Marc Chagalls etchings of he Old Testament bring colour and passion to many of its stories - not least that of Ruth and Naomi. When we explored this text this morning at Crossroads, there was a moment when both the images and the story came to life for me - the moment of realising that Naomi, Ruth and Boaz were all, in different ways, washed-up people. They were broken. Life had not treated them as they had hoped it might. Naomi had lost her husband and both her sons: she was homeless, penniless and worse still, without a family to carry on her line. She had nothing. Ruth was young and beautiful, but because of her commitment to Naomi she too was desrtined for a life of poverty, lonliness and childlessness. She had given up everything to stand by her mother-in-law, and she faced an uncertain future as a result. While she waited for that future, she had no choice but to take her place amongst the destitute and gather the scraps left behind by the harvesters. Boaz, for his part, was also a lost cause. He was rich, and had a reputation as a kind man - yet he could not find a wife. Perhaps he was ugly, or awkward in some other way. Perhaps he just wasn't any good with women. Whatever the reason, he was old and had never married, though not - the text implies - for lack of wanting to.
And what happens to these three mis-fits, these social disaster areas? Simple - Yahweh brings them together. They collide in a field in Bethlehem. They find each other, and out of the tragedy of three spoiled lives something beautiful is woven. In the coming togetehr of their three losses, one new future is born. Naomi finally holds the grandchild she has longed for. Ruth has a husband anda future. Boaz has a young bride: and Irael has the grandfather of a future King. Better than Jack Nicholson and Shirley Maclean and Terms of Endearment. More romantic than Clint Eastwod in Bridges oif Madison County. More redemptive than Kevin Costner in Message in a Bottle. This is life at its most hopeful: redemption at its most poerful. This is as good as it gets.
And it is hugely fitting that the genealogy of Jesus - the 'bloodline' of the Messiah - should contain such a finely-crafted tale of hope in broken places and new life on the margins.
I was thinking recently - in preparation for a talk at Tyndale Semniary here in Amsterdam, about the growing place that art has in my theology. This is somewthing that has developed over a number of years, and it started, really, with this picture by Paul Gaugin. Painted in 1898, when the artist had determined to kille himself and thought this would be his last work (in fact he survived and lived a few years more), this picture wandered into my life when I was 17 and studying art at school in Bath. It is a beautiful work, and I am a huge fan of Gaugin, but it was the title of the work that most gripped me. Scratched into the surface of the painting itself - in the top left-hand corner - the title is 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
I was struck by Gaugin's own story, running away from a settled life as a banker in Paris to seek 'truth' in the native worlds of Polynesia - but also by the turmoil of the times in which he lived, on the very threshold of the 20th Century. Gaugin's prophectic question, a flace-slapping challenge to the arrogant Europeans of modernity, hovered over Western culture for generations after the artists death. To the 1960's counter-culture in america, it was a rallying cry.
What I learned from this picture back in my school days was that art could providfe the stimulus - the dreams and questions and prophesies - by which philosophy, and with it theology, can grow. As I might now express it, many years later and with a job that involves understanding and communicating the content of the Bible, art such as that of Paul Gaugin provides a hermeneutic key to unlock the truths of scripture. I have since gound the same to be true of Michaelangelo; Rene Magritte; Henk Helmantel; Marc Chaggall and many others. I name these because they are artists whose specific works have opened up for me specific aspects of truth and discovery in recent years.
Two other of Gaugin's paintings - this time from his period in Brittany - have done the same for me: 'Yellow Christ" and 'Vision after the Sermon'. I cannot think of Jacob wrestling with the angel without this latter image coming to mind, with its coulorful celebration of the power of story and the miracle of the imagination.
The same principle applies, for me, both to poetry and to popular culture: not least music videos. Who can fail to be inspired / moved / challenged / caused to reflect by Kanye West's increbible 'Jesus Walks' sequence? And who could forget Maddonna's painfully but beautiful black and white film for the track 'Oh Father' (1989), or Coldplay's gospel-tinged passion on 'Fix You'?
The point of all this is that 'all truth is God's truth': that the clues we use to make our journey into the depths of God's revelation are often the clues we find around us in the questions being asked in our culture.
Anther artist who has deeply moved me of late is one who's name I don't even know. His Flickr tag is 'Stoneth', and he takes beautiful pictures of people who are homeless on the streets of San Francisco... pictures that challenge almost everything about how I see people, how I value them and where I think God might be...
People trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world. It is the third-largest industry of organised crime, after the smuggling of guns and drugs. In some places, people-trafficking is overtaking drug-smuggling, as the traffickers switch. They find the smuggling of people easier and more lucrative than that of drugs, and the penalties, if they get caught, are much lower. Something like 2.4 million people are traficked across international borders every year.It is the silent horror that circles our globe.
