St Paul’s Canterbury,1st September 2013, Pentecost 15
Second 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
MISSION
The Readings
“Go out into the streets and Lanes”.
Originally Stanley Spencer intended to paint
forty pictures, one for each day in Lent and place them in the ceiling of his
parish church in Cookham on the Thames . He
meant us to see all of the paintings in one scene rather like an Advent
Calendar. He wrote,
“In these paintings I have regarded Christ’s
dwelling in the Wilderness as a prelude forming part of his Ministry. Apart from his last days when he was tempted,
I don’t know of any statements, which refer to his life during this period
except the reference to his fasting…” ‘Christ in the
wilderness” by Stephen Cottrell” p 11-12
Christ’s forty days and forty nights is both
exile and pilgrimage. His Mission
It is the Holy Spirit who ‘drives’ Jesus into
the Wilderness of Judea, an inward ‘driving’.
Preparing this sermon I searched my own mind
to discover times when I have been driven to do something or to be somewhere in
the context of my own mission and ministry.
I discovered many occasions when
I have acted intuitively. This
is also true of my own work as an artist; standing before a large blank canvas
for hours, sometimes for days, then suddenly
attacking it with great speed, sometimes finishing it in less than an
hour; then reflecting on it and realizing that all of the work has been in my
mind, often for years.
Logically an unbeliever would say “that is
instinct”. I say “Intuition” the leading
of the Holy Spirit; the result of patient meditation, contemplation of the
Scriptures, of music, of poetry and of many lovely people.
An aspect of our vocation (about which we
spoke last week) is to go into the desert.
Jesus said, “When you pray, go
into your room and shut the door and pray to your heavenly father who is in
secret and your heavenly father will reward you”. This has to do with the efficacy of prayer
which is our Mission
“Go into your room and shut the door”. In darkness pray. Jeremiah knew this (Jer 2 v 6) ”Where
is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren
wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and
darkness”.
It was in the absolute darkness of Mount Sinai that God who dwells in inexpressible light
gave to Moses the Enlightened Torah.
Mount Sinai as I know it is the place of sheer majesty, a landscape of
terror where God met with him in the darkness of Unknowing.
The Passover and Mount
Sinai are of tremendous importance to us as Christians. The Sinai moon presents herself to us every
time we come to receive Holy Communion, for the Host which is the body of
Christ has the form of the full-bodied Paschal Moon.
Whether our days are in the Wilderness or in
the shade of Paradise; in darkness or in light, the writer of today’s Epistle
to the Hebrews reminds us, “Never will I leave you or forsake you”. God is always faithful, more particularly so
when we find ourselves metaphorically “in the Wilderness” for we are a People
of the Covenant, called, as St Luke reminds us in today’s Gospel, “ We don’t do that very often do we. Unlike the Jehovah’s Witnesses who called at
our home last Saturday.
When Stanley Spencer was painting his “Driven by the Spirit into the Wilderness”
he was reminiscing on his wartime experiences of being in Macedonia and “...the personal terror of being cut off
from home life….but the world is the place for our encounter with God”.
This is also true for us. Our neighborhood is the locus and focus for
our Mission
Our daily life is the landscape of our inner
geography where that which is deeply ‘ME’ is joined to ‘The Other”. “Take
no thought for tomorrow….today is where we are to live out our Mission
The God of utter transcendence humbles
Himself, takes upon himself the form of a servant to enable us to know how to
engage in His Mission of Grace.
Perhaps it is for this reason, at Christ’s Transfiguration the two
standing with him are both survivors of the terrors of the wild landscape image
of Mount Sinai – Moses and Elijah.
It enables us to speak of the wonderful works
of God. And we can and must speak because
it is God who first speaks to us, inviting a response.
Except through Jesus Christ our only mediator
and advocate God is ultimately inaccessible to all forms of human control. See Belden
C. Lane
You know, I have a problem about revisions of
Prayer Books designed to make God, religion and the Church more relevant. (Whatever that means) So? “….cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…” ‘thoughts of our hearts? We say it at every Eucharist.
In Jewish anthropology the heart is the
centre of all our Being. Language!
As a young priest, one day on a hospital
visit I came across a man lying on his stomach. He was greatly
discomforted. I asked him, “What is
wrong”. He replied, “I’ve got boils on
me bum…sorry Padre, I mean on me arse”.
Christ is driven by the Spirit into the
Wilderness. All through his life he goes
“UP” to pray-“up into a mountain…up
into a secret place, up into the eremos”, up to Jerusalem, up into the Galilee,
and finally up onto the Cross to pray. Always
alone.
In the long run knowledge about God is
inconsequential, for God cannot be known, only worshipped. Our deepest prayer has no language; we are
not able to speak, yet we have to speak in the twisted language of metaphor if
we are to comprehend the awesome-ness of our Mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment