CTiW Easter Message

Here is my Easter message sent as Chair of Churches Together in Westminster:

Alleluia! Christ is risen. So what?

This year, unlike any other year in our lifetimes, the reality of the resurrection may seem harder for us to grasp. As a global community we have lived the events of Lent and Holy Week like never before in the form of lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. Here in the UK, and in many other parts of the world, we are still in that place and will be for weeks to come.

What does the reality of Christ's resurrection and our celebration of Easter Day mean in that situation? Our situation has parallels to the experience of the first disciples. For them everything changed while, within their society, nothing apparent had changed. Through their encounter with the risen Christ they went from being frightened disciples, hiding behind locked doors afraid of the authorities, to the sharing of communion and good news, having all things in common, and care for others that characterised the Early Church in Jerusalem.

Nothing had changed in wider society at that point; the Emperor was still Roman and no one other than the disciples accepted Jesus as Messiah. Yet everything had changed for the disciples, whose encounter with the risen Christ brought the revelation that Jesus was the promised Messiah and, therefore, Lord of all; a challenge to all the powers and authorities of their day.

This change in the disciples led to the acts of sharing and caring that characterised the Early Church and, in time, through the power of Christ's Spirit in them, wider society was impacted and changed.

That is where we are today. We celebrate resurrection at a time of continuing lockdown and isolation, which our society can only see continuing at this time. In response, we need to be among those coming alongside others to be with them in their time of need. This Easter we are asked to publicly commit - through a pledge at YourNeighbour.org - to supporting our local communities, bringing a message of hope, that no-one will be alone, without the help they need, during the Covid-19 crisis.

As wider society sees the hope we have because of the resurrection motivate us to support others in every community in the here and now, the good news of resurrection will be shared and change will come. That was the experience of the first disciples. It can and will be our experience too.

Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

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Now the green blade riseth.

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.

Online exhibition: Where is God in our 21st Century World?

The Chaiya Art Awards are the UK’s biggest art awards exploring spirituality through the visual arts. Due to the coronavirus, the 2020 Chaiya Art Awards, for which I am one of the judges, has been postponed until Easter 2021 and will take place at gallery@oxo on London’s Southbank.

Chaiya Art Awards believe that art can play such an important role in our current situation, to calm the soul, to challenge our perspectives and world views, to inspire and encourage us, to engage with creativity and the mystery within. It can give us and other people fresh perspectives on what is happening in our neighbourhoods and across our world. Art can bring hope, comfort or challenge.

As the 2020 awards have been postponed until Easter 2021, they have decided to showcase an exhibition never seen online before. From over 450 submissions, they selected over 35 visual artists in this curated and judged exhibition as they respond to the theme of the inaugural Awards: 'Where is God in our 21st Century World?’

To visit this 3D virtual online exhibition, click here. After you have visited the exhibition you can vote for your favourite piece, the winner of the public vote will win £500.

There is also an accompanying hardback book featuring all the exhibition artists, plus an additional 35 artists, alongside inspiration writing, poems and quotes. During the online exhibition this is available at a special discounted price, click here to buy.

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Mavis Staples - All In It Together.

Windows on the world (273)

London, 2020

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Michael McDermott - What In The World ...

Exhibitions, resources and artists update

News first of two artists with which I worked while at St Stephen Walbrook:

Stations of the Cross 2020 is a development of Stations 2017, updated for such a time as this, with video works by Mark Dean, and new readings via Zoom (the social distancing medium of the moment) by friends of Arts Chaplaincy Projects, including NHS & Royal Mail workers from the front line, and those working from home, including artists, educators, therapists and priests, remotely recorded on Maundy Thursday. A new video for the 15th Station, made in collaboration with Lizzi Kew Ross & Co, will be posted below on Easter Day. Updated commentaries on the video works written by curator Lucy Newman Cleeve are available here. 

