He Qi is a Chinese artist who spent the years of the Cultural Revolution painting pictures of Mao Tse Tung in the day time as an alternative to forced labour, and in the evening painting pictures of the Madonna inspired by his fascination with Raphael’s Madonna and Child.
He Qi’s Nativity is typical of his work in terms of colour and vibrancy. His painting resembles stained glass and always feel they have an element of fun. In this picture you can see the sheep virtually dancing in response to the angels. Listening is an important element of this piece. Of course, the sheep stand for all those who know the Lord as their shepherd.
The light in this Nativity comes from heaven and is far more intense than the light any of us can hold. The light Joseph holds is dim compared to the light that Mary holds. – but then Joseph is fading from the picture with his work well and faithfully done.
Mary is pictured in the pink. Normally Mary is dressed in blue, but here He Qi picks up pink as a symbol of marriage and shows Mary as the archetype of the church who holds and treasures Jesus. Jesus is offering a red apple to Mary and the church. This is a reference to the Garden of Eden signifying Jesus as a new Adam and Mary and the church as a new Eve. This is new creation.
The apple is blood red to indicate the nature of God’s offering. Is there also an ambiguity in the shape of the apple? Is it also heart shaped to indicate that this is the new heart promised by God to his disheartened people (Ezekiel 36)?
This is the Nativity. Christus natus est. This is Christmas. Happy Christmas.
Notes for a sermon for Ashton Hayes for June 22nd 2014
Fresco in the “Visoci Decani” in Kosovo
Text: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34)
Teachers are busy writing school reports. Here’s Jesus’ report from the autumn term:
Resistant materials – A – excellent in woodwork section, and obviously well supported by the help and stimulation he gets at home.
Maths – F – Lacks basics. Keeps muttering about “Three in One” and “I and the Father are one”.
Graphic communications – D – Prefers to draw with a stick in the sand than to use pencil and paper.
Physical Education – D- Jesus has been a troublemaker. He refuses instruction in swimming, and is surprised that he sinks when he tries to walk on the water.
Overall – it saddens us to say that Jesus is a disruptive influence in the class. He flouts uniform regulations by turning up in sandals. He chooses his friends unwisely.
Biology – 28% – weak, thinks he knows it all. Constantly rude about Darwin.
Domestic Science – 54% – a useful cook, the pillar of salt will come in handy for a long time.
Games – will not row, hates games and once parted the waters of the swimming pool during a match against the old boys which was both unsporting and dangerous. He can still do press ups.
Progress and conduct: “I am afraid that I am severely disappointed in God’s work. He has shown no interest in rugger, asked to be excused prayers and moves in a mysterious way. His attentions to the carpentry teacher’s fiancée caused her to leave a term early, and there are several nasty rumours flying around.
There is no getting round the fact that Jesus is a disruptive influence. As he says himself in today’s gospel reading: “I didn’t come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword.” (Matt 10:34)
Here’s trouble and an affront that we overlook at our peril. This is challenging behaviour.
His mother was no better. Her song (from Luke’s songbook and gospel), Luke 1:46-55, aka Magnificat, was banned for many years. The authorities in British ruled India, and in 1980’s Guatemala and Argentina banned the words from being read out loud because they were too revolutionary.
Mary knew that Jesus was not good news for everyone. For every blessing that she sang there was an answering curse on those who thought they had it all. She sang of the one who looks with favour on the lowly, and who scatters those who are proud in their innermost thoughts, the one who lifts up the lowly, but brings down rulers from their thrones, who fills the hungry with good things, but sends the rich away empty.
Woe betide us if we become proud, rich and powerful. According to her song, we will be scattered, brought down and sent away empty.
Mary too is disruptive and dangerous for the authorities. It is no wonder that she is silenced by the authorities from time to time. Jesus takes after his mother and father. Blame the parents, if you like.
50 years ago, this weekend, three young men went to investigate a church that had been burnt out. The church was Mount Zion Methodist Church in Neshoba County in Mississippi. This was a building that was being used to register black voters in the States in what was called Freedom Summer, 50 years ago, in 1964 in the civil rights movement.
The state authorities were bitterly opposed to the voter registration campaign, believing that blacks shouldn’t be able to vote. You can feel the authorities bristling with the arrival of these three men: Michael Schwermer, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. The authorities were sheltering the culprits of the chapel burning. Their crime was about to be exposed by these men who had come to disrupt their peace.
Deputy Sherriff Cecil Price followed the men as they drove back to their home in Lauderdale County. He intercepted them just on the county line and ordered them into his car. He then drove them to a deserted piece of land where they were met by two cars full of Ku Klux Klan members. They beat, shot and killed the three men, 50 years ago this weekend, June 21st 1964.
