A real relationship and conversation with God

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

Although he doesn’t deserve it, Job is a man on whom all the troubles of the world have come (Job 9.1-12, 14-16). In rapid succession he loses all his livestock, servants and children. Then sores break out all over his body and his wife tells him to curse God and die. If we think life is hard for us, we might want to look at the story of Job and think again.

The book of Job is told as a series of conversations. It begins with a conversation between God and Satan about Job, continues with a conversation between Job and his friends about God and his response to suffering and ends with a conversation between Job and God himself. 

Job asks in 9.14-16:

“How then can I answer him,
choosing my words with him?
… If I summoned him and he answered me,
I do not believe that he would listen to my voice.”

However, Job’s experience, as the story progresses, is that it is possible for him to discuss and debate with God and what changes Job in this story is not the arguments and words of other human beings but the experience of genuinely meeting and speaking with God himself. Job asks why good people suffer and his friends reply that people suffer because of their wickedness, because they have not helped others and that we are punished in order to repent and be healed. Job knows in his heart and in his conscience that he has helped others and has not done wrong. Job’s friends are only able to tell Job what they think about God what they aren’t able to do is to help him encounter God himself. The story is told as a series of conversation because Job entering in to a conversation with God himself is what the book is all about.

Job’s friends - and, to begin with, Job, himself - think that being in relationship with God is primarily to do with our keeping a set of rules and regulations. If we do the right things then we will have God’s favour. The problem with this view is that we can look around the world and see wicked people who seem to prosper and good people who experience tragedy. This problem is acute for Job because he is one of those good people who experience tragedy. This view is still apparent in many churches today despite our knowledge of God’s grace and forgiveness in Jesus. Yet, when we act like that we are, like Job’s friends, setting up a series of standards which we believe come from God, and saying that if you don’t meet those standards or don’t repent, then you are outside of God’s will and no longer a follower of God.

But at the end of this story, it is Job’s friends with whom God is angry, not Job. In fact, Job himself has to pray for his friends so that they are not disgraced by God. The problem God has with Job’s friends is that they have not spoken the truth about God, as Job did. And yet much of what they had to say about God is standard theology about God. So, what is the difference between Job’s friends and Job? The difference is that Job wants to speak with God while his friends want to speak about God.

Job’s friends have a black and white view of God with no shades of grey and this is actually a way of avoiding encounter with God. In this way of thinking if life is going well then you know you must be keeping the rules because you have God’s favour and if life is not going well then you know you must have done something wrong and need to repent. Life is very simple and when you understand life like that you can keep God at arms length and don’t need to talk with him because you know what you have to do and all that matters is doing it right.

Job, however, knows that life is not as simple as that and, as a result, he wants to ask God about it direct. And when he starts talking to God, God starts talking to him. And what God has to say isn’t about giving Job rules and regulations to follow; it isn’t even about answering Job’s questions. It is simply about allowing Job to experience the magnitude of being in a real relationship and conversation with God. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Midnight Oil - World That I See.

Meeting God in the dark night of the soul

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

The book of Job is the record of one man’s dark night of the soul. In the story Job loses everything that gave his life meaning. His family are wiped out, his home, money and possessions are lost, he experiences severe and painful illnesses and is left alone, except for three friends who are more hindrance than help as they offer only platitudes that essentially pin the blame for his condition on Job himself.

Job knows that the diagnosis offered by his friends is wrong. He knows there is nothing he has done to deserve his suffering. He knows that it is not punishment for something he has done and this gives us one of the reasons why this is such a significant book to find within the pages of the scriptures. The book of Job tells us that much suffering in this world is undeserved. There are times in life when we do reap what we sow and bear the consequences of our choices, as Job’s friends assume must be the case for him. But this is not one of those times and the story is told, in part, to warn us against making the assumptions made by Job’s friends. Not all suffering is brought on by our actions, sometimes life simply deals us a bum hand - and that’s the way it is!

Job is understandably angry about this situation. In the section of the poem we heard read today (Job 19:1-27), he says that he has been broken down on every side and that he has been pursued by both his friends and by God. God accepts Job’s arguing with him and affirms him in so doing. In the final chapter of the book, God says that he is angry with Job’s friends because they did not speak the truth about him, the way his servant Job did. So, the friends who said “it’s all your fault and God is right to punish you” were condemned and Job, who argued his case with God is affirmed.

The book of Job is important, therefore, because it tells us that it is ok to argue with God and to complain to him when life seems unfair. That is important because it is not how we have been brought up to think about relationship with God. Most of us instinctively think that submission to the will of God rather than arguing the toss with God is what makes for a good Christian. Job tells us that that is not so. And, in fact, if we read scripture carefully, we will finish that stories are told of all the heroes of the faith - from Abraham through Moses, Jeremiah and Habbakuk to Jesus and Paul - arguing with God. Why? Because it means we are in real relationship with God. Our virtuous mask comes off and we say what we really mean. We are honest with God in a way that we cannot be when we are trying to be righteous. That is real relationship and that is what God wants more than anything.

This is something which has been acknowledged and understood throughout Church history. The phrase which I used of Job at the beginning of this sermon - the dark night of the soul - was coined by St John of the Cross while imprisoned in a tiny prison cell for his attempts to reform the Church. He was a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who wrote many of his poems on a scroll smuggled to him by one of his guards. After escaping his captors, he wrote the Dark Night of the Soul, a poem about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Similarly, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of “That night, that year / Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

At the end of the Book of Job, Job says, “I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know.” Through his dark night of the soul, he comes to understand that God is not who or what he had thought him to be. God is more than he had imagined or conceived. Human beings can know God but cannot know God fully because is always more than we can imagine or conceive. Every image or idea we have of God is inadequate because God is always more than any human definition. We can say, for example, that God is Father but to say that cannot fully define God as God can also be understood as Mother and as child and as Spirit (without gender). All these different things are true of God at one and the same time. So, God is both known to us and yet unknowable. In the dark night of the soul, all that we had thought we knew of God is taken away from us and we experience something of the mystery of God.