Hannah Rose Thomas has been interviewed for Impossible Beauty. Hannah has completed her MA at the Prince’s School of Traditional Art in London and has also studied at the Florence Academy of Art and the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Hannah has found a way to integrate her art and humanitarian work, largely painting portraits of those whom have been persecuted. She desires to use art as a tool for advocacy, bringing a voice to the voiceless into places of influence in the West. She has organized art projects in Jordan with Syrian refuges, with Yezidi women in Northern Iraq who had escaped ISIS captivity, with Rohingya children in refugee camps on the Myanmar border, and with survivors of Boko Haram and Fulani violence in Northern Nigeria.

The Visual Commentary on Scripture (VCS) is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. For Holy Week 2020, VCS has been sharing an exhibition a day every day from Palm Sunday to Easter, exploring Bible passages relevant to that day. Each has been accompanied by a short introductory reflection by VCS Director, Professor Ben Quash. My VCS exhibition entitled 'Back from the Brink' can also be viewed by clicking here.

The National Gallery has an online exploration of the story of Christ's Passion. Click here to discover the story of the Passion, as told through paintings in the National Gallery Collection. Continue to reflect with ‘Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story’, a free resource to help people explore the Christian faith, using paintings and Biblical story as the starting points. It’s been created by St Martin-in-the-Fields in partnership with the National Gallery.

Logos was an exhibition of abstract paintings by David Wojkowicz in galerieCM at the First Republic Central Church of the Evangelical Methodist Church in the heart of Prague. The church opens its spaces to artists whose work is the spark of the Holy Spirit, who will revive their spaces and inspire those who come. Wojkowicz's paintings are inspired by the Bible and biblical theology. His goal is to illustrate both well-known and lesser-known verses and entire stories from all of the Scriptures. The paintings are created on a computer using graphic vector software. The paintings are made using a method that he invented and are the result of the blending of at least seven similar (or dissimilar) images.

Roman Barabakh’s The Origins at IconArt in Prague was an attempt by the artist to record his own experiences around the theme of creation. Taking the image of an Old Testament passage about the Creation of the World, Barabakh built his own seven-day photo story. Through his use of metaphorical depictions, Barabakh tries to reimagine familiar ideas and concepts from scripture. Here, these concepts are visualised through the medium of photography.

The mission of Iconart contemporary sacred art gallery is to exhibit, collect and make available for sale sacred icon art of contemporary artists from different regions of Ukraine. Iconart opened in Lviv, Ukraine on February 14, 2010 with an icon exhibition of the work of Ivanka Krypyakevych-Dymyd called “Between the Nativity and the Resurrection. The Icon and Around It”. Since its inception, the gallery has introduced visitors to the best examples of current religious Icon paintings of artists from the Lviv region, including the work of Petro Gumenyuk, Ivanka Krypyakevych-Dymyd, Oksana Romaniv-Triska, Lyuba Yatskiv, young creators Danylo Movchan, Natalya Rusetska, Ostap Lozynsky, along with representatives of other Ukrainian schools of sacred art, such as Oleksandr Antonyuk, Andriy Kovalenko, and Olga Kovtun.

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Michael McDermott - Carry Your Cross.

Holy Saturday

Station 14 - Jesus is laid in the tomb*

still
be still
be still and know
God
born
still God
still man
still born
still born among us
God
in flesh appearing
defenceless
helpless
needing us
all-knowing
un-knowing
all present
confined in space
a child
God child
incarnate
incarnate still
be still
be still and know

still
be still
be still and know
God
dead
still God
still man
still buried
still buried in the ground
God
in flesh appearing
defenceless
helpless
killed by us
falling
buried
germinating
growing
a seed
God man
incarnate
incarnate still
be still
be still and know

* The first verse of this meditation is by Alan Stewart.


In between

Between the action and its consequence
Between knowledge and its understanding
Between the invitation and the party
Between the longest day and the last day

The stone not rolled away
The tomb still guarded
The friends still scattered
The promise known
but not understood
The body still still

The still time
The still waiting time
The time between times
The last times
In between

Between suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste
and the dream of liberation and rebirth,
ours is the long days journey of the Saturday

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Mahalia Jackson - Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?

Stations of the Cross

I have two sets of meditations on the Stations of the Cross which are available for download from theworshipcloud.com.