The lives of the three are commemorated in a stained glass window in the chapel of Cornell University. Their faith is celebrated in the words of the gospel song made famous by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez – “we shall overcome”.
Are they martyrs for us? Or were they disruptive and dangerous? What do we think? Are we on the side of the Klansmen, or the poor of the earth?
Those three didn’t bring peace. Neither did they bring a sword. They brought beatings, shootings, burnings and violence. They didn’t bring those things themselves. They brought those things on themselves. They engaged the powers and suffered their might.
Does this help us to understand what Jesus said when he said, “I didn’t come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword”? In the cold light of day these words strike us as difficult. They challenge us and disrupt us. The more we burn with passion, the hotter we get under the collar, the more our hearts burn within us, the more understandable they become.
What good is gentle Jesus, meek and mild in a world that is crying out for disruption? The prophet Jeremiah complains about the false prophets who claim that there is peace when there is no peace. (Jer 6:14)
No, Jesus comes with a sword. He is disruptive and he is divisive. The authorities expected him to go one way, and he went the other – to the lost, the last and the least. His words were salvation to some, but offensive to others.
The words of Mary’s song provide commentary on Jesus as well as his father: he looked with favour on the lowly, and scattered those who are proud in their innermost thoughts, lifting up the lowly, while bringing down rulers from their thrones, filling the hungry with good things, while sending the rich away empty.
He never used the sword.
The sword is metaphorical. It is an effect. The sword is what happens as a consequence of his love. People turn on one another and on him. Even families and friends turn against each other. He is disruptive and unsettling for us all.
He didn’t bring a sword but he brought a sword on himself. The political and religious authorities got him in the end. Jesus never drew a sword – he loved through the challenge and disruption. And he told his followers to put their sword away, as we recall from the incident in the Garden of Gethsemane. (Matt 26:51ff)
When Jesus said “I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword” he was preparing his followers for mission, so that they might be disruptive in a world crying out for disruption. He was preparing them for a dangerous mission which could bring disruption, persecution and even death.
What is true of Jesus is true of the church.
Just some times we have to stand against the crowd – like those who were conscientious objectors in the war 100 years ago, like those who protest when they see injustice being done, like when we side with the scapegoat, the sick, the prisoner, the stranger.
It just might be that we have to stand alone – our friends may desert us, our families may turn on us, we may lose our cherished place in the community.
We stand for love and we overcome evil with good. We can’t pretend there is peace where there is none. We haven’t come to bring peace, but a possible sword on ourselves.
So I wonder what it will say on my final report. Will it say that I have been a troublemaker? Will it say that my behaviour has been challenging? Will it say that I have been disruptive for the sake of those who suffer in the way things are?
Or will it say, “he was just nice”? What good is that, only being nice? Being nice just doesn’t cut it does it?
It’s only a donkey! There was no horsepower to Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem. Photo from the World Bank Photo Collection
In his excellent book Barefoot Disciple, Stephen Cherry reminds us that we have misunderstood Jesus’ “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem and suggests that we should not be celebrating a triumphal entry on Palm Sunday but a “humble entry”. That is what Matthew makes of it. Matthew cuts the “triumphant and victorious” reference of Zechariah’s prophecy and simply says, “Look your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.” (21:5). The crowd wanted a triumphal entry of a Saviour to please them. Jesus’ humble entry led to a humble end. He refused to play to the crowd (his last temptation?) who expected him to turn the tables on their occupiers, and then they turned the tables on him.
Like many Christians I joined the Palm Sunday procession yesterday. I was at Chester Cathedral. We went into the city. I have seen many processions, including many I dare not and could not cross. They were triumphal processions. They were pompous processions. Yesterday several people crossed our path. This was an unpretentious procession. This was a procession you could touch (and the children loved petting the donkey!) I appreciated the soft edge of our procession and the hospitality of the ground that was given to all who passed by. If that’s the way of the cross, that’s the way to go.
How Jesus entered Jerusalem challenges our rather grand entrances. Don’t we like to wade in? Don’t we like to look big? Don’t we try to impress? I followed the humble procession yesterday. I’m not so sure how much I fit with my other interventions, my entries into conversations, rooms and situations. There’s a way to go: a way that is far more compassionate.
>Lighting effects figure in the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. The spotlight is turned on the cross – all else is darkness. Then the metaphorical curtain opens and the lights go up. It is not only the thief crucified with Jesus, or the Roman soldier who realise what a good day this Friday is. The curtain veiling God is ripped from top to bottom – a new act in history begins.