Summing all this up, what can we say? We need to be careful about the advice we offer to those who are suffering. In particular, not to assume that they have in some way brought their suffering on themselves. God said to Job’s friends, “you did not speak the truth about me, the way my servant Job did.” Then, to understand that we do not have to suffer in silence. To argue or complain to God actually brings us into a deeper relationship with him and is a valid part of prayer. Job says, “I still rebel and complain against God; I cannot keep from groaning.” Finally, we need to be prepared to have our understandings of God brought into question as he challenges us to engage with the mystery of who he is, the One who is always more than we can ever conceive or image. And so, like Job, we say “I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know.” May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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William Cowper - God Moves In A Mysterious Way.

Hannah Rose Thomas: Tears of Gold

Last night I was at Exhibition Launch for 'Tears of Gold' at Garden Court Chambers. This exhibition by the artist, author, and human rights activist Hannah Rose Thomas features portraits of Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity, Rohingya women who fled violence in Myanmar, and Nigerian women who survived Boko Haram and Fulani oppression. Hannah’s most recent portraits depict survivors of the re-education camps in Xinjiang, China, and of conflicts in Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.

With these artworks, along with the associated publication Tears of Gold, Thomas bears witness—painting by painting, relationship by relationship—to the singular stories shared by each individual, and by extension the trauma and recovery experienced by their communities.

This body of work not only serves as a reminder to remain concerned about the ongoing persecution of people around the world based on their backgrounds and beliefs, but also reflects on the complexities and limits of empathy as we look to pursue justice more compassionately.

Hannah Rose Thomas demonstrates the potential of caring and creative practices that take time to listen, learn, and focus a prayer-like attention on the suffering of others and in the process reveal a sense of interrelatedness, common vulnerability, and shared humanity that allows for healing and hope.

Hannah Rose Thomas is a British artist and an UNESCO PhD Scholar at the University of Glasgow. She has previously organized art projects for Syrian refugees in Jordan; Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity in Iraqi Kurdistan; Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps and Nigerian women survivors of Boko Haram. Her paintings of displaced women are a testament to their strength and dignity. These have been exhibited at prestigious places including the UK Houses of Parliament, European Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Lambeth Palace, Westminster Abbey, the International Peace Institute in New York and The Saatchi Gallery.

Her exhibition Tears of Gold was featured in the virtual exhibition for the UN’s Official 75th Anniversary, “The Future is Unwritten: Artists for Tomorrow.” Hannah was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 2019 Art & Culture; shortlisted for the Women of the Future Award 2020 and selected for British Vogue Future Visionaries 2022. Hannah’s debut art book Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya and Nigerian Women was published in 2024, with a foreword by HM King Charles III.

The book also presents Thomas' stunning portrait paintings of Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity, Rohingya women who fled violence in Myanmar, and Nigerian women who survived Boko Haram violence, alongside their own words, stories, and self-portraits. A final chapter features portraits and stories of Afghan, Ukrainian, Uyghur, and Palestinian women.

These portraits, depicting women from three continents and three religions, are a visual testimony not only of war and injustice but also of humanity and resilience. Many of the women have suffered sexual violence; all have been persecuted and forcibly displaced on account of their faith or ethnicity.

Hannah Rose Thomas met these women in Iraqi Kurdistan, Bangladeshi refugee camps, and Northern Nigeria while organizing art projects to teach women how to paint their self-portraits as a way to reclaim their personhood and self-worth. She gives women their own voice both by creating a safe space for them to share their stories and by using her impressive connections to make sure their stories are heard in places of influence in the Global North.

Thomas uses techniques of traditional sacred art – early Renaissance tempera and oil painting and gold leaf – to convey the sacred value of each of these women in spite of all that they have suffered. This symbolic restoration of dignity is especially important considering the stigma surrounding sexual violence. Hannah’s work attests to the power of the arts as a vehicle for healing, remembering, inclusion, and dialogue.

Long after the news cameras have moved on to the next conflict, this book shines a spotlight on the ongoing work of healing and restoration in some of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities around the world.

Hannah's essay from the book can be read here. My interview with Hannah for Artlyst can be read here. My Church Times review of her UN75 exhibition is here. Hannah exhibited at St Stephen Walbrook in 2017 and posts about that exhibition are here and here. Hannah also participated in a HeartEdge workshop on 'Art and Social Change' which can be viewed here.

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Tim Hughes - We Won't Stay Silent.

Artlyst - Rodin: Suffering And Conflict – Tate Modern

My latest review for Artlyst is of The Making of Rodin at Tate Modern:

'Rodin learnt from Michelangelo’s ability to show internal pain and suffering through the gestures of the whole body noting that, ‘It is Michelangelo who has freed me from academic sculpture.’ In describing the greatness of Michelangelo, it was experience of suffering that was emphasised: ‘Michelangelo was only the last and greatest of the Gothics. The turning in of the soul upon itself, suffering, a disgust with life, struggle against the chains of matter, such are the elements of his inspiration … he himself has been tortured by melancholy.’

Rodin also saw suffering and conflict as characteristic of modern art, saying, ‘Nothing is more moving than the maddened beast, dying from unfulfilled desire and asking in vain for grace to quell its passion.’ As Rachel Corbett notes in ‘You Must Change Your Life,’ her biography of Rodin and his secretary, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, to Rodin’ punishment was the condition of the living’ as his vision of Dante’s hell ‘mirrored the realities of life in Paris at the fin de siècle‘ because its inhabitants were ‘living in a nightmare of their own earthly passions.’