Stop the Traffik (www.stopthetraffik.org) is a fast-growing coalition of NGO'd, churches, businesses, artists and others who want to see an end to people-trafficking. It's cry is
Prevent the sale of people
Prosecute the traffickers
Protect the victims
Check the sirte for a good overview. Sign the declaration. Get your organisation to join the coalition. A bunch of us are hoping that this will gain ground in the Netherlands - watch this space...
This poem - called Stop the Traffic - will be in my new book [Spoken Worship], to be published by Zondervan in March 2007.
Stop the Traffic
I am a person,
not a potato
to be picked and packaged
and sent to market
to be sliced and diced,
chopped up and ketchupped
on the other side of the world.
I am human
and I am not for sale.
I am a living conscience,
not a cargo.
I travel passenger,
not freight.
I am not cattle,
not contraband,
not a catalogued commodity.
I’m not the bottom line
for those who trade in tragedy
and profit from perversity.
I am not a can
to be recycled.
I am human
and I am not for sale.
I am a thinking individual,
not a rare exotic bird.
I am your sister,
not an inmate for your zoo.
I am not merchandise,
not meat,
not a meal ticket.
I was mothered,
not manufactured,
begotten,
not created.
I am human
and I am not for sale.
Its time to end this trade
in human tragedy,
to terminate this travesty
of a global economy.
Let the red lights
of your cities
be put to better use
to stop the traffic.
Write it in lights
across your seared conscience:
I am human
and I am not for sale
On the surface, these three images have little or nothing in commo. The first is an ancient carving from the Ethiopian Church, the second a contemporary painting ['Three are One' by Madeline Janovec] and the third is a design based on the 'Trinity Knot', a favourite image of the Celtic hristians..
The connection is that each is, of course, trying to portray, or hinting at, one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith - the trinity. Whether with symbolism, with humour or with intricately woven patterns, each is trying to say that the idea of being both 'three' and 'one', or of being three-in-one, is intriguing, imaginiative and impossible to fully comprehend. The triinty is a difficult concept, and cliche's of steam - water - ice and three-leaf clovers just don't do it for m.
Mystery or not, this is the heart of our faith: that we have encountered God as the heavenly parent - the one who nurtures and watches over us; who is there for us in times of need; who fathers us - and as the earthly Son - the one who walks alongside us; who shares our humanity; who stoops low enough to wash our feet - and that finally we have encountered God as the Holy Spirit - the one who takes up residence within us; who brings something of the very essence of God into us; who writes the Law on our hearts, just as God has promised he would. It is this experience of God that is the foundation of the trinity: this is how God has revealed himself to us. This is what we have discovered him to be like. This is who he is...
Our response is not to write neat mathmatical formulae, nor to give uyp and surrender to the unknowable fog of an unsolvable riddle. Rather it is to embrace God as he has come to us and to trust that that which now seems illogical and unresovable by reason will, in due course, reveal itself to be the very source of reason. We walk by trust, honouring God for the ways in hich he has chosen to be involved in our world. As parent; as lover; as source.
Don't give up on the triinty just because your brain aches. Don't settle for less than all of God - two-thirds won't be enough to get you through the lean times. Embrace God as he is; build the relationship; exercise trust. Get to know God in the reality of your expereince - and from that experience, fall headlong into worship.
I've enjoyed the work of Wayne Forte for some months now - accessible at www.wayneforte.com . As far as I can tell from his site, Wayne produces some of his work in the immediate context of public worship, and in any cases many of his pieces are inspired by his faith. This one has a rough-and-ready feel, and explores the moment of Peter's life-changihng denial of Christ. It's a great image. Wayne's portrayals of Biblical scense are also excellent, not least his River of Life, below.
I've used these images a lot in worship and / or teaching, and they work very well.
Rene Magritte's 1929 painting 'The Treason of Images' is a wonderful exploration of the meaning of image and art. Accused of bring deliberately obtuse by painting an image of a pipe and writing under it 'this is not a pipe', Magritte himself explained:
"Just try to stuff it with tobacco! So if I had written on my picture This is a pipe I would have been lying."
It is a fascinayting exercise to apply this thinking to the foundational statement of Genesis 1 that men and women are 'made in the image of God'. Might it be that this simple statement not only tells us that we somehow bear God's image in the world, but also makes it clear that we are not ourselves Gods? Is it possible to be the image of a thing and also be the thing itself? Magritte would say no.
[The analagy breaks down, of course, when it somes to considering Jesus - who is described in the New Testament as 'the image of the invisible God' but also as God become flesh: but perhaps this serves to reinforce the audacious nature of this unique claim - that Jesus is the only one who bears the image of God - as a human creature - but at the same time carries the essence of God - as God's only son.]
