the original reality of that sign but in a different form. In this way the outward and visible sign of the Eucharist works an inward and invisible grace in us. Jesus comes to us in the form of bread and wine and all who receive the Sacrament receive his body and blood.

Intercessions:

Wise and gracious God, you spread a table before us; nourish your people with the word of life and the bread of heaven. With the bread that we bring, we shall remember Jesus. With the wine that we bring, we shall remember Jesus. Bread for his body, wine for his blood, gifts from God to his table we bring. We shall remember Jesus. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation: through your goodness we have bread to set before you, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will be for us the bread of life. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation: through your goodness we have wine to set before you, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will be for us the cup of salvation. As the grain once scattered in the fields and the grapes once dispersed on the hillside are reunited on the Lord’s Table in bread and wine, so, Lord, may your whole Church soon be gathered together from the corners of the earth into your kingdom. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We thank You, Lord God, that You refresh us with this precious gift of The Lord’s Supper. We ask for Your mercy, that You would use this meal to nurture in us strong faith toward You and genuine love among us all. Almighty and Ever-loving God, we thank You that You feed us at Your Table with this spiritual food and assure us of Your goodness toward us. We thank You that we are members of the Body of Your Son. Assist us with Your grace, so that we may continue in this holy fellowship, and live more fully to Your glory. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

The Blessing

Blessed be God, by whose grace creation is renewed, by whose love heaven is opened, by whose mercy we offer our sacrifice of praise; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

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Gioachino Rossini: O salutaris hostia.

Saturday, 23 April 2016

Poem: Paying Attention

Attend, attend, pay attention, contemplate.
Open eyes of faith to days, minutes,
moments of miracle and marvel; there is wildness
and wonder wherever you go, present
in moments that never repeat, running free,
never coming again. Savour, savour the present –
small things, dull moments, dry prayers –
sacraments of presence, sense of wonder,
daily divine depth in the here and now.
There’s only here, there’s only now,
these are the days, this is the fiery vision,
awe and wildness, miracle and flame. Take off
your shoes, stand in the holy fire; sacrament
of the burning, always consumed, never repeating
present moment, knowing the time is now.

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Victoria Williams - This Moment.

Saturday, 6 June 2015

Start:Stop - 96 Sacraments

Start your day by stopping to reflect for 10 minutes. Every Tuesday morning there is a rolling programme of work-based reflections at St Stephen Walbrook (39 Walbrook, London EC4N 8BN). Every 15 minutes between 7.30am and 9.15am, a 10 minute session of reflection begins. These sessions include bible passages, meditations, music, prayers, readings and silence. Drop in on your way into work to start your day by stopping to reflect for 10 minutes.

Bible reading

‘… whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ Philippians 4. 8

Meditation

The artist Paul Thek once wrote 96 Sacraments in one of his notebooks. By doing so, he celebrated everything around him and everything that was present to him, especially the small and everyday things.

The things he celebrated can seem banal but, as our reading, suggests it is a godly thing to do to develop an attitude or habit of looking for the good in what is around us, the people we meet and the things we do. St Paul suggests that we go through life looking for what is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable. He suggests this because he is confident that if we seek these things we will find them.

I wonder, therefore, whether our view of our day and those we are with would change at all if we were able to simply to say, like Paul Thek, ‘Praise the Lord’ in respect of each thing we do, each person we meet and each place we go to.

Prayer

Walk to work. Praise the Lord.
Greet the receptionist. Praise the Lord.
Get in the lift. Praise the Lord.
Acknowledge others in the lift. Praise the Lord.
Exit the lift. Praise the Lord.
Greet colleagues. Praise the Lord.
Find your desk. Praise the Lord.
Sit at your desk. Praise the Lord.
Turn on the computer. Praise the Lord.
Open emails. Praise the Lord.
Read emails. Praise the Lord.
Compose and send emails. Praise the Lord.
Answer the phone. Praise the Lord.
Attend meetings. Praise the Lord.
Begin tasks. Praise the Lord.
Complete tasks. Praise the Lord.