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

• Louis Carreon: Sampling Art History
• Modus Operandi - What Makes Successful Public Art: Vivien Lovell Interviewed
• Genesis Tramaine: A Queer Devotional Painter
• Lakwena Maciver: Review-Interview Hastings Contemporary
• Nicola Ravenscroft - Sculpture With A Peaceful Stillness
• Artist Hannah Rose Thomas – Tears of Gold – Interview
• Marcus Lyon: Human Atlas Explorations
• Elizabeth Kwant Interview
• Helaine Blumenfeld: Undulating Structures
• National Gallery Explores ‘Sin’ In New Exhibition – Interview Dr Joost Joustra Curator
• Betty Spackman: Posthumanism Debates
• Christopher Clack: Connecting The Material And Immaterial
• Peter Howson Artlyst Interview
• Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker On The Legacy Of ArtWay
• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar

Articles -

• Barbara Hepworth: Symbols Of Art & Life – Hepworth Wakefield
• 20th Century Women Artists Challenging Conventions In Britain
• Chaiya Art Awards 2021 Gallery OXO
• Marc Chagall’s Exquisite Stained Glass Window Commissions
• George Gittoes Equal parts artist and warrior
• Keith Haring: Personal Spiritual Imagery
• Sean Scully: Philosophical Poetic Pastoral The 12 / Dark Windows
• Arthur Jafa: The Art Of Cutting And Pasting
• Blackpentecostal Breath: Spirit-Led Movement Jumps From Music To Visual Art
• Made in USA Ed Ruscha An American Perspective
• Robert Smithson: The Archetypal Nature Of Things
• If Jesus Is A Man Of Colour Why Did We Make Him Aryan?
• Cosmic Patches And Quilts Five Exhibitions
• Everyday Heroes: Southbank Exhibition Celebrates Low-paid Key Workers
• Entwining Spiritualism And Art – Three Shows
• Of Church And The Visual Arts
• Has The Word Master Reached Its Sell-By Date?
• The People Behind Community Is Kindness Billboard Campaign
• André Daughtry: Art, Rebellion And Racial Justice
• Salisbury Cathedral 800 Years Of Art And Spirit
• Home Alone Together Twenty Five Artists
• Botanical Mind Online: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree
• Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith
• Art And Faith A Time For Seeing
• Andy Warhol: Catholicism His Work, Faith And Legacy
• Kiki Smith: Embodied Art
• Art and Christianity Awards A Positive New Millennium Legacy
• Arnulf Rainer: 90th Birthday Exhibition Celebrated At Albertina Museum
• A Belonging Project And Exiles Loss and Displacement
• Robert Polidori: Fra Angelico Opus Operantis
• Art, Faith, Church Patronage and Modernity
• Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
• Mat Collishaw Challenges Faith Perspectives With Ushaw Installation
• Waterloo Festival Launches At St. John’s Waterloo
• John Bellany Alan Davie Spiritual Joy and Magic
• RIFT Unites 17 Art and Science MA Graduates At Central St Martins
• Visionary Cities: Michael Takeo Magruder – British Library
• Van Gogh’s Religious Journey Around London
• William Congdon Holy Sites And The Kettle’s Yard Connection
• Mark Dean Premieres Pastiche Mass At Banqueting Hall Chelsea College of Arts
• John Kirby: The Torment
• Underlying The Civilised Facade
• Curating Spiritual Sensibilities In Changing Times
• Homeless Highlighted: New Beau Exhibition At St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Ken Currie: Protest Defeat And Victory
• Bosco Sodi: A Moment Of Genesis
• Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation
• Art In Churches 2018: Spiritual Combinations Explored
• Sister Wendy Beckett – A Reminiscence
• Guido Guidi: Per Strada Flowers Gallery London
• Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery
• Camille Henrot: Scientific History And Creation Story Mash Up
• Nicola Green Explores Recent And Contemporary Religious Leaders – St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Art And The Consequences Of War Explored In Two Exhibitions
• Helaine Blumenfeld Translating Her Vision
• Sam Ivin: Physically Scratched Portraits Of Asylum Seekers Exhibited
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• 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
• Polish Art In Britain Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• 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
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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This Picture - Death's Sweet Religion.

I come alive

I come alive

When I stand in snow on a mountain slope viewing a cobalt lake,
I come alive.
When the morning mist forms a white sea on the Somerset levels, islanding trees,
I come alive.
When my daughter nestles up and hugs me tight,
I come alive.
When my wife and I lie, skin touching, sweat mingling in the heat of summer and passion,
I come alive.
When a friend listens with understanding and without advising,
I come alive.
When I sing and dance in the echoes of an empty Church,
I come alive.
When words cannot express Your praise and I sing in tongues,
I come alive.
When I hear the rustle of angel’s wings above me in the eaves,
I come alive.

I come alive to endurance
when I see a hesitant smile form on the face of the Big Issue seller.
I come alive to pain
when I hear a friend’s story of depression and unanswered pleading.
I come alive to patience
when I see a husband answer again the question from his alzheimered wife.
I come alive to injustice
when the Metro contrasts Big Mac obesity lawsuits with African famine victims.
I come alive to suffering
when I see Sutherland’s Crucifixion and read Endo’s Silence.
I come alive to grief
when I remember the aircraft shattered and scattered across Kosovan heights.

I come alive
when I am touched and see and hear
the beautiful or broken, the passionate or poor.
The mystery or madness
of the Other in which God
meets and greets me
and calls forth the response
that is love.

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Aretha Franklin & Mavis Staples - Oh Happy Day.

God hears our cries, understands our needs and is with us

Our readings this morning (Psalm 102, Exodus 6.2-13 and Hebrews 10.26-end) provide three different responses to trouble and difficulty. In the reading from Exodus we hear of people so broken in their spirits by the cruelty of slavery that they cannot hear the message of redemption. In the Psalm we hear a prayer of complaint about the trouble and difficulty that the Psalmist is experiencing and in the Letter to the Hebrews we hear of people who show compassion towards others in the midst of enduring their own suffering.

It would be easy to turn these into a hierarchy of responses; a kind of version of good, better, best that may be closer to bad, better and best. Yet, these are all stories of responses from God’s people; and in the stories all experience God’s presence alongside them. The people of Israel are rescued from slavery regardless of whether they can believe it is to happen or not. The Psalmist who anxiously prays, ‘O my God, do not take me in the midst of my days’ ends that same prayer with the statement that ‘The children of your servants shall continue, and their descendants shall be established in your sight.’ Those receiving the Letter to the Hebrews read that after they have endured their suffering, they will receive what was promised.