Funny how evil is an anagram of veil. Today, Good Friday, embraces the evils of what we are able to inflict on one another. Venom and spite concentrated on Jesus was returned with the full force of humanity. Blind passion gives way to a forgiving love which permits no final solution.
A very belated cut to a hedge came to a sudden stop with this discovery.
Then the following morning in this very suburban garden a resident hedgehog revealed itself. The garden is only two years old, and has developed from a wasteland of a former running track (so the builders reckon). So quickly we are teeming with wildlife in an area which was jokingly known for its radio-active streams.
In contrast, how monstrous it seems to fly in the face of such diversity. This photo shows the one-eyed stupidity of such concentrated evil who thought they could control destiny. It was in the concentration camps that Hitler was able to concentrate on absolute power, without the restraint of any other point of view. I came across this quote from Primo Levi, who wrote in If this is a man “Never has there existed a state that was really “totalitarian.” … Never has some form of reaction, a corrective of the total tyranny, been lacking, not even in the Third Reich or Stalin’s Soviet Union: in both cases, public opinion, the magistrature, the foreign press, the churches, the feeling for justice and humanity that ten or twenty years of tyranny were not enough to eradicate, have to a greater or lesser extent acted as a brake. Only in the Lager [camp] was the restraint from below non-existent, and the power of these small satraps absolute.”
Auschwitz II Entrance – known as Death Gate photo by vm-ramos
>Kirsty Young began a four-part history of the British Family from the end of WW2 to the present day last night. It’s a sign of old age when you see your own childhood as history. But that’s what it was and it was a fascinating insight into how families have changed and how my own family changed. The programme highlighted how the family was in crisis as a result of WW2 and how marriage came to be understood relationally rather than institutionally. The programme reminded me of the angst of the 50s and 60s as we discussed and argued (not very calmly because of the issues at stake). Shocking statistics revealed the amount of sexual ignorance and repression. There’s more to look forward as the series continues next week.
Running through my own mind at the same time were thoughts about how to facilitate “diversity training” – that’s part of my job. I had already read Donald Clark’s post about narrow minded (and patronising, frustrating and annoying) diversity training and was wondering what it is all about. Then, putting two and two together I realise how diversity training has developed in family life. The politics of home life has seen the emergence and emancipation of women, the development of companiable relationships between adults and a transformation in relationship with children – (or is that all still aspirational?)
And what has been the training programme? Has it been that through the developments in the media we have been able to be part of a very public debate about relationships and the family? Through the soap operas we have seen all sorts of relationships and sufferings modelled and entertained ideas about where we fit in our own behaviours. And doesn’t the training continue through “homework” and “exercises” – in which we exercise and practise love for others, including listening for their best interest and their frustrations.
Is this a clue for facilitating diversity training? What else is there?
There is also listening. Are there voices we can hear protesting their exclusion and their hurt? Hearing their cries prompts us to ask questions about how much they count as people and to challenge the systems that oppress and marginalise them. We do have a hearing problem though – because the voices of suffering are hard to hear. Their cries are muffled and smothered in so many cases. Careful listening becomes a requirement – listening that is full of care will prise off respectability’s veneer to investigate what is really happening and what people are really feeling. This is diversity training which is moved by compassion to diversify practice and thinking so that there is room for people. People suffer the world over because of their gender, their sexuality, their ethnicity, their nationality, their age, their class etc etc. They suffer personally in the details of their daily life (and often within their own living space/home) – and they suffer because of our narrow minded thinking.
But why do we need “diversity training” in the church? That’s my exercise – “to review continuing ministerial development in the area of diversity issues” – within the monochrome Diocese of Chester. For one thing we could refer to the experience of those who complain about being excluded (women clergy some of the time), or to the absence in our congregations of youngsters (and other groups) because our thinking and practice is not diverse enough to embrace them. Or we could refer to our scripture and Jesus’ ministry which has “diversity training” so much at its heart. Jesus’ life was with the marginalised. He taught us (Matthew 25) to recognise him in the prisoner, the naked, the asylum seeker, the scavenger and the homeless. He invited his followers to diversify their thinking to embrace a saviour who could be crucified as a common criminal. Those who accepted the invitation became a diverse family in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”. (Galatians 3:28)
As an enabled, white, English, straight, educated, male priest in the “established” Church of England in this skewed world I should have enough power to do something to diversify our world. I know it must start from where I am. I’m just off to the Post Office. Who knows – it could just start there.
It is an adult Christ that the community encounters during the Advent and Christmas cycles of Sunday and feasts: a Risen Lord who invites sinful people to become the church. Christmas does not ask us to pretend we were back in Bethlehem, kneeling before a crib; it asks us to recognize that the wood of the crib became the wood of the cross.