As we praise you, Lord, this morning,
We recognise that the world you created
contains much that is true, honourable, just,
pure, pleasing and commendable.
Keep us looking for these things
in the ordinariness of life
and praising you when they are found.
And may that blessing of God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Rest upon you and remain with you always.
Amen.

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Gungor - Doxology.

Saturday, 14 March 2015

Art as epiphany and sacrament

Here is the sermon which I preached at today's commission4mission's service celebrating the Arts held at St Stephen Walbrook as part of an Arts in Worship event:

Please look at The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio and ask yourself three questions: What is central in this picture? How does the artist point us to what is central? Why are those things central?

At the centre of this picture and at the centre of the story it depicts is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread or tearing a loaf of bread into two pieces. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because this is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours on the Emmaus Road is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised, and we can see that clearly on the faces and in the actions of the disciples as they are portrayed in this painting.

Something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is. That is art in action! Art captures or creates moments when ordinary things are seen as significant.

When our eyes are suddenly opened to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary that is called an epiphany. Caravaggio’s painting is a picture of an epiphany occurring for the disciples on the Emmaus Road but it is also an epiphany itself because it brings the story to life in a way that helps us see it afresh, as though we were seeing it for the first time.

The disciples realise it is Jesus when the bread is broken because Jesus at the Last Supper made the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine (the Eucharist) into a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and so it is something more than an epiphany. In a sacramental act there is a connection between the symbolic act and the reality being symbolised, which does not need to occur in an epiphany. So, an epiphany is a realisation or sign of significance, while a sacrament is a visual symbol of an inner change. For Christians the taking of bread and wine into our bodies symbolises the taking of Jesus into our lives. As a result, art (or the visual) can symbolise inner change and be sacramental.

This understanding of epiphany and sacrament is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation; the belief that, in Jesus, God himself became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. Jesus is an epiphany because he is the visible image of the invisible God. For the Church this has been the primary reason why we have such a strong tradition of figurative art. As Rowan Williams has written, ‘God became truly human in Jesus … And if Jesus was indeed truly human, we can represent his human nature as with any other member of the human race.’ But when we do so ‘we’re not trying to show a humanity apart from divine life, but a humanity soaked through with divine life … We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus; we show a life radiating the life and force of God.’

Williams goes on to write that it is when ‘we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration’ that ‘the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates [the] light and force’ of God. He is implying therefore that an important element of prayer is paying attention.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian, observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician (1486), and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

Art historian Daniel Siedell has said: ‘It is a cliché, but I would suggest that one must approach contemporary art with an open mind … Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’ Daniel Siedell (http://imagejournal.org/page/artist-of-the-month/daniel-siedell)

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. We can do this by paying prayerful attention to all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that seems to go back at the very least to the Celtic Christians, who had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam writes that, ‘If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

Attending to details in the way Daniel Siedell suggests is the outworking of St Paul’s words in Philippians 4. 8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Philippians 4. 8). We are called to look for and look at these things as we go through life. This is an excellent approach to bear in mind when also looking at art.

Then, as Rowan Williams writes, visual images will be to us ‘human actions that seek to be open to God’s action’ and which can ‘open a gateway for God.’ If we pay prayerful attention, art can truly be epiphany and sacrament to us.

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Steve Scott - Sun Poem.

Sunday, 31 August 2014

Paying attention to sacraments and epiphanies

Tonight I led the evening service at St Peter's Bradwell with Peter Webb of commission4mission and Café Musica led by Peter Banks, with whom I co-wrote The Secret Chord. 70 - 80 people filled the chapel to participate in a liturgy which celebrated the Arts, view artwork by commission4mission artists, and be led in song by Café Musica. Click here to see photos of the artwork in the Chapel.

Here is the sermon that I preached:

Take a look at Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus by clicking here and ask yourself three questions: What is central in this picture? How does the artist point us to what is central? Why are those things central?