In differing ways God meets each in their troubles suggesting that we are not dealing with a case of bad, better and best but instead relating to a God who truly understands who we are and the differing ways in which we respond to trouble and difficulty. Years of slavery would break many, if not most of us, in our spirits. God understands that reality and hears the groans of those who are broken by abuse and oppression. All of us are likely to have been in same place as the Psalmist; of railing at God for the unfairness of life. I read a post the other night from a friend expressing the heartbreak of all the ways in which our current constraints were impacting their family. It was absolutely right that that person expressed their feelings and God is big enough to take it. As the Psalmist experienced, God doesn’t criticise complaint. Complaint means we are in conversation and relationship with God. In situations, like that of the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews and its readers, where we can have that kind of confidence in God then endurance in ourselves and compassion towards others also becomes possible.

We may each empathise with a different reading and response this morning in our own response to the trouble and difficulty that we all face at this time. Whatever our response these readings assure us that God hears our cries, understands our needs and is with us however we react and respond.

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Mark Heard - Strong Hand Of Love.

Crucifixions: Francis Bacon

Crucifixions: Francis Bacon – 6-31 March 2017, 10.00am – 4.00pm Mon – Fri (Weds, 11.00am – 3.00pm), St Stephen Walbrook, 39 Walbrook, London EC4N 8BN

For Lent 2017 St Stephen Walbrook is exhibiting Crucifixion drawings by Francis Bacon from “The Francis Bacon Collection of the drawings donated to Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino”. Between 1977 and 1992 Francis Bacon donated to an intimate Italian friend a considerable number of drawings, pastels and collages. Today those drawings are part of a collection which has previously been exhibited in Bologna, Dubrovnik, London, Madrid and Trieste among other locations.

The image of crucifixion was consistently utilised by Francis Bacon in his art to think about all life’s horror as he could not find a subject as valid to embrace all the nuances of human feelings and behaviours. This exhibition of crucifixion drawings by Bacon provides an opportunity to explore why the image of the crucified Christ retained its power for an avowed atheist such as Bacon and to reflect on the horror of the suffering that Christ endured for humanity.

Revd Jonathan Evens says: ‘Francis Bacon rather obsessively revisited religious imagery in his iconic paintings. The subject of the crucifixion preoccupied him throughout his life as he made at least eight major Crucifixion paintings, spanning five decades, including the work that launched his career, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Bacon thought that this subject, more than any other, had the validity to embrace all the nuances of human feelings and behaviours that enable us to think about all life’s horror. Bacon’s basing of his godless images on an image freighted and weighted with salvific power highlights its enduring impact, even in the secular West and even in the work of an avowed atheist. The bleak obscuring of features in Bacon’s images of Christ reveals the emanation of love which leads Christ into nothingness. For all these reasons, Bacon’s crucifixion drawings deserve the interest of Christians, as well as that of art historians or art lovers, and reward informed reflection and contemplation.’

In his recollections of Francis Bacon, Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino suggests that: ‘It is completely wrong to see Francis Bacon as a determined blasphemer and convinced atheist. As a matter of fact, and paradoxically, Francis was almost more fascinating in what he thought about religion than in what he actually painted. This man frequently described (first, by we journalists) like a merciless satanic drunkard was one of the most pitifully charitable people I ever met.’ He suggests that ‘Bacon was a gambler, but he was a gambler more in hiding himself from people than in actually playing roulette.’

Art Below

London based public art collaborative Art Below will feature selected works from the exhibition in stations including Bond Street, Green Park and St. Paul’s from the 13th March for two weeks.

Exhibition events

• Monday 6 March, 5.00pm: Francis Bacon & The Crucifixion – lectures by Edward Lucie-Smith & Revd Jonathan Evens

• Monday 6 March, 6.30pm: Preview & opening night reception

• Monday 13 March, 6.30pm: The Crucifixion in modern art & Poetry reading – Revd Jonathan Evens (lecture) & Rupert Loydell (poetry reading)

• Wednesday 29 March, 7.00pm: concert by Claudio Crismani

Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally known art critic and historian.

Revd Jonathan Evens is priest-in-charge of St Stephen Walbrook and Associate Vicar Partnerships at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at Falmouth University, a widely exhibited painter of small abstract paintings, and a much-anthologised and -published poet.

Italian pianist Claudio Crismani ‘is an amazing, daring and magnetic artist.’

Francis Bacon Collection. The Francis Bacon Collection of the drawings donated to Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino: This association exists to collect and catalogue the Italian drawings of Francis Bacon. The collection consists of a large number of drawings, created between 1970 and 1990. The drawings were a gift from Bacon to his Italian friend Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino. 

St Stephen Walbrook is an Anglican Parish Church rich in heritage, but one which remains actively involved in the City of London. In 2017 its art programme includes exhibitions of Jamaican spiritual art (3 – 14 July), solo exhibitions by Terry Ffyffe (15 May - 9 June) and Alexander de Cadenet (2 - 27 October), and a group show by commission4mission (4 – 15 September). On Holy Saturday (15 April), we will premiere 'The Stations of the Cross' (14 videos installed at an all night vigil) featuring work by video-artist, Mark Dean, and choreographer, Lizzi Kew Ross, as part of a wider project also including 'The Stations of the Resurrection' (a 12-screen work installed under the Dome of St.Paul's Cathedral) on 26 April. Each event incorporates performances of 'Being Here', a newly devised work for five dancers.

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Arvo Part - Passio.

Visual meditation: 'Solo' by Marlene Dumas

My latest visual meditation for ArtWay focuses on Marlene Dumas' Solo, a crucifixion image which can currently be seen in Dumas' retrospective at Tate Modern entitled The Image as Burden.

In this meditation I say that:

'Solo, and the other Crucifixions from this show, are images of aloneness. Christ and his cross exist in voids of darkness or light. In Solo the dark cross fills the white void, while Christ is compressed and condensed at the pinnacle of the painting and at the point of death; a defeated, forsaken, tragic figure. As with many of Dumas’ images, these Crucifixions are meditations on the depths of human suffering; homo homini lupus est, ‘man is a wolf to man’.'

