A Falling Mantle: What Legacy Are You Leaving?

This Sunday I shared with our congregation at St John's Seven Kings a condensed version of a sermon by Leighton Ford which I found on the internet and which was first preached at Wee Kirk, Linville, North Carolina, on August 13, 2006.

I found the way in which Leighton Ford interwove personal and other stories with the content of his two texts (Mark 4:26-33, 2 Kings 2:1-14) to be moving and profound. I was intrigued by his identification of the biblical story as one of a legacy passed on from generation to generation, in faithfulness to God’s kingdom – and sometimes, tragically, of a legacy wasted. I was challenged by the questions he posed: What do your heirs expect and want from us? What are we called to pass on to them? And will we do it with faith and faithfulness, and confidence in God?

Ford's focus on the passing on of a legacy is of particular relevance to us as we shortly begin our Lent course Handing on the Torch.

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The Barratt Band - Your Love.

Clay as earth and flesh

The following comes from the latest ImageUpdate:


"The late sculptor Stephen de Staebler, whose work will be featured in a retrospective at de Young Museum in San Francisco through April 22, is the subject of a beautiful, substantial new monograph from the University of California Press ... de Staebler is ... an important bridge builder—a connector of different worlds. His art reflects the influence of both traditional figurative art and modern Abstract Expressionism. As Timothy Anglin Burgard says in his brilliant introductory essay, de Staebler’s art synthesized ancient Egyptian “frontality,” the figurative poignance of Michelangelo, and the modern angst of Giacometti. Indeed, Burgard’s essay is aptly entitled “Humanist Sculptor in an Existentialist Age.” As a boy, de Staebler fell in love with clay while playing in the rivers of his native Indiana. For him, clay was both earth and flesh—beautiful but fragile and evanescent. His sculptures (which also include works in bronze) dramatize the paradoxes of the flesh by giving us figures who have been eroded by time and suffering but who nonetheless radiate with dignity. From an early age, de Staebler experienced mortality and physical suffering in his family, so his work always resonates with a heartbreaking pathos that is not the least bit sentimental. While he often claimed to be outside formal religious institutions, de Staebler was deeply influenced by the Western heritage of Christian art. He wrote a thesis on St. Francis of Assisi—that most earthy of saints—and found endless mystery in the figure of the Virgin Mary and angels (though his angels are enigmatic and formidable, not cute)."


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Henryk Górecki - Concerto for piano and strings.

Christendom is on the way out

Responding to the Ipsos-Mori survey of 'census Christians' commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science UK, Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia, has made what is in my view a very accurate and sensible response:

"This opinion survey makes interesting reading as part of a whole web of research on the changing shape and location of Christianity in Britain over the past thirty or more years.

"It shows that 'civic' and 'cultural' Christian self-identification is a very different thing to the deeply-rooted faith held by a much smaller number of people whose believing, belonging and behaving is strongly shaped by regular participation in active Christian communities.

"While we can argue over details, the broad outline of what this survey reveals should not come as any shock or threat to church leaders who have been paying attention to what has been happening in recent decades.

"Top-down and institutional religion is in decline. Trying to restore or maintain the cultural and political dominance of Established religious institutions in what is now a mixed-belief 'spiritual and secular' society is a backward-looking approach.

"Churches have a creative opportunity here. It is to rediscover a different, ground-up vision of Christianity based on practices like economic sharing, peacemaking, hospitality and restorative justice. These were among the distinguishing marks of the earliest followers of Jesus. They have always been part of the 'nonconformist' tradition shared in different ways by Anabaptists, Quakers, radical Catholics, Free Churches and faithful dissenters in all streams of Christian life.

"The mutually reinforcing pact between big religion and top-down authority that we call 'Christendom' is on the way out.

"The kind of conservative religious aggression that claims 'anti-Christian discrimination' every time Christians are asked to treat others fairly and equally in the public square is a threatened response to the loss of top-down religion's social power. So is overbearing 'Christian nation' rhetoric, and the 'culture wars' that some hardline believers and non-believers sometimes seek to launch and win against each other.