At the centre of this picture and at the centre of the story it depicts is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread or tearing a loaf of bread into two pieces. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because this is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours on the Emmaus Road is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised, and we can see that clearly on the faces and in the actions of the disciples as they are portrayed in this painting.

Something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is. That is art in action! Art captures or creates moments when ordinary things are seen as significant.

When our eyes are suddenly opened to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary that is called an epiphany. Caravaggio’s painting is a picture of an epiphany occurring for the disciples on the Emmaus Road but it is also an epiphany itself because it brings the story to life in a way that helps us see it afresh, as though we were seeing it for the first time.

The disciples realise it is Jesus when the bread is broken because Jesus at the Last Supper made the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine (the Eucharist) into a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and so it is something more than an epiphany. In a sacramental act there is a connection between the symbolic act and the reality being symbolised, which does not need to occur in an epiphany. So, an epiphany is a realisation or sign of significance, while a sacrament is a visual symbol of an inner change. For Christians the taking of bread and wine into our bodies symbolises the taking of Jesus into our lives. As a result, art (or the visual) can symbolise inner change and be sacramental.

This understanding of epiphany and sacrament is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation; the belief that, in Jesus, God himself became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. Jesus is an epiphany because he is the visible image of the invisible God. For the Church this has been the primary reason why we have such a strong tradition of figurative art. As Rowan Williams has written, ‘God became truly human in Jesus … And if Jesus was indeed truly human, we can represent his human nature as with any other member of the human race.’ But when we do so ‘we’re not trying to show a humanity apart from divine life, but a humanity soaked through with divine life … We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus; we show a life radiating the life and force of God.’

Williams goes on to write that it is when ‘we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration’ that ‘the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates [the] light and force’ of God. He is implying therefore that an important element of prayer is paying attention.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian, observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician (1486), and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

Art historian Daniel Siedell has said: ‘It is a cliché, but I would suggest that one must approach contemporary art with an open mind … Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. We can do this by paying prayerful attention to all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that seems to go back at the very least to the Celtic Christians, who had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam writes that, ‘If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

Attending to details in the way Daniel Seidell suggests is the outworking of St Paul’s words in Philippians 4. 8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Philippians 4. 8). We are called to look for and look at these things as we go through life. This is an excellent approach to bear in mind when also looking at art.

Then, as Rowan Williams writes, visual images will be to us ‘human actions that seek to be open to God’s action’ and which can ‘open a gateway for God.’ If we pay prayerful attention, art can truly be epiphany and sacrament to us.

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Tom Jones - My Lord Did Trouble Me.

Sunday, 24 August 2014

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Sermon

The rock band Switchfoot have a song called ‘Meant to Live’ which articulates the sense which, I suggest, we all have that there must be more to life than we are experiencing now. They sing:

‘We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Maybe we've been livin' with our eyes half open
Maybe we're bent and broken

We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And everything inside screams for second life’

The singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn expresses the same sense in a song called ‘More not More’ when he sings:

‘There must be more...
More songs, more warmth
More love, more life

More current, more spark
More touch, deep in the heart

More growth, more truth
More chains, more loose’

Christianity is about the something more of life. We believe that there is more to life than the material, more to life than just the visible and we express this through signs and symbols. So, bread and wine is not simply wheat and grapes or food and drink but is also the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself was a physical being – a human who could be touched and felt – but was also more by being, at one and the same time, divine; the Son of God.

One of the ways in which we express this sense of there being something more to life is through the Arts. When we make art – whether that is literature, performing arts or visual arts – we are essentially following what Jesus did when he made bread and wine into a symbol of his life and death; we are using something known to us to make the invisible visible. This happens most powerfully when the symbol connects us to something real; if Jesus had broken bread and shared wine with his disciples and said this is my body and blood but had not then died, we would not celebrate communion today. We celebrate using the symbols of bread and wine because they connect us with the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection and all that that opens out to us. When something visible and tangible connects us to the invisible reality of the divine that is what we call a sacrament and, at its best, that is what art can do.