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Torres - New Skin.

Julian Meditation 2

Here is the second collage of words from Julian of Norwich which I have compiled as part of reflecting on the her writings, particularly as used in the DVD featuring Alan Oldfield's paintings. They are intended to put Julian's words in new combinations while retaining her overall meaning:

There were times when I wanted to look away from the Cross, but I dared not.

The huge, hard, hurtful nails pulled the wounds wide open

The body sagged with the weight of its long hanging

Fair skin was driven deep into the tender flesh

Harsh striking all over the sweet body

The nails wrenched it as the weight of the body pulled against it

Shaken in sorrow and anguish and tribulation

As a cloth is shaken in the wind

The weeping and wailing of the soul

Bearing the loss of every kind of comfort except the deep, quiet keeping of God

I knew that while I gazed on the Cross I was safe and sound.

The holy joining made in heaven. God's son fell with Adam

Adam's old shirt - narrow, threadbare and short - our mortal flesh that God's son took upon him

So joined in love that the greatness of our love caused the greatness of his grief

The shame, the despising, the utter stripping he accepted

All the bodily and spiritual pains and passions of his creatures

Our Lord Jesus made nothing for us and we made nothing with him

In our joining together in love lies the life of all who shall be saved

In falling and rising again we are held close in one love

For our falling does not stop him loving us

I dared not look away. I was not willingly going to imperil my soul.

Flee to our Lord and we shall be comforted. Touch him and we shall be made clean.

Cling to him and we shall be safe and sound from every kind of danger.

For our courteous Lord wills that we should be at home with him

as heart may think or soul may desire .

Our soul rests in God its true peace, our soul stands in God its true strength,

and is deep-rooted in God for endless love.

He did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary,

you shall not be discomforted'.

But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'

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Indelible Grace - All Must Be Well.

Pole Position article

Artway have just published an article I have written about Pole Position, an exhibition celebrating the work of Polish artists living and working in the UK throughout the 20th century. The article ends by focusing on Marian Bohusz-Szysko's Christ Crowned with Thorns: "Colour here is both violent and vibrant, as befits a world-changing event which is both suffering and salvation."

Bohusz-Szysko's is a story which deserves retelling, his work retains its power and vision and his contribution to the image and reality of hospices as landscaped, art-filled, home-like havens remains a significant contribution to have made not just to art but healthcare. ArtWay also have an earlier piece from me written following a visit to St Christopher's Hospice, the major collection of Bohusz-Szysko's work in the UK.

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Arnold Schoenberg - Moses Und Aron.

Spiritual Life: Resurrection

Here is my Spiritual Life column for this week's Ilford Recorder:

Death AND resurrection. Suffering AND salvation. This is the journey which Christians make, following in the footsteps of Jesus, as we travel through Lent and Easter.

While it is a journey which in no way minimises the reality and pain of suffering and bereavement, it is ultimately a journey of hope. One which leads to new life, where we proclaim that Jesus is alive and death is no longer the end.

As a result, to go on this journey, builds resilience and endurance in those who travel this way. As we look at our lives, the difficulties and challenges we might face, our Christian faith tells us that this is not the end instead change and new life are possible; indeed, that they will come.

The story of Christ’s death and resurrection takes us forward into a new life. The reality of his presence with us on the way helps us endure and persevere. The combination of the two brings hope for the future. Whatever we may experience in the here and now, ultimately Love wins.   

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The Danielson Famile - Lord's Rest.

The reality of evil

Susan Hill has been talking about the reality of evil in a Guardian interview:

'Hill, who is a Christian, does believe in wickedness. In an afterword to her classic 1970 bullying novel, I'm the King of the Castle, widely taught in secondary schools, she spelled out that she believed her 11-year-old villain, Hooper, was "evil". Asked about this now, she says: "How do you look at a tiny baby and say it is potentially evil, yet look at the boys who killed James Bulger, what was that? That was evil. It's a knotty problem but I think there are some people, not many, who have … the devil in them."'

This is a theme Hill has pondered previously, as in this quote from an interview in the Telegraph:

'Hill sits forward, hands between her knees, thoughtful: "Why do the innocent suffer? There are these two sides in life, always: the innocent do suffer and there is evil." Evil's presence, she thinks, comes from love's absence. She cites two friends, a forensic psychiatrist and a judge: "They both say they have never really known any serious murderer or psychopath for whom the key isn't somewhere in an unloved childhood."'

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Lou Reed - Waves Of Fear.

About Time to Love Life

Last night I went to see About Time which is a flawed, funny, fabulous film. Mark Kermode's review (see above) of the film seems entirely accurate, both about its flaws and its moving impact.

About Time and Love Actually are films which narrativise love for life - ordinary life - and the seeing of heaven in the ordinary and in a diversity of relationships. To dramatise such love for life is, according to some cynical reviewers such as Anthony Quinn, to be inane yet, despite the sense of "middle-class ease" (which, in these films, ignores totally the suffering that Richard Curtis addresses outside of drama through Comic Relief), the breaking of his own rules of time travel, and the enacting of a fantasy in which death itself is briefly cheated, it seemed to me that Curtis' dramatization of a learning to see and celebrate the wonder of existence (particularly in relationships) was ultimately emotionally convincing and renewing.

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Paul Buchanan - Mid Air.

Job and the Dark Night of the Soul

The book of Job is the record of one man’s dark night of the soul. In the story Job loses everything that gave his life meaning. His family are wiped out, his home, money and possessions are lost, he experiences severe and painful illnesses and is left alone, except for three friends who are more hindrance than help as they offer only platitudes that essentially pin the blame for his condition on Job himself.

Job knows that the diagnosis offered by his friends is wrong. He knows there is nothing he has done to deserve his suffering. He knows that it is not punishment for something he has done and this gives us one of the reasons why this is such a significant book to find within the pages of the scriptures. The book of Job tells us that much suffering in this world is undeserved. There are times in life when we do reap what we sow and bear the consequences of our choices, as Job’s friends assume must be the case for him. But this is not one of those times and the story is told, in part, to warn us against making the assumptions made by Job’s friends. Not all suffering is brought on by our actions, sometimes life simply deals us a bum hand - and that’s the way it is!