• Mark of the Cross features 20 poetic meditations on Christ’s journey to the cross and reactions to his resurrection and ascension (images by Henry Shelton and words by Jonathan Evens).
• The Passion: Reflections and Prayers features pictures, poems and prayers by Henry Shelton and Jonathan Evens which enable us to follow Jesus on his journey to the cross reflecting both on the significance and the pain of that journey as we do so and published as a double-sided A3 sheet with all the images, haiku-like meditations and prayers laid out in sequence for ease of devotional use.

Here are the meditations and prayers from The Passion set:

Station 1 - Jesus is condemned to death

The finger of a freshly washed
hand points condemnation.
A drip forms on the finger-tip
and glints in the sun, blood-red.

May we walk from our prisons with thankfulness that your condemnation set us free. Amen.


Station 2 - Jesus takes up his cross

An arm raises up the torture instrument
to which a hand will be nailed
when a body is raised up as was
the bronze serpent in the wilderness.

May all who look on you, raised up upon the cross, know healing. Amen.


Station 3 - Jesus falls the first time

Body bowed, weight-laden, exhaustion
spreads through limbs, feet catch
on stones, stumble, to fall spread-eagled
like the chalk outline of a murder victim.

In our exhaustion and pain, may we know you alongside. Amen.


Station 4 - Jesus meets his mother

At my beginning I was pushed bloodied
from your limbs and struck so that strange
gases would rush my lungs. I return to you
at my end, bloodied and panting once again.

You are Alpha and Omega, in my beginning as at my end. Amen.


Station 5 - Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross

In my exhaustion, in my torment, in my
time of distress, I reach out and touch the hand
of a stranger. One man meeting the need
of the one who seeks to meet the needs of all.

May we reach out and touch a hand to make a friend if we can. Amen.


Station 6 - Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

A tender touch after rough-handling, beating
and thorns. Eyes, cleansed from dirt and sweat
that clogged and stung, now
fill with tears at such a tender touch.

May we see the face of Christ in the tears which others weep. Amen.


Station 7 - Jesus falls the second time

Apple taken, nakedness hidden,
excuses made, judgement given,
expelled and barred, enter stage
left, a second Adam, falling up.

May our fragilities and fallibilities be healed by your sacrifice for the fallenness of all. Amen.


Station 8 - Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

Wail and mourn, keen and grieve
for a mother’s son untimely torn
from life, for all who fall before
their time, for life as grief and pain.

May all those who mourn know the paradox of comfort. Amen.


Station 9 - Jesus falls the third time
Burnt orange, red umber, blazing
while fading, taking one final leap
into the unknown, joining the many
speckling the dusty, dirty highway.

Just as autumn holds the promise of spring, may our falls be redeemed by your resurrection. Amen


Station 10 - Jesus is stripped of his garments

The first Adam covered his nakedness
when sin gripped human life.
The second Adam stands uncovered
to break sin’s vice-like grip.

Strip us of our sin, set us free from all that enslaves us. Amen.


Station 11 - Jesus is nailed to the cross

Blow after hammer blow holds your body
to the cross. Yet, if you had willed so,
you could have walked away. You did not
so will, your will held you crucified and dying.

Enable us to set our faces like flint as we follow in your footsteps. Amen.


Station 12 - Jesus dies on the cross

The sun is eclipsed, early nightfall,
darkness covers the surface of the deep,
the Spirit grieves over the waters.
On the formless, empty earth, God is dead.

Through the death of all we hold most dear, may we find life. Amen.


Station 13 - Jesus is taken down from the cross

Manhandled when beaten, whipped, nailed
and pierced, the body of God
is handled with care as Jesus is taken
in the arms of those who loved him.

Enable us to care tenderly for all who have been abused. Amen.


Station 14 - Jesus is laid in the tomb

Clean linen, scents, perfumes and spices
to cover the stench of decay. Guards set
to prevent the body’s theft. No thought
but return and how to move the stone away.

May we continue to be surprised by all your sweet, clean returns. Amen.

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Adrian Snell - Golgotha.