"A positive, post-Christendom perspective suggests that Christianity can and should flourish beyond the demise of 'big religion', and that a level-playing field in public life can and should involve both religious and non-religious participants.
"Likewise, while Richard Dawkins may not be a subtle, unbiased or persuasive analyst of religion overall, it would be entirely unhelpful for believers to dismiss this survey because they disagree with its commissioner in other respects. Its content evidently needs further and deeper analysis, alongside other data, than the initial response to it has allowed."
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Al Green - Belle.

Windows on the world (183)

London, 2012

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Leonard Cohen - Amen.

Upcoming talks, exhibitions and poetry readings

I will be speaking on commission4mission and understandings of Christian Art at the February Learning Supper for West Mersea Parish Church (6.30pm, Sunday 26th February). Learning Suppers on Mersea Island include a time of worship, teaching, prayer and a convivial supper of soup, cheese and wine on the 4th Sunday in the month.


Together with Sue Newham and Steve Scott I have written an event planning support pack for the Run with the Fire DVD pack, which also includes a high quality video of the Run with the Fire exhibition and an introduction giving a background to the Run with the Fire project and statements from the artists involved. The 24 sections of the event planning support pack cover every aspect of planning and executing your chosen arts event. Planning, publicity, risk assessment and other templates are provided as appendices.


The Run with the Fire digital exhibition, as well as including 25 original artworks on Olympic/Pentecost themes by artists from eight different nations, includes my latest poem also entitled Run with the Fire. The Run with the Fire DVD pack is available for purchase, to provide creative content at Olympic-themed events in 2012 and beyond, from http://www.veritasse.co.uk/cards-prints/most-popular/run-with-the-fire-dvd-pack/ or by contacting Sue Newham on 01686 626228. A preview of the Run with the Fire digital exhibition can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFBGZDgFaw4&feature=youtu.be.


I will be exhibiting next at the Pentecost Festival in a show organised by commission4mission as part of which the Run with the Fire digital exhibition will be shown alongside original artworks from commission4mission artists and invited guest artists. The Run with the Fire exhibition will take place at the Strand Gallery (32 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6BP) from 22nd - 27th May, 11.00am - 6.00pm.



Including an eclectic mix of styles and media, this will be a stimulating and exciting show exploring the broad theme of running life's race with passion and spirit. Featured artists include Harvey Bradley, Colin Burns, Christopher Clack, Valerie Dean, Elizabeth Duncan Meyer, Robert Enoch, Jonathan Evens, Christine Garwood, Jim Insole, Ken James, Miriam Kendrick, Mark Lewis, Glenn Lowcock, Tracy Mcculloch, Henry Shelton, Sergiy Shkanov, Esther Tidy, Mike Thomas, Andrew Vessey, Rachel Watson and Peter Webb. On Saturday 26^th May there will be an additional programme of art talks and painting demonstrations.


A Launch Night on Monday 21st May, 6.00 - 8.00pm, will provide the first opportunity to see the exhibition and will also include music and poetry exploring the exhibition theme. I will be reading some of my poems, including Run with the Fire. This is guaranteed to be a special evening because the other performers include singer-songwriter and poet Malcolm Guite, artist-musician Colin Burns, artist-poet Andrew Vessey and performance poet Tamsin Kendrick. Refreshments will be available. Cost - £2.00, pay on the door.


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Malcolm Guite - Love In The Red.

Stalker and Amazing Grace

Two recent books celebrate and explore seminal works of art which are infused with Christian spirituality:

"In Zona, Geoff Dyer attempts to unlock the mysteries of a film that has haunted him ever since he first saw it thirty years ago: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. (“Every single frame,” declared Cate Blanchett, “is burned into my retina.”) As Dyer guides us into the zone of Tarkovsky’s imagination, we realize that the film is only the entry point for a radically original investigation of the enduring questions of life, faith, and how to live."