Job is understandably angry about this situation. In the section of the poem we heard read today (Job 23. 1-9, 16-end), he is so angry that he argues the toss with God, saying "I still rebel and complain against God; I cannot keep from groaning." God accepts Job’s arguing with him and affirms him in so doing. In the final chapter of the book, God says that he is angry with Job’s friends because they did not speak the truth about him, the way his servant Job did. So, the friends who said "it’s all your fault and God is right to punish you" were condemned and Job, who argued his case with God is affirmed.

The book of Job is important, therefore, because it tells us that it is ok to argue with God and to complain to him when life seems unfair. That is important because it is not how we have been brought up to think about relationship with God. Most of us instinctively think that submission to the will of God rather than arguing the toss with God is what makes for a good Christian. Job tells us that that is not so. And, in fact, if we read scripture carefully we will finish that stories are told of all the heroes of the faith - from Abraham through Moses, Jeremiah and Habbakuk to Jesus and Paul - arguing with God. Why? Because it means we are in real relationship with God. Our virtuous mask comes off and we say what we really mean. We are honest with God in a way that we cannot be when we are trying to be righteous. That is real relationship and that is what God wants more than anything.

This is something which has been acknowledged and understood throughout Church history. The phrase which I used of Job at the beginning of this sermon - the dark night of the soul - was coined by St John of the Cross while imprisoned in a tiny prison cell for his attempts to reform the Church. He was a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who wrote many of his poems on a scroll smuggled to him by one of his guards. After escaping his captors, he wrote the Dark Night of the Soul, a poem about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Similarly, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of "That night, that year / Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God."

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

At the end of the Book of Job, Job says, "I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know." Through his dark night of the soul, he comes to understand that God is not who or what he had thought him to be. God is more than he had imagined or conceived. Human beings can know God but cannot know God fully because is always more than we can imagine or conceive. Every image or idea we have of God is inadequate because God is always more than any human definition. We can say, for example, that God is Father but to say that cannot fully define God as God can also be understood as Mother and as child and as Spirit (without gender). All these different things are true of God at one and the same time. So God is both known to us and yet unknowable. In the dark night of the soul, all that we had thought we knew of God is taken away from us and we experience something of the mystery of God.

Summing all this up, what can we say? We need to be careful about the advice we offer to those who are suffering. In particular, not to assume that they have in some way brought their suffering on themselves. God said to Job’s friends, "you did not speak the truth about me, the way my servant Job did." Then, to understand that we do not have to suffer in silence. To argue or complain to God actually brings us into a deeper relationship with him and is a valid part of prayer. Job says, "I still rebel and complain against God; I cannot keep from groaning." Finally, we need to be prepared to have our understandings of God brought into question as he challenges us to engage with the mystery of who he is, the One who is always more than we can ever conceive or image. And so, like Job, we say "I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know."

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Julie Miller - By Way Of Sorrow.

Leonard Cohen: Going Home

Sam Norton has a helpful reflection on the problem of suffering based on songs from Leonard Cohen's Old Ideas. My series of posts on the Suffering God here, here and here seem to cover similar ground.
The song from Old Ideas that I've been musing over is 'Going Home':

"I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit"

This opening verse sets up the ambiguity inherent in the song, as Leonard is singing about speaking with Leonard.

Just who is the first person character in the song? One suggestion from some reviews has been a manager-type figure. It is also possible that the character speaking in the song is intended to be God, who might command the kind of obedience attributed to Cohen within the song. That would also seem to fit with 'Show Me The Place' where the singer of the song speaks of himself as the slave being told where to go. Where he is to go seems to be to do with incarnation ("Where the Word became a man") and resurrection ("Help me roll away the stone") and therefore it would seem that he is characterising himself as the slave of God.

In 'Show Me The Place' this slavery seems to be accepted but in 'Going Home' it seems more ambiguous and more sinister:

"But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn’t have the freedom
To refuse"

As an alternative, I want to suggest that Leonard the man is speaking to Leonard the persona. All performers seem to need to create a stage persona that is in some way separate from the reality of who the person actually is. On this basis, the song is to do with the experience of leaving the stage in order to experience reality - "Going home / Behind the curtain / Going home / Without the costume / That I wore."

It seems to me that this is a good fit with Cohen's experience of spending five years in a Buddhist retreat only to return to performing when his retirement savings were plundered by his personal manager. Not that 'Going Home' is a confessional song. It's ambiguities mean that it can be read on several different levels but this reading makes sense of both it's central premise - Leonard talking to Leonard - and the stage-related imagery of the song's chorus.

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Leonard Cohen - Going Home.  

Beyond the power of words

I have a new article published today on the Transpositions blog entitled 'Walter Navratil: Beyond the Power of Words'.
Walter Navratil was an Austrian artist whose work shows the influence of Art Brut and which explores the incidence and impact of mental distress. This exploration is, however, always shot through with Christian concepts, themes and images focused on suffering, its endurance and redemption.

Transpositions is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, voted runner-up as Best Newcomer Blog in the Christian New Media Awards 2010.

Its organisers write:

"On one level, transpositions connotes our goal to create conversations between Christian theology and the arts. Just like a musician might transpose from the key of B flat Major to C Major in order to create beautiful music with other instruments, we desire to transpose from the mode of theology to the arts and from the arts to theology in order to create meaningful resonances. Transpositions also brings to mind placing images and ideas of varying opacity over one another so that from particular points of view they appear to blend without distinction, creating a new form of beauty. On yet another level, transpositions suggests the nature of both art and theology as a transposition of divine reality into earthly form. As C. S. Lewis concluded in his brilliant essay entitled ‘Transposition,’ our glimpse of God through embodied transpositions and our taste of true reality in the present gives us hope that one day we will experience the fullness of beauty."

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Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris - Love Hurts.