—Nathan Mitchel, quoted in, LITURGY WITH STYLE AND GRACE by Gabe Huck and Gerald T. Chinchar. (Archdiocese of Chicago, Liturgy Training Publications, 1998, page 97. Paper, ISBN 1-56854-186-4 in Preachers’ Exchange
> A bit of fun in preparing next Sunday’s sermon. With the passage being the invitation by Jesus to Peter to walk on water I looked at what it could possible mean and come to the conclusion that we believe in a Jam Jar – or should that be Yamm-Yah? Not a lot of people know this (myself included) but Luke and Johjn in their telling of the story use the same Greek word for water as the Greek word for sea in Job who recognises God as the one who “alone stretched out the heavens and treads on the waters of the Sea” (Job 9:8) That word is Yam. God is Yah. So we have Yam Yah – God is a Jam Jar. Discuss.
Job wasn’t the first to see God walking on water. In the beginning – “the earth was barren with no form of life. It was under a roaring ocean covered with darkness. But the Spirit of God was moving over the water.” (Genesis 1:2) And then we have the gospel story of Jesus walking on water – and, in only Matthew’s gospel, Peter walking on water proving the point that rocks do float.
Is it just a stunt? Look at me – I can walk on water! There has to be more to it than that – and the answer to that is in the Yam.
Apparently the Hebrews didn’t believe in sea monsters, but used the image of a sea monster to symbolise evil – referred to as Leviathan. The Canaanites – early settlers of the Promised Land – had a god called Yam – deity of the primordial chaos and representing the power of the sea untamed and raging.
I wonder whether people attributed the storms of the lakes and seas to Yam – evil or whatever name evil goes by. Walking on water then becomes not some super stunt, but a sign of Jesus’s power over the force of evil. When he invites Peter to walk on water he is inviting him to trust that the Spirit of God within him has power over evil.
We translate storms and turbulence psychologically. We know when we are upset, when we are overwhelmed – and when we feel we are drowning. We say we feel “all at sea” – but then we have Jesus who knows that we can walk on water – our Yam-Yah God.
Is that why Jesus washed his disciples’ feet – because they would walk on the water. When he washes the feet of the disciples, is it to admire them. Paul writes: “how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:5-15) Does Jesus admire the feet of those who by walking on water so declare the good news about the power of love?
> A bit of fun in preparing next Sunday’s sermon. With the passage being the invitation by Jesus to Peter to walk on water I looked at what it could possible mean and come to the conclusion that we believe in a Jam Jar – or should that be Yamm-Yah? Not a lot of people know this (myself included) but Luke and Johjn in their telling of the story use the same Greek word for water as the Greek word for sea in Job who recognises God as the one who “alone stretched out the heavens and treads on the waters of the Sea” (Job 9:8) That word is Yam. God is Yah. So we have Yam Yah – God is a Jam Jar. Discuss.
Job wasn’t the first to see God walking on water. In the beginning – “the earth was barren with no form of life. It was under a roaring ocean covered with darkness. But the Spirit of God was moving over the water.” (Genesis 1:2) And then we have the gospel story of Jesus walking on water – and, in only Matthew’s gospel, Peter walking on water proving the point that rocks do float.
Is it just a stunt? Look at me – I can walk on water! There has to be more to it than that – and the answer to that is in the Yam.
Apparently the Hebrews didn’t believe in sea monsters, but used the image of a sea monster to symbolise evil – referred to as Leviathan. The Canaanites – early settlers of the Promised Land – had a god called Yam – deity of the primordial chaos and representing the power of the sea untamed and raging.
I wonder whether people attributed the storms of the lakes and seas to Yam – evil or whatever name evil goes by. Walking on water then becomes not some super stunt, but a sign of Jesus’s power over the force of evil. When he invites Peter to walk on water he is inviting him to trust that the Spirit of God within him has power over evil.
We translate storms and turbulence psychologically. We know when we are upset, when we are overwhelmed – and when we feel we are drowning. We say we feel “all at sea” – but then we have Jesus who knows that we can walk on water – our Yam-Yah God.
Is that why Jesus washed his disciples’ feet – because they would walk on the water. When he washes the feet of the disciples, is it to admire them. Paul writes: “how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:5-15) Does Jesus admire the feet of those who by walking on water so declare the good news about the power of love?
He Qi is a Chinese artist who spent the years of the Cultural Revolution painting pictures of Mao Tse Tung in the day time as an alternative to forced labour, and in the evening painting pictures of the Madonna inspired by his fascination with Raphael’s Madonna and Child.
Grits and Grains 