During my sabbatical I heard Rev. Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields talk about the way his church using the Arts. He used a description of Jesus as prophet, priest and King, which he took from the writings of John Calvin, to illustrate how the Arts reveal the something more of life. Prophetic art holds a mirror up to society and asks, ‘Are you proud of what you see?’ This kind of art can create a vision of what society could be (the kingdom of God) and then brings home to us the painful gap between this possibility and our present reality. As a result, prophets and prophetic acts are often shocking.

Priestly art takes the opposite approach. The poet George Herbert wrote that when we look at glass we can either see ourselves reflected (like a mirror) or we can look through it to see the heavens. Priestly art gets us seeing beyond the stars. Through priestly art the ordinary stuff of life speaks or sings of the divine.

Kingly art, Wells suggested, is about glory; the glory of God and, through that, the glory of human beings reaching their full potential in God. Kingly art is art which stretches us by showing what humanity can be when we reach our full potential.

The art made for churches often succeeds in doing all these things and that is why it can impact and change our lives. However, there have been periods in the life of the Church when the Arts haven’t been fully appreciated and understood and when artists have felt disconnected from and disillusioned with the Church.

The beginning of the twentieth century was just such a time. Modern art looked, sounded and felt very different from the art that had traditionally been made for the Church, meaning that the Church avoided using modern art while many modern artists were excitedly exploring new ways of creating art and couldn’t see any connection between what they were doing and the styles of art which the Church continued to use. As a result, there was a whole segment of society – artists and art lovers – that were not being impacted by Christianity.

Fortunately, there were some visionaries both in the Church and among modern artists who made it their life’s work to reconnect the Church with modern and contemporary art. The visits I have made during my sabbatical have been to places where they worked or had an influence.

My concern in making this story the focus of my sabbatical has been to encourage the Church to value, learn from and tell the story of what these people did. In my ordained ministry, particularly through commission4mission, I have seen the value of promoting and publicising the artworks which churches have commissioned. Art competitions, exhibitions, festivals, talks, trails, walks and workshops all bring new contacts to the churches that use them and build relationships between those churches and local artists/arts organisations.

Telling more fully the story of the engagement which the Church has had with modern and contemporary art, as I am trying to do using my sabbatical, can impact people in these ways and contribute to the wider mission of the Church. Ultimately, though, it brings me and others into contact with art which speaks powerfully and movingly of the Christian faith and informs the spirituality of those who see.

Next Sunday I will be leading an Evening Service at St Peter’s Chapel in Bradwell which will be a celebration of the Arts and during September I will share some of the artwork and other resources that I have found during my sabbatical in the Evening Services at St John's Seven Kings.

As we use the signs and symbols of the Arts to reflect in this way on the something more which Christianity reveals to us – the divine in the human, the invisible in the visible – we have the opportunity to become walking, talking, living works of art ourselves. Through the way we live and act we can be signs and symbols of the divine. As the singer-songwriter Keith Green sang:

“We are like windows, stained with colours of the rainbow,

Set in a darkened room, till the bridegroom comes to shining through,

Then the colours fall around our feet, over those we meet,

Covering all the grey that we see,

Rainbow colours of assorted hues, come exchange your blues,

For His love that you see shining through me.”

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Keith Green - Stained Glass.

Sunday, 2 February 2014

Practising the presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment

All babies look like Winston Churchill! The story goes that a friend once remarked to Churchill, "Winston! How wonderfully your new grandson resembles you!" and Churchill immediately replied, "All babies look like me. But then, I look like all babies."

Whether a true story or not, the phrase “all babies look like Winston Churchill” entered popular culture as a way of saying that, although we naturally look to see the characteristic features of both parents’ families in the face of a new born child, all newborn babies look very similar because at that stage the distinctive characteristics of their face have yet to develop fully.

Think about that in relation to the story from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 22-40) that we have heard read this morning when Simeon and Anna both knew that the six week old baby in Mary’s arms was God’s Messiah, the one who would bring salvation to all peoples. Now, at that time all six week old babies had to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem. So there would have been other babies there on the same day and Simeon and Anna seem to have both been regular visitors to the Temple looking out for God’s Messiah. They might have seen thousands of six week old babies over the years that they had spent in the Temple. How did Simeon and Anna know that baby Jesus was different from all the other babies that they had seen brought into the Temple?