Beyond 'Airbrushed from Art History' (5)

"Marcus Reichert (1948 - ) is a painter and a poet who has also worked in film. He was given his first exhibition of paintings at the age of twenty-one at the legendary Gotham Book Mart and Art Gallery, New York, home to the Surrealists during WWII. In 1990, he was honoured with a retrospective organised by the Hatton Gallery of the University of Newcastle which toured in various forms to Glasgow, London, Paris, and the United States. His Crucifixion paintings have been described by Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, as being among the most disturbing painted in the 20th Century ..."

"Exhibited at Canterbury Cathedral (1999) and Winchester Cathedral (1999-2000), these massive paintings confront one with what Sister Wendy Beckett has called their terribilita ... Reichert's Crucifixions command the viewer's attention not only with their depiction of the magnitude of Christ's agony but also with the eloquence of their painterly qualities. The American critic Donald Kuspit has written that both Picasso's and Bacon's Crucifixions, in their singular lack of commitment to the subject, pale when compared with Reichert's. Kuspit writes: 'The image of an isolated human being in the process of being annihilated by the world and his own anxiety is one that speaks to every person in our anomic society. What makes Reichert's crucified Christ modern is his angry incomprehension at his suffering.'"

Reichert has written: "As a subject to paint, the Crucifixion has preoccupied me since I was eleven years old. I should explain that my father was a painter and I began painting with oils when I was just eight. It was not until 1990, when I was forty-two, that I felt wholly compelled to begin work on the Crucifixion. For me, the question will always be: to what extremes is one willing to go to express the agony -- physical, psychological, and spiritual. No one knows what Jesus suffered. We do know however that such a death is the ultimate expression of man's cruelty. The anxiety and despair of being subjected to such forms of torture and annihilation at the hands of one's fellow human beings is nearly beyond comprehension. Although it is impossible to truly express such suffering, this was my intention."

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Gary Cherone - Difference.

The suffering God (3)

To conclude I shall explore some of the implications for understanding the place of suffering and evil in God’s world that derive from understanding the relationship with God as one within which suffering can be protested and where our relationship is with a God who himself suffers.

First, protest within relationship implies freedom (2 Cor. 3: 6 & 17). Relationship with God cannot therefore simply involve unquestioning obedience and, were this to be the case, then God could be served just as well be automatons. Relationship with God must then be something freely entered into and freely maintained. This has important consequences for our understanding of evil in God’s world. For human beings to have this freedom requires an ‘epistemic distance’ from God which appears to have been achieved through biological evolution.

Biological evolution, however, brings the twin issues of becoming - an evolving world contains imperfections, which are, or result in, natural evils - and selfishness - development through the ‘survival of the fittest’. Left to their own devices these two would seem to hopelessly bias humanity against relationship with God but they are counter-balanced by the order within the universe and by cultural evolution which is predicated on co-operation not opposition, leaving human beings living with free will within a deterministic framework. This freedom does not just apply to our ability to choose or reject relationship with God but also to what happens within relationship as well. After all, as Christians we believe that the truth/Christ sets us free for freedom.

This leads on to the second implication, that protest within relationship implies intimacy (2 Cor. 3: 7 – 18). Such freedom to argue, berate, converse, debate, discuss, and protest within relationship can only occur where there is trust and long-term commitment. Between human beings this occurs most clearly within marriage relationships where we can choose to become naked in both our bodies and our thoughts. This is one reason why marriage imagery is often used of the relationship between God and his people.

The most significant learning that occurs within human lives occurs by observation, action and discussion within relationships, firstly within our birth families and then within relationships of choice. It is no different in relationship with God, within this intimacy we can observe, discuss and imitate in naked honesty. It is this pattern that we see in the lives of those who come closest to God - Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Job and, supremely, Jesus. Within this intimate relationship it is possible to become like God, learning a way of life that is counter to the selfish determination of biological evolution.

The third implication then, is of maturity (2 Cor. 3: 18). Growth occurs within relationships that contain the freedom and intimacy that we have examined. This growth, which is growth in partnership with God, is what God has offered humanity from day one of consciousness. It is pictured in the creation stories in the imagery of ruling in God’s image, tending the Garden at God’s request and naming the animals that God brings. It is the privilege of developing further the world that God has made, through the selfless imagination of the possibilities inherent in each aspect of creation, until it reaches its full perfection. It is growth that is individual, cultural and cosmic. It is this, towards which the choosing of Israel and the giving of the Law lead.

It is appropriate then that it is the one to whom the Law leads who, through his life as a divine-human Jew, his suffering and his rising again, opens up the possibility of entering into this partnership relationship with God for all once again. A possibility that is only achieved through the self-emptying and suffering of God leading to the awareness that those entering in to this free, intimate, maturing partnership to perfect creation will follow where God has led and themselves accept and embrace suffering (2 Cor. 4: 7 – 12).

Finally, there is the implication of an eschatological resolution to the problem of suffering and evil in God’s world (2 Cor. 4: 16 – 18):

“... God has ordained a world that contains evil - real evil - as a means to the creation of the infinite good of a Kingdom of Heaven within which His creatures will have come as perfected persons to love and serve Him, through a process in which their own free insight and response have been an essential element.” (John Hick)

Again, this is a perception that is common to both Christians and Jews and one that is seen by Jews such Cohn-Sherbok as providing “an answer to the religious perplexities of the Holocaust”. “The promise of immortality offers,” he suggests, “a way of reconciling the belief in a loving and just God with the nightmare of the death camps”.

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Johnny Cash - Redemption.

Prayer for peace in Sri Lanka

On Saturday evening at St Johns Seven Kings we held a time of prayer for peace in Sri Lanka together with friends from the Tamil Church in East London. Our aim was to stand alongside our Tamil brothers and sisters locally in their anguish at the bloodshed occuring within their country.

As part of this time of prayer we viewed powerpoint slides and a dvd clip giving brief background details to the current crisis. Over the past 60 years:

• more than 100,000 Tamils killed and disappeared;
• more than 20,000 Tamil orphaned children;
• more than 35,000 Tamil widows;
• hundreds of thousands of schools, houses, hospitals, churches, temples, villages and livelihoods destroyed;
• more than 600,000 Tamils internal refugees; and
• nearly 1 million Tamils made to flee the country.