Gregory Halvorsen Schreck writes that: "The films of the late Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky represent an exceptional Christian vision. His artistic vision was profoundly original and provocative, yet also profoundly Christian. It is impossible to separate his art from his faith. A Russian Orthodox Christian, Tarkovsky stated that his films "are one thing, the extreme manifestation of faith." At the base of his work, at the very conception of his ideas about form, lies his spirituality ... Tarkovsky's films offer a redemptive vision that expresses a solution to society primarily in terms of spiritual regeneration. As he wrote, "The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good." (Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections of the Cinema [Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986], 43)."

Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace by Aaron Cohen is "a fascinating and thoroughly researched exploration of the best-selling gospel album of all time":

"For two days in January 1972, Aretha Franklin sang at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles while tape recorders and film cameras rolled. Everyone there knew the event had the potential to be historic: five years after ascending to soul royalty and commercial success, Franklin was publicly returning to her religious roots. Her influential minister father stood by her on the pulpit. Her mentor, Clara Ward, sat in the pews. Franklin responded to the occasion with the performance of her life and the resulting double album became a multi-million seller—even without any trademark hit singles. But that was just one part of the story.

Franklin’s warm inimitable voice, virtuoso jazz-soul instrumental group and Rev. James Cleveland’s inventive choral arrangements transformed the course of gospel. Through new interviews, musical and theological analyses as well as archival discoveries, this book sets the scene, traces the recording’s traditional origins and pop infusions and describes the album’s enduring impact."

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Aretha Franklin - How I Got Over.

Where is wisdom to be found?

‘My child, learn what I teach you and never forget what I tell you to do. Listen to what is wise and try to understand it. Yes, beg for knowledge; plead for insight. Look for it as hard as you would for silver or some hidden treasure. If you do, you will know what it means to fear the Lord and you will succeed in learning about God. It is the Lord who gives wisdom; from him come knowledge and understanding.’ (Proverbs 2. 1 – 6)

The Book of Proverbs encourages us to look for wisdom as hard as you would look for silver or hidden treasure. We should beg and plead for wisdom, it says, because when we find it we will succeed in learning about God. It is God who gives wisdom and God is wisdom. There are two main ways in which we can find wisdom.

In verses 22 – 24 of Proverbs 8 we read that:

‘wisdom is “created” … “at the very beginning of [God’s] work … before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water” (vv. 22-24). Wisdom, according to this remarkable poem, occupies an intermediate place between God and the world of creation. On the one hand, wisdom is a “creature” who is “created” by God. On the other hand, wisdom, the capacity and agency for generating life-giving order, is prior to all creation and all (other) creatures … This second agent of creation has a permanent place in the work of creation and peculiar intimacy with Yahweh in that work.’ (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament)

As a result, ‘… under the aegis of wisdom … the whole of creation is shot through with the rationality and intentionality of Yahweh, a rationality and intentionality that need not be visible and intrusive because they are inherent in the very character and structure and fabric of creation itself.’

Wisdom, therefore, ‘is common sense that is responsive to [God’s] lordly, generous will for life. It has in it dimensions of acumen and calculation, of trust and willing submissiveness.’ It ‘is a rule, an intention, a discernment, a purpose … something intended by [God], which may be discerned, embraced, and practiced by attentive human agents …’ Those who teach wisdom ‘live very close to concrete, daily reality and give to Israel a sense that [God] is present in, with, and under daily, lived experience.’

Proverbs 1. 20-21 says:

‘Wisdom goes out in the street and shouts.
At the town centre she makes her speech.
In the middle of the traffic she takes her stand.
At the busiest corner she calls out.’

This open proclamation, made above the noise of the market, shows that the offer of wisdom is for the person in the street, it is for the business of living. There is no separation of the public and private or the sacred and the secular when it comes to the proverbs and wisdom in the Bible. The book of Proverbs applies the principles of God’s teaching to: relationships, home, work, justice, decisions, attitudes, reactions, everything we do and say and think.

