Living Wittily

Greet Epenetus, Ampliatus, Rufus and Anyone Else Who Knows Me!

I have a letter, now 47 years old, written by an elderly widow, in which the first words are, "Dear Pastor, while I’m waiting for the tatties to boil”. She was writing to me on Sunday after the morning service to encourage her minister. At the end of it she mentions a couple of folk in the church with equal appreciation and gratitude to God.

I mention this because I want to recommend that you read part of a letter that was written to a church made up of all kinds of folk, some of them I guess not unlike Mrs Todd, the elderly saint who made it her mission to encourage the minister.

Romans chapter 16.1-17 is a long list of greetings from Paul to various friends, colleagues and other Christians whose presence in his life had been blessing, for him and in the life of the Church in Rome.

Here’s some of Paul’s reasons for thanking God for some of his fellow Christians. “They risked their lives for me.” “My dear friend Epenetus who was the first convert to Christ in Asia.” “My relatives who have been in prison with me.” “Greet Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord.” “Greet those women who work hard in the Lord.” Then he greets Rufus, “chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me too.” And so on.

Read it for yourself. Seventeen times Paul says Greet… the church…my dear friend…our fellow workers…all the saints. You know how at a vote of thanks there’s always the worry that someone will be missed out and be offended? No such problems with Paul. He’s on a thanksgiving roll. The word he uses, “Greet”, means to warmly welcome, to say hello and wish someone well. It also means in this letter pass on my good wishes, remind them of me and my affection for them. In fact he finishes the list with “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

What is very clear from this catalogue of friendships and affection is that Christian fellowship runs deep, and the love of God is a powerful current that runs through the Body of Christ. There’s a lot of heart searching going on about how local churches, churches like ourselves, rebuild and recover their impetus, energy and vision after all the disruptions during the pandemic. And there’s no doubt a lot of thinking, praying, talking, praying, deciding and praying will have to be done!

But there’s something that hasn’t changed, and shouldn’t change. Two things actually. Paul mentions them in this letter to the Romans. “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.” (Romans 5.5) We love because God first loved us – not only so, but the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us, to live in our hearts and to inhabit and guide the church opf Jesus, wherever it is locally expressed.

So yes, let’s think and plan and pray and seek to discern the mind of Christ as in all our churches  we look to our future together. But we do so as those transformed by the outpouring of God’s love and the gift of God’s Spirit. Two things – (1) God’s love poured into our hearts, and (2) the Holy Spirit, the Gift that keeps on giving, the Giving Gift of God, the Giver of Gifts to the people of God.

God’s love for us, God’s love in us and flowing through us is the great presupposition of Christian fellowship in any and every church seeking to be faithful to Jesus. In the Body of Christ, our love for each other presupposes God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and overflowing in love, joy and hopefulness for our life together. That’s one great presupposition – and it changes everything. Charles Wesley gave us the exact words for our prayer:

O Thou who camest from above, the pure celestial fire to impart.

Kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart.

Jesus confirm my heart’s desire to work, and speak, and think for Thee;

Still let me guard the holy fire and still stir up thy gift in me.

 

An Exercise in Visual Exegesis. "The Holy City." Revelation 21.9-27.

Over the past two months or so I've been working away on the new tapestry. The idea came from a reading from the Book of Revelation, chapter 21.9-27. I knew roughly what I wanted to do, but like a number of previous projects, I tried to listen to the text and find ways of giving image, form and colour to what is a remarkably precise description of the Holy City.

The angel with a measuring rod lays out the geometric contours of a celestial cube, a city of inconceivable dimensions. But this is Heaven, so mathematics comes into conversation with eschatology, geometry is informed by theology, and the architect is drawing up a blueprint for a city where there will be inhabitants "from every tribe and language and people and nation."

Throughout John's Revelation the figure of the Lamb is central, enthroned, the focus of worship and the guarantor of the victory of God. So John sees, and says in a pivotal passage,

"I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb is its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their treasures into it" (19.22.3-5 

So I started at the centre and worked out. I decided to use three basic geometric shapes; the square, the triangle and the circle. The full central panel is done in tent stitch allowing the mixing and detail of colours. The centre of the City is represented by the small and intermediate squares. Beyond them are the 12 large triangles, which represent the 12 foundation stones of the city walls. Each is the colour of one of the precious stones described in 19.19-20.

The large square is superimposed on a circle, representing a universe filled with the glory of God, emanating from the centre of the Holy City. Once the basic outline was worked came the tricky part of embroidering with metal threads, - copper, silver and gold. These are notoriously difficult to work without them breaking, snagging or getting into a fankle on the underside of the canvas.

I chose to use them because the entire descriptive passage is about a city the glitters and glistens and that is an integrated layout with streets of gold, and everything converging on the centre. Like a gold and silver maze, these threads can be followed from the edges, through the circle, triangles and squares to the small central panel. 

Based on the descriptions of the Lamb in Revelation 5.6 and 12, and the reference here in ch.19.22 and 23 I opted for a small cross, from which everything begins and towards which everything returns. The metal threads emanate in all four directions from the centre of the cross, with the effect of making the entire tapestry crucicentric, the cross emphasised not by its size, but by the outward movement of increasingly complex geometric connections.

While doing all of this, every day I read the passage, and often when working it I listened to certain pieces of music including the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, "Worthy is the Lamb", various versions of "The Holy City," Jessye Norman "Sanctus" by Gounod, Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, Andrea Bocelli "The Lord's Prayer", Bonhoeffer's "Von guten Mächten" and a variety of other music from Mozart's Laudate Dominum to a big sing version of Crown Him with Many Crowns!

I read commentaries on the passage, did my own exegesis of the text, and was glad that some of them were as puzzled as me about what colour those blessed precious foundation stones would have been! I doubt if any one visual representation can do justice to such a multi-layered text, but it seemed important to make some attempt to visualise, however one dimensionally, the impossibly beautiful vision of God's reconciliation of all things in Christ. Worthy is the Lamb! 

This is now the seventh tapestry I have completed