After the Election of President Rajapakse there has been an escalation of violence by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and Government sponsored Paramilitary. The Sri Lankan Government has de-merged the Tamil Homeland in the North-East of the country and unilaterally abrogated the Ceasefire Agreement from January 16, 2008. The Sri Lanka government is intensifying a full scale war on the Tamil Homeland to impose a military solution and calling it a “War on Terror.” There is no credible political solution under discussion by the Sri Lankan government.

Tamil civilians are being targeted through disappearances, daily aerial bombings, road-side bombs, shelling, and extra-judicial killing. Over 5,000 Tamils have been killed since the election and an average of 57 Tamils are being killed daily.

Yesterday, an informative article on the current situation - Traumatised Tamils live in fear of new crackdown in Sri Lanka - was published in The Observer.

In our service we prayed the following prayer:

The weight of grief bears heavily upon us
but it is a load we need not bear alone.
Let us offer our burden to Jesus,
Lord of life and of death,
of the present and of the future.

We bring before you, Lord,
our confusion in the face of shock,
our despair in the face of tragedy,
our helplessness in the face of death.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

We bring before you, Lord,
the tears of sorrow,
the cries for help,
the vulnerability of pain.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

We bring before you, Lord,
our sense of frustration,
our feeling of powerlessness,
our fears for the future.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

We bring before you, Lord,
our frustrated hopes,
our unfulfilled desires,
our unfettered sadness.
Lift from us our burden,
and in your power, renew us.

God of the desolate and despairing, your Son Jesus Christ
was forced to carry the instrument of his own death -
the cross that became for us the source of life and healing.
Transform us in our suffering
that in the pain we bear you might be for us
a fount of life and a spring of hope;
through him who died for us,
yet is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
now and for ever.
Amen.

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Marvin Gaye - What's Going On / What's Happening Brother.

The suffering God (2)

Thomas Weinandy has identified three arguments within twentieth century Christian theology for the suffering of God:

• God suffers in himself: the incarnation was the consequence of “God’s passible pathos towards and empathy with humankind (see John 3: 16);


• The Son of God suffers as a man: Jesus suffers as a divine-human person, what pertains to his humanity also pertains to his divinity; and


• The Father and the Son suffer in their relationship: “the abandonment on the cross which separates the Son from the Father is something which takes place within God himself”.

Weinandy points out that the traditional emphasis in Christian theology has, because of the legacy of Platonism, been on the impassibility of God. He notes that this change in emphasis has been the result of a re-evaluation of scripture brought about, in large part, by the impact of Auschwitz on theology. He cites the frequency with which Wiesel’s gallows story is told in books exploring God’s passibility and paraphrases Jurgen Moltmann to suggest that there “can be no theology ‘after Auschwitz,’ which does not take up the theology in Auschwitz i.e. the prayers and cries of the victims”.

As we have seen those prayers and cries also included the argument with God that is encapsulated in Wiesel’s trial story and Christianity has taken up those prayers and cries too. This protesting dialogue with God can be seen, for example, in the work of the poet-priests George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins. In ‘Bitter-sweet’, Herbert says that if God is going to be contrary in his relationship with him then he will reciprocate and complain, praise, bewail, approve, lament and love. Hopkins’ poems of lament and protest have been called the ‘terrible sonnets’. In ‘Carrion Comfort’ (which he described as ‘written in blood’) he wrestles with God, while a line from ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’ - “Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,/How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost/Defeat, thwart me?” - could be a summary of Wiesel’s protest within relationship.

Christian theology has also taken up these prayers and cries. Karl-Josef Kushel consciously aims to do theology in the sphere of Steiner’s ‘Easter Saturday’ and by paying attention to the art that arises in this sphere. He notes that, “the rebellion of human beings against God can be their form of prayer; quarrelling their form of saying yes; protest their declaration of love to God”.

Walter Brueggemann is another theologian to have tackled these issues and in ways that are similar to Sacks, as the following description of his Old Testament theology will show:

“A somewhat different ... dialectic is found in his proposed structure for understanding Old Testament theology - the dialectic between the majority voice that is creation-oriented, a voice that assumes an ordered world under the governance of a sovereign God and so serves to legitimate the structures of the universe, and a minority voice that is in tension with the legitimation of structure, a voice embracing the pain that is present in the world and protesting against an order that allows such to be. Brueggemann’s dialectical approach, which assumes an ongoing tension between voices “above the fray” and those “in the fray” is fundamental to his reading of the Old Testament".

Brueggemann’s minority voice, the counter-testimony to the core testimony of the Old Testament, equates to the protest in relationship of Sachs and Wiesel. It is a “radical probe of a new way of relationship that runs toward the theology of the cross in the New Testament and that runs in our time toward and beyond the Holocaust, as Elie Wiesel and Emil L. Fackenheim have seen so well”. Brueggemann views the tension between the core- and counter-testimony as unresolved in the Old Testament and therefore views God as ambiguous, always in the process of deciding “how much to be committed to the common theology, how many of its claims must be implemented, and how many of these claims can be resisted”.

Protest within relationship and ideas of a suffering God are, therefore, common to both Judaism and Christianity. This is only to be expected as Christianity’s roots are in Judaism and, although the influence of Greek thought has undoubtedly been great, the extent to which Jewish thought has been sidelined in Christianity is by no means as great as Sacks implies. In fact, as we have seen, the latter half of the twentieth century has seen a significant revision of the relationship, in part because of the Holocaust, and this has impacted significantly in theology. Finally, the fact that the Hebrew scriptures are such a significant part of the Christian scriptures means that the influence of Jewish thought in Christianity should never be underplayed as, for example, in the template that the Psalms provided to Herbert and Hopkins well before the Holocaust.

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Ralph Vaughan Williams - Five Mystical Songs, Part 2: Love Bade Me Welcome.