The question is an important one, in an era in which the New Age movement, an army of motivational speakjers and a handful of renegade Chistian evangelists are all trying to pursuade us that 'we are all gods'. We are not. God is God, we are human. He creates, we are created. We find our identity in covenant relationship with him. And just as a coin that bears the image of Caeser must be 'rendered unto him' in tax, so the human life that bears the image of its maker is somehow 'owed' to Him...
In the Image of My Father
Made in the image of my Father:
breath-filled,
his will to live kindling my life,
his call to be driving my being.
My heart is sparked by his heart;
my mind is fired by his imagination.
My animation is his declaration:
because he is, I am.
Made in the image of my Father:
able,
artful, articulate,
created to create,
pulsing with potential.
Designed to design,
invented for invention,
made to make.
Through his eyes, I see possibilities.
Through his ears, I hear harmonies.
In his heartbeat, I feel life’s dancing rhythms.
Because he can,
I will.
Made in the image of my Father:
dependent,
rooted in relationship,
commissioned for companionship,
a free individual made free in community,
distinct yet needing devotion,
complete but needing completion.
Unique, I seek the company of others.
A part, I seek my meaning in the whole.
Because of him, I need to be needed.
Because I am loved, I love.
Made in the image of my Father:
human,
his word of command shaping flesh,
his loving intention sculpting the soil of earth into life.
His voice causing, calling, claiming me, naming me,
framing my future,
fashioning me.
Because of his dreams, I have promise.
Because of his promise, I have dreams.
Ushered into extravagant existence,
tumbling into time,
fumbling,
falling,
free.
I am human.
I am dependent.
I am able.
I am breath-filled.
I am made
in the image of my Father.
c. Gerard Kelly, April 2006. To be published in 'Spoken Worship', Zondervan, April 2007
I recently came across the paintings of Ivan Aivazovsky. Now hailed as an Armenian national hero, Aivazovsky had a long-standing fascination with the sea, and is known as one of history's greatest painters of seascapes. His 'The Ninth Wave' is the most famous of all Russian seascapes, and he excelled in catching the many moods and moments of the sea, espaecially the sheer power of storms.
What intrigued me was to discover that not all Aivazovsky's works were contemporary. In 1841 he painted an allegorical work called 'Chaos: The Creation of the World', capturing the moments when 'the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep' in Genesis 1. I was struck by this work because it seemed to explain for me why it was that this aritst was so drawn to the sea: what it was that he saw in the majesty and menace of the ocean. It was something of God that he experienced when faced with the power, beauty and terror of the seas. God's creative force captured, soemhow, in the moving of the waves.
I think Aivazovsky was onto something. There is an image of the presence of God when a lowe sky hovers over a wild sea. God is present in the stilling of every storm - just as God was present when the freinds of Jesus asked 'Who is he, that the winds and waves obey him?'.
Might it be true of all artists who are drawn to capture the splendour of the sea: and of all of us when the sea takes hold of our imagination - that it is God they are painting, and God who is calling to us?
I have certainly expereinced God speaking to me through this painting of 160 years ago... and offering, not least, to speak stillness to the wild storms of my life...
It was great fun to 'launch' the new season and new vision for Crossroads church on Sunday... highlight for me was the revelation that the church is setting out to be a flower: a daisy to be precise! Apart from making all the old hippies feel at home - one of our major ministry goals - the image captures for me the 'shape' of the community God is calling us to be. If you draw a 'map' of the activity that being involved in Crossroads leads you into, you will find the daisy emerging: you are drawn into a strong centre, where you enjoy the strengths and benefits that arise from being together - but from that centre you are 'sent out' into all kinds of activities - from learning, growing and praying together to engagement with your community and with your culture at all kindsa of levels. 'Church' in this sense becomes your workplace; your home; your street and your neighbourhood. It touches hospitals, parliaments, factories and TV studios. The centre is 'gathered' - here people, energy, resources and vision are concentrated in such a way as to give strength to many: but the wider network is 'dispersed' - spread out around all the areas of culture in which God has called each of us to serve. So that Crossroads has characteristics both of a 'gathered' and a 'dispersed' community - and it is from a healthy embracing of this paradox that much of our missional energy will flow in the coming years.
This is one of my favourite images from recent research into the biblical idea of the 'heart'. I have long been fascinated by the way the term heart is used in the Old Testament, and the fact that God in essence says 'I don't want your blind obedience, I want your heart'. Still, today, our hearts are drawn to a thousand alternatives, often presented to us in the beguiling soft-focus of the advertising world. We don't call the Argos catalogue pornograhpy, but many of the techniques are the same. And where our eyes linger, our hearts soon follow: the new car, the new computer, the new kitchen. Somewhere along the line, that which we 'desire' becomes to us that which we 'need', and our hearts are won over.
Perhaps we should understand more readily that this is idolatry, that nothing has really changed, and that God still longs for us to linger longer before his beauty; to be drawn both to desire and to need his presence: to let our hearts be tipped 'toward him'. Who (or what) has your heart?