It was the Holy Spirit that led Simeon into the Temple on that day so that he could encounter Jesus and it was the Holy Spirit that had assured him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s promised Messiah. In addition, Simeon was waiting – looking out, praying for, expecting – Israel to be saved. He was expecting God to reveal the Messiah to him before he died and so he would have been constantly looking for signs of the Messiah. So, we have a combination of the Holy Spirit’s revelation and Simeon’s expectation – his active looking - that reveal the Messiah to him in a six week old baby boy.

Often God’s work in the world and in other people is not easy to spot. God works in and through the ordinary and everyday, through the people and things around us and we need to be looking out for signs of his activity and presence. We need to be listening for his Holy Spirit to prompt us to look at some ordinary thing or ordinary person in order to see God at work.

In the film American Beauty, Ricky shows Jane a blurry video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind among autumn leaves. As they watch he explains that "this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. . . . And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever." "Sometimes,” he says, “there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” To encounter God as that incredibly benevolent force that wants us to know that there is no reason to ever feel afraid, we need to pay attention to the beauty of the ordinary, overlooked things in life, like a plastic bag being blown by the wind. As Saint Augustine said, “How many common things are trodden underfoot which, if examined carefully, awaken our astonishment.”

Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and writer known for his work Abandonment toDivine Providence and his work with Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France. De Caussade coined a phrase to describe what we have just been talking about. He called it 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment,' which ‘refers to God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane. Only those who are spiritually aware and alert discover God's presence in what can seem like nothing at all. This keeps us from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are 'Godly'. Rather, God is equally present in the small things of life as in the great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers ... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one.’ (Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Life in God's NOW, New City, 2012)

‘To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.’ So, 'Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is.’ (Simon Small, 'From the Bottom of the Pond', O Books, 2007)

Brother Lawrence was a member of the Carmelite Order in France during the 17th Century. He spent most of his life in the kitchen or mending shoes, but became a great spiritual guide. He saw God in the mundane tasks he carried out in the priory kitchen. Daily life for him was an ongoing conversation with God. He wrote: “we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment.”

As a result, "The time of action does not differ from that of prayer. I possess God as peacefully in the bustle of my kitchen, where sometimes several people are asking me for different things at the same time, as I do upon my knees before the Holy Sacrament.”

“It is not needful to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God. When it is finished, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on the ground and worship my God, who gave me the grace to make it, after which I arise happier than a king. When I can do nothing else, it is enough to have picked up a straw for the love of God.”

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

This sort of spirituality - the sense of the presence of God in all things, and the possibility of honouring God in every action is also found in our hymn books. We sing:

‘Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

To do it as for thee:’

George Herbert’s hymn, originally a poem called ‘The Elixir,’ ends with these words:

‘A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.

This is the famous stone

That turneth all to gold:

For that which God doth touch and own

Cannot for less be told.’

If we practising the presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment, as Brother Lawrence and Jean Pierre de Caussade teach us, then we will be like Simeon and Anna, able to signs of God’s activity and presence all around us. Because, as Bill Fay sings, when our eyes are open and our hearts are expectant:

‘There are miracles,

In the strangest of places

There are miracles,

Everywhere you go

I see fathers,

Hold a little child's hand

I see mothers,

Holding a little child's hand

I see trees, trees,

Blowing in the wind

I see seeds,

Being sown by the wind

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul.

I see grandmas,

Blowing kisses into a pram

I see grandpas,

Scratching their head in amazement

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul.’

Let us pray: Help me become attentive to this moment which will never come again. May I know you in the sacrament of the present moment seeing that you are there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers. More than that, that all is in you, all is held in the palms of your hands. May I see the present moment as though I were walking on my hands, seeing the world hanging upside to know dependence and rest in the Maker’s hands. Amen.

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Bill Fay - Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People).