Living Wittily

Why it is a good thing when someone says Jesus was wrong!

Listening to Radio 4 Any Questions yesterday, having come away from the Baptist Assembly, there was much discussion about the resignation of Canon Giles Fraser from St Paul's Cathedral Chapter.

Some of the panel admired him but thought he was wrong, others admired him but thought, on balance, he was idealistic.

Matthew Parris made the observation that Jesus Christ would have been amongst the protesters, and Jesus would have been wrong. Listen  to it on IPlayer - It's around the 2 minutes 20 seconds.

What surprised me was the assumption that it was an outrageous thing to say that Jesus would have been wrong to be amongst the protesters.

Of course he would have been with the protestors - and of course he would have been wrong.

I think he might also have resigned had he been a Canon of the Cathedral.

That said, I think he might have had problems with a place of worship receiving around £20,000 pounds a day from tourists, and if he overturned the Donation boxes he would have been wrong.

I think there is an intriguing question about the church and its understanding of Jesus lurking behind Matthew Parris's cultured superiority in social and political realities, over the carpenter rabbi from unfashionable Nazareth. The question what would Jesus do is always asked when we want to do the right thing. I struggle with that question sometimes because I'm not sure Jesus is as predictable, or that my guesses at what Jesus might do are always accurate, disinterested, and - well, right.

Supposing instead of asking what would Jesus do, we accepted that Jesus would often do the scandalous thing, the unexpected, socially unacceptable thing. Allow and approve of his feet to be washed in a provocative gesture by a woman; touching people with leprosy; having parties with the local owners of ASBOS; healing on the Sabbath; and yes, making life difficult for the religious status quo, including an act of protest in the temple that makes the St Paul's demonstration look like a peace camp.

 

 

Somewhere in all this we have to hear what is being said. Matthew Parris has done the church an unwitting service in compelling us to stop wrapping Jesus up in respectability, and recover some of the disturbing truth that Jesus isn't our intellectual property so that we can simply always e right in deciding what Jesus would do. In the person and ministry of Jesus our best ideas are subverted, our clever strategies face the scrutiny of whether cleverness can replace radical critique, and our models for stable social relationships and an untroubled status quo collide with one who had nowhere to lay his head, who looked on the crowds and had compassion, and who knew all about symbolic acts of protest. 

Thank you Matthew Parris - for reminding us that the cultured reason of the capitalist democrat has no acceptable category for those actions and sayings of Jesus that critique such comfortable forms of injustice.

Guernica - the novel and the painting

Guernica, Dave Boling, (Picador)

This is a carefully researched novel about Basque village life in the 30's seen through the eyes of three generations, culminating in the atrocity that was Guernica. Picasso's presence is woven throughout, and the novelist  makes him neither hero nor villain, but simply what he is; an artist who lives with the ambiguity of his own life story and the politics of his time. His painting of the raids on Guernica (which is brilliantly repulsive in conception and creation) is an example of art as moral outrage and political protest - and of how the representation of human anguish when it is well done as in Picasso's Guernica, is potent not by its power to attract, but by its power to repel. The medium conveys exactly human recoil from the evil the painting depicts.

 

It’s an interesting thought, that art, so naturally identified with the creation of beauty, grace and human loveliness, is equally potent in depicting ugliness, violence and human suffering. There are some paintings that are hideous both in their content and in their execution, and that makes them great art because they compel attention to the human experience of that which dehumanises, degrades and violates. In class last year when looking at artistic representations of Jesus on the cross, there were several images which students found repulsive, even upsetting, there was “no beauty that we should desire him”. Crucifixion is utter unremitting cruelty, and some artists refuse to surround such inhumane infliction with light or hope or theological concessions. Likewise, Picasso in his painting of the atrocity of Guernica, was unsparing of the sensitivities of the public viewers of his art. There are times when art speaks truth, the representation of a subject contributes to its reality, the medium successfully conveys the message, the viewer is forcibly confronted with what we would rather not see and think, and thus moral judgement is demanded by the stark uncompromising portrayal of moral evil.

