Anger, pity, always, most, forgive.
It is the language we surrender by.
It is the language where we have to live... (Elizabeth Jennings).
Today's world, contemporary culture, current social realities - whatever collective abstract nouns we use to describe where and when we live, one feature of it that increasingly troubles me is an unforgiving spirit that extends from personal, to social, to international and even global relationships. The words of Elizabeth Jennings are spiritually wise, but they are also politically necessary. Events in Pakistan and Kenya are merely the latest occasions for simmering hatred and repressed suspicions to erupt in violence and legitimised retaliation. Reading Christopher Wood's tome, Victorian Painting the other night, and turning over in my mind a definition of forgiveness written years ago, in the Apostle Paul's Elizabethan English, "I am persuaded....". I am persuaded that forgiveness is the language where we have to live. And retaliation, recrimination, litigation, compensation, satisfaction, strict justice, confrontation, payback, is the language where usually something, or worse someone, has to die.
So. A second generation pre-Raphaelite artist, whose piety was inspired and formed by the example of John Henry Newman, and whose religious imagination conceived some of the most telling works of religious art; and a mid-20th Century Secretary General of the United Nations whose personal diary reveals the sacrificial nature of Christian commitment and who died in circumstances still unexplained. Two men from different centuries, one from England and one from Denmark, one a Victorian artist the other a political diplomat, one who trusted imagination as the way to truth, the other insisting on the world of real human affairs as the place where truth is to be lived. But two men of such integrity that their different ways of embodying the truth that commanded their conscience, became for them another art form expressed in the ultimate human art medium - human life portrayed with accuracy and beauty through the demanding artistic discipline of vocational obedience to Christ. Both were skilled in the language of forgiveness, 'the language we surrender by. The language where we have to live'.
Burne-Jones' painting, The Merciful Knight represents the Victorian fascination with medieval chivalry and honour. But what is portrayed in the picture is the subversion of the knight's code of honour by a higher call. The kneeling knight has earlier forgiven another for the murder of his kinsman. He has stopped at a wayside shrine to pray, and finds himself embraced by the wooden crucified Jesus whose hands are unpinned in order to reach out to the one who is forgiven as he forgave. The helmet is removed revealing the face of the knight as he faces the crucified Christ and is fully and deeply known. The sword is laid down, on the left hand side, the hilt not easily accessible to his right hand. The symbols of power and worldly status are thus surrendered, at the feet of Christ crucified. In a reversal of Jesus prayer for his crucifiers who were oblivious of the eternal consequences of a routine execution, the painting shows that same eternal love reaching out, without the protection of armour, from an instrument of inhuman cruelty to affirm, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
Interestingly, and just perhaps intentionally, The Merciful Knight is an alternative portrayal of atonement, in which the medieval code of offended honour requiring satisfaction, is subverted by a Knight who forgoes the cultural norm of satisfied honour and in an act of counter-cultural foolishness, forgives the offender. And it is this unreasonable, indeed unchivalrous act of mercy which brings him into the embrace of the Crucified God, as his individual act of forgiveness is drawn into the redemptive suffering of Christ.
Dag Hammarskjold's slim volume Markings, is one of the 20th Century's most intriguing spiritual documents. Notes, quotes, thoughts, prayers, complaints, jotted in a diary found only after his death, revealed a man whose interior world was profoundly influential in how he construed the world of political action. It was in this lean and spare volume of political spirituality and personal longing that I first encountered Hammarskjold's childlike definition of forgiveness. Childlike isn't the same as juvenile or reductionist. The word is used in the 'Except you become as little children' sense of what the kingdom of God is about. "Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle, by which what is broken is again made whole, and what is soiled is again made clean." The most childlike wish when faced with the harsh reality of the broken favourite toy, is that it be made like new, made whole as if the brokenness hadn't happened. And when newness is soiled, or beauty spoilt, the same childlike longing is for someone to make it clean. The decisive word is 'again', because what is described is renewal, restoration, a process of healing and repair that is costly but enduring.
One of the most cited lines from Markings asserts, 'In our era the road to holiness necessarily runs through the world of action'. Hammarskjold knew, as our own age must rediscover, that forgiveness is more an activity than an emotional stance, a making whole and a making clean by acting mercifully and as peacemaker. Burne Jones spent much of his creative energy painting themes and images which celebrated a world where 'beauty is beautiful' and where the highest norm is not displayed by personal honour defended by shedding blood. On the contrary, The Merciful Knight, is one who in the world of necessity and action, enacts forgiveness, is embraced by the crucified Christ, and speaks the language where, if our own world is to have a future, we have to live.
Enjoyed this post Jim.
Posted by: saint | January 03, 2008 at 03:48 PM
I really enjoyed this post - it seemed to be speaking directly about a situation where I didn't know what advice to offer. Now I know.
Thank you
Posted by: Endlessly Restless | January 03, 2008 at 09:09 PM
A beautiful post Jim.
What is the true nature of God's majesty? It is not material vastness, nor the majesty of force, nor the majesty of mystery. It is not the majesty of thought, great as thought is. The true majesty of God is his mercy. That is the thing he did which no mere human being would ever have done - he had mercy on all flesh. His greatness was not in his loftiness, but in his nearness. He was great not because he was above feeling, but because he would feel as no person could. God's majesty is saturated through and through with his forgiving love, which comes out most of all in his treatment of sin.
Posted by: Jason Goroncy | January 03, 2008 at 09:21 PM