St Paul’s Canterbury , 25^th August  2013, Pentecost 14

First in a Series of Sermons

on the paintings of Sir Stanley Spencer

The Images used in this Series are taken from
Sir Stanley Spencer’s Paintings of

“Christ in the Wilderness”, held in
the Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.

The Rt. Rev'd John Bayton, AM

VOCATION

Stanley Spencer’s Image:  "Consider the Lilies of the Field"

Jeremiah 1 v 4-10.  Psalm 71 v 1-6.  Hebrews 12 v 18-29.  Luke 13 v 10-17. 
During these weeks of the Vicars Long Service Leave at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist I propose to introduce you to the works of eminent English artist Stanley Spencer in the context of our on-going discipleship. In particular I will refer to his paintings of Christ in the Wilderness, held in the Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.

You might well ask, “Why Stanley Spencer” and not, say Sidney Nolan or John Percival…. Simply because from his birth he had a vocation to paint works of religious significance. He lived and painted during the period of two great world wars and once wrote, “…the kind of heaven I enter when I do begin to paint I find not at all insipid”. Apart from his tremendous World War 1 paintings his field of inspiration was his own small village of Cookham in Berkshire where he was born in 1891 (30 August) . His biographer Duncan Robinson wrote of him, “He never lost the ability to translate the abstract into the reality of experience and locate the eternal in his own back yard….. His father conducted his informal education and augmented it with readings aloud from the Bible…the nursery was his universe and the parish church, the Garden of Eden.”

I have studied his religious works for any years. One of his Resurrection paintings is in our own NGV on St. Kilda road.

His genius lay in his ability to locate the great narratives of the Bible within the landscape of his own little Village. As an example he paints Christ preaching from the boat, on the River that runs by Cookham. Cookham churchyard was the setting for his “Visitation’, his Annunciation, Christ’s Betrayal and his Crucifixion. This was his vocation.

My vocation and yours is to live out the bible within the context of our own neighborhood. We do not have to be artists to do this. However, we are called by Christ to do it . When we examine Christ’s own preaching, teaching and healing miracles all were performed within that evangelical triangle along the Lake of Galilee, with 15km sides, bounding Capernaum, Chorazin and Beth Saida.

This preacher is speaking to the converted. Look around and see –EA the Organist, , June, Charles and Henrietta – Wardens, Kate, Members of Vestry, Readers, Servers, Eucharistic Assistants, choristers, teachers in Sunday School and Schools, administrators Members of Caritas, Welcomers , Men’s Group, providers of morning tea, washers-up, collection counters ………….– a wide and wonderful congregation, all responding to the ideal of Christian vocation.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. Before we were born God know what is in us; he gave us a life, he gave us free-will to choose right from wrong. He gave us the ability to respond to his calling to be disciples of Christ, that is ‘responsibility’.

I have often pondered on Jesus call. When did he know he was called to the salvation of all creation? For me this is perhaps the most important Christological questions. “Is it I” he asks. “Is it I”. Am I the “I AM” of all Revelation. . It is important because despite the occasional flashes of insight He came to Gethsemane with the question, “If there is any other way, let this cup pass from me”. Is Jesus obedience to the will of the Father the same thing as his knowledge of Himself as God? Despite the later end of 1st century intrusion into John’s Gospel – “I and the Father are One”, how do I reckon his anguished cry from the Cross, “My God, My God, Why…”

If Jesus knew all along that he truly was the second person of the blessed Trinity, that he knew that he was God, then (for me) the entire Incarnation is a joke!

He absolutely knew that he was called to proclaim the Kingdom of God, to teach the values of that Kingdom and he heal all manner of dis-ease. But is that all?!

“Consider the flowers of the field, they do not toil, they do not spin, yet Solomon in all his Glory was not arrayed like one of them!”

In Stanley Spencer’s paintings these weeks I am with you, we consider his time in the wilderness following his Baptism. His Calling. His vocation to be ‘at – one’ with the whole creation. At-One – Atonement. Gathering together all the fragments of a lost Universe. Yes he says to us, “In the same way as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Imagine therefore the enormity of our own vocation - to BE what God has called us to BE from our mother’s Womb. To BE is not the same as to DO! ‘Doing’ is only part of our true vocation. Our vocation is to be One with Christ. Our outer life is to match our inner life.

How can this be ? We have a number of deep seated spiritual gifts that enable us to be constantly aware of our true vocation, (1) The Liturgy of the Eucharist with Holy communion on the Lord’s Day, week by week. (2) By Prayer, contemplation, meditation and reflection on how the Scriptures impinge upon our daily lives. (3) By fasting and abstinence and (4) by works of charity.

So far as we are concerned as Christians, Jesus is the only one who has ever lived whose outer life matches his inner life. Yet ours is the same vocation as His. To be at One with the entire Universe, knowing that we are made of the same stuff as the dust of the stars; therefore never to add to the violence of the world by thought or word or deed.

The Series of Stanley Spencer’s Paintings invite us to consider what it is to be in the wilderness. Unless you are totally at variance with my own spiritual life, you must know what it is to be “in the wilderness”. In my Spiritual Life I have known many times when I can’t even believe in god, let alone worship Him? Ever felt like this? I well remember ministering to a fellow priest who had faithfully read the Daily Offices, celebrated the Daily Eucharist; prayed the Intercessions, faithfully visited his parish, prepared children for confirmation, married couples, buried the dead and cared for their families. Lived a faithful life for 30 years. He had a heart attack, and suddenly found nothing. No joy in believing, no hope for the future, no comfort from the Daily Prayers. No fellowship with either his parish or the bishop or the diocese. Nothing. The cupboard was bare.

Have you ever felt this? I well remember my own mother. Dad died or his war wounds when I was a baby. She brought us up on the Dole when there was no such thing as War Widows’ Pensions. My brother died at age 18. Her parents died. There was nothing! She had nothing, yet she taught us to care for the poor and she tithed her meager income week by week for the Church. As children our favorite Sunday evening meal; was toast and dripping. Years later I asked her, “How did you continue to believe in God all these years ?” She replied, - “Faith overcomes all things”. Years in the Wilderness with Christ and Nothing. Many years later when the government allowed for the War Widows Pension she would say, “When I needed it I did not have it. Now that I have it I do not need it”.

“Christ in the Wilderness” is not an abstraction. It is a reality.