Wisdom comes as we make a habit of reflecting on daily life recognising that God is to be found there. As David Adam has written:

“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. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

 

Philosophy means the love of wisdom but we are not talking here about a detached, academic or ivory tower style love of wisdom; instead we are speaking of insights which come from hard graft, wisdom from experience tested in the fire. So, for the Bible’s wisdom to really make sense we have to take and use it in everyday life; to apply to our Monday to Saturday lives rather than keeping it bottled up on Sundays alone.

The second source of wisdom is Jesus himself. What is said of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is also said of Jesus in John 1. James Dunn puts it succinctly: "What pre-Christian Judaism said of Wisdom … Paul and the others say of Jesus. The role that Proverbs … ascribe to Wisdom, these earliest Christians ascribe to Jesus." (Christology in the Making)

‘The New Testament teaches a “wisdom Christology” in various passages, indicating that Jesus is the fulfillment of this portrait of wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30; Colossians 2:3). The connections between Proverbs 8 and John 1 are particularly important: Wisdom is “from the beginning” (8:23), as is the Word that is with God; wisdom is the agent of creation (8:27-31), as is the Word (John 1:3); wisdom is “begotten” by Yahweh (8:24), as is the Word (John 1:18).’ (Peter J. Leithart)

This means that ‘Christians seek and find all the things Wisdom offers in Christ.’ Wisdom makes plans and carries them out. Wisdom helps kings to govern and rulers to make good laws which bring honour and prosperity to their nations because they walk the way of righteousness and follow the paths of justice (Proverbs 8. 11 - 21). Jesus, the Wisdom of God, also enables all these things to happen.

‘Wisdom was [God’s] agent to create the world, and through Wisdom, kings establish boundaries and create worlds (cf. Ecclesiastes 2:1-11); and Jesus is the Wisdom of God who equips us to form our worlds after the pattern of God’s Word and to re-form the whole world after the pattern of His kingdom. Jesus as the Wisdom of God does not rescue us from responsibility for the world, but equips us to be [righteous leaders].’

As we do so, it is important to bear in mind that proverbs are by nature generalisations. They state what is generally true, not invariably true. The writers do not deny that there are exceptions. But exceptions are not within the scope of proverbial sayings. For instance, Proverbs states that those who live by God’s standards will prosper in the world. This is generally the truth (and we have statistical evidence today about the health and general well-being of churchgoers to back this up). But it is not an ‘unconditional’ promise, as the example of Job and the life of Jesus clearly show us.

So, these proverbs are not a set of commands or laws that must be followed to the letter in order that we benefit from wisdom. Instead, they are given to persuade us or tease us into seeing a connection between God’s order in the world and his orders to human beings. The style of the proverbs is to provoke thought, getting under the skin by thrusts of wit, paradox, common sense, and teasing symbolism. They are a bit like the parables of Jesus, something to make us think about life rather than being a set of clear and simple instructions to follow. As a result, it is good to digest or study them a few saying at a time, weighing one saying against another and getting an idea of the general teaching on a particular topic.

Secular philosophy tends to measure everything by human beings, and comes to doubt whether wisdom is to be found at all. But the Old Testament with its motto – ‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’ – turns the world the right way up, with God at its head, his wisdom the creative and ordering principle that runs through every part; and human beings, disciplined and taught by that wisdom, finding life and fulfilment in his perfect will. Knowledge in its full sense is a relationship with God, dependent on revelation or wisdom and inseparable from character or discipline.

So, let us beg for knowledge; plead for insight. Let us look for it as hard as we would for silver or some hidden treasure. If we do, we will know what it means to fear the Lord and we will succeed in learning about God because it is the Lord who gives wisdom; from him come knowledge and understanding.
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The Byrds - Turn, Turn, Turn.