There is no comfortable distance from which to view Picasso’s Guernica. It is an offence, searingly effective, and the depth of negative reaction to its images and overall composition is precisely the intent – a jolt in the nerve centre of our moral perceptions and political complacency. This novel doesn’t operate at this kind of level, at least not self-consciously. But by giving human face and character to the villagers, by drawing us into the family life of the Basque people, and by making us care for the outcomes in the stories of their lives, such personal and moral reactions are inevitably evoked. Near the end, there is a beautifully conceived insight into how human beings deal with loss and love. It comes as a comment on how two men coped with the violent deaths of their wives and children in the bombing raid:

"...if you lose someone you love, you need to redistribute your feelings rather than surrender them. You give them to whoever is left, and the rest you turn towards something that will keep you moving forward."

So the novel is a romance and a lament, a celebration of human courage and consolation, an affirmation of the love that humans have for each other and the finite miracle of love that survives brutal death; but all this set against the chronic capacity of human beings to hate, or worse, to not care about the consequences for other human beings of military action and political violence. And Picasso's painting, now an iconic image, an artistic monument of 25 feet by 12 feet, ensures that the name of a the small historic town of Guernica is not forgotten. And Picasso's poignant image of the dove flying over broken weapons of war is also a necessary and urgent reminder that human creatvity, industry and reason, can also be persuaders and builders of peace. This is a fine novel, about a remarkable painting, a flawed artistic genius, and an act of human barbarity that changed the nature of war.

The book ends with the following few lines. It isn't a spoiler to quote it. The opposite in fact, it's an invitation to read the book, and enter with moral imagination the experience that inspired a masterpiece of poltical protest, moral outrage and symbolic resistance to war.

Picasso is sitting in his favourite cafe in Paris. He is approached by a German officer.

"One officer who considered himself culturally advanced approached the artist as he sipped his coffee at a table beneath the green pavement awninga. The officer held a reproduction of the mural Guernica, barely larger than a postcard size.

'Pardon me', he said, holding the card out. 'You did this didn't you?'

Picasso put his cup delicately on its saucer, turned to the picture, then to the officer, and responded, 'No. You did.'

The hermeneutic of great art - "The Magdalen Reading"

Yesterday Ruth asked about the picture of Jesus and Mary. No idea where it came from or who created it. This one I didn't know either till a friend gave me a postcard print of it. "The Magdalen Reading" painted by Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464), is one panel from and altarpiece probably six times the size. Late medieval art is one of the treasure stores of biblical reflection and theological imagination. When all the exegesis is done, and all the hermeneutical suspicions are counted, and we are quite sure we have sufficiently de-cluttered the text of distorting presuppositions and power-laden superimposed agendas, there is still something powerfully persuasive about great art expressing a not so naive piety.

Here the idea is expressed that Mary Magdalen was so transformatively changed by Jesus, that it is she who is not wearing red, (except the colour of the seat cushion as a reminder); instead she is wearing green and a bejewelled underdress, her clothes telling the recovered richness of life. The alabaster jar is the symbol of a love once poured out, of one who loved much because she was forgiven much - and there it is again, miraculously unbroken but ready to hand.

And she is reading; the third person singular feminine is not to be overlooked - she is reading. Female literacy was rare except in privileged circles - Van der Weyden was painting around the same time Julian of Norwich claimed to be unlettered, a disclaimer her own work disproves. Mary Magdalen reading one of the Gospels, modestly but beautifully dressed, beside her an alabaster jar, and off-stage in red, the foot of John the Evangelist whose Gospel captured the grief of Mary and her last encounter with Jesus on Easter morning. Forget the hermeneutic of suspicion and engage the hermeneutic of great art; trust the exegesis that flows from devotional imagination, and contemplate sympathetically a way of telling truth that is itself transformative.

Christ the Wisdom of God, and the repository of all the treasures of wisdom

When it comes to browsing in the Bible, after the Gospels I most often find myself in that supermarket trolley of good advice and wise counsel, the book of Proverbs. One of the words I enjoy saying, and reading, and hearing, is "wisdom". Just pronouncing it somehow conveys a reassuring sense of the world being made OK, of good decisions, of careful considerate behaviour, of something as good, beautiful and true as the knowing smile of a good friend.

Information informs and knowledge enables understanding. but then, when understanding and human experience flow together, the resulting confluence is wisdom, that deep way of knowing and being known that forms character, transforms lifestyle, and conforms us to the image of Christ. Paul knew about Christ and wisdom; he hoped the Christians of Laodicea would receive "all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

My own take on wisdom is profoundly Christological. The Word God utters, the knowledge of the Holy, the incarnate truth that is human life articulated in its surrender to God, the experience of the Creator accommodating to the creature, and thus understanding from within the truth of our humanity and limitation, this is the "loving wisdom of our God." And if indeed it is so that Christ is the wisdom of God, the source and repository of divine understanding and the finally uttered truth of who God is, then all wisdom is tested by Christ, and no wisdom is alien to Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom."

So whether I am reading the book of Proverbs, or Pirke Avot that marvel of compression embedded in the Mishnah, or some of the great wisdom statements of other faith traditions, I recognise a certain ethical tone, a spiritual accent, an echo, perhaps slightly distorted, that is deeply resonant of the Wisdom of God. Wisdom is not disqualified from our consideration because it is uttered by another faith tradition whose dogmatic framework and doctrinal constructions are incompatible with Christian theology. "All the treasures of wisdom are hidden in Christ", the eternal Word subsumes the wisdom of the ages, and so in that incarnate life, crucified and risen, the wisdom of this world is converted into the currency of a quite other way of thinking, acting and being.

So when I come across words like the following, from the ancient Chinese wisdom tradition of LaoTzu, I listen respectfully. And if I do, I am attentive to that which resonates with the uttered words of Jesus, who lived a life which was the uttered Word of God:

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. 

Keep sharpening your knife 

and it will blunt. 

Chase after money and security 

and your heart will never unclench. 

Care about people's approval

and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back. 

The only path to serenity.

Or as Jesus said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all those other things will find their proper place."

Caravaggio's "Jesus Calls Saints Peter and Andrew".

Today I was in Edinburgh doing important things. I had lunch with Sheila at the Queens Gallery Mews restaurant and had the best carrot soup ever, followed by a slab of millionaire shortbread with toffee a minimum of 1 cm thick. We then met up with oor Aileen for an early afternoon coffee (and for her a late lunch), and I borrowed my car back for a while!

But before that.

We visited the Queens Gallery Baroque Exhibition where I wanted to sit and gaze at Carravagio's "Jesus Calls St Peter and St Andrew". This sumptuous painting was on the news recently - as part of the Royal Collection it was assumed it was an early copy. But no - it's the original masterpiece and it has now been restored and is on view till early 2009.

The scene is from Mark's Gospel, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men". The first surprise is the artist's assumption that Peter and Andrew are middle aged while Jesus is an unbearded youth. Not sure what to make of this - I suppose I never thought about relative ages of the disciples. And if Peter's mother in law was still around, and was ill but healed by Jesus, I suppose that would suggest Peter wasn't that old, at least not as old as in this painting?

Then there's Peter's neck - strong, corded, thick, and his hands, one holding fish and the other held out in a gesture of....what? The choice is between the fish and his liveliehood, or the emtpy hands of the disciple who leves it all and follows, and finds life. Peter's hand is at the centre of the painting, and has a three dimensional effect - it is open, empty, the gesture of a reasonable man questioning an unreasonable command. Andrew's hand is pointed at himself as if to say, Who? Me? You serious? And Jesus hands point to the future offstage, a gesture towards the unknown but travelling in the direction he points.

The contrast of the dark background in the top half of the painting and the shadow of light coming from the direction Jesus points, gives the painting a dramatic effect - not least because the only light part of the background is also on the shadow side of the figures. Not sure what that means - even if it means anything, other than that in the sharp crisis of decision, nothing is certain, obvious or predictable. Peter and Andrew are faced with an outrageous lack of options- fish or follow, stay or go, the safety of status quo or the risk of everything. Incredulity, confusion and no time to think it through; sometimes the greatest opportunities come once if at all.

What I can't easily convey, and what is lost in any print, scan or e-image of this painting, is the quality of light that spills from the faces, reflecting the mystery of revelation. You have to see it, sit before it, gaze at it, and feel the theologically charged impact of colour. The supernatural light is given added force by the white sash across Jesus shoulder and chest, reflected on Andrew's face, and creating an aura of concentrated intensity on each of the faces.

If I'd gone to Edinburgh, got off the train, walked to Holyroodhouse, sat for 15 minutes before this painting and then come home - it would have been more than worth it. My ticket allows me to have a years free entry to the Queen's Gallery - I'll be back every time I'm in Edinburgh. As a commentary on one of my favourite Gospel stories, it beats any amount of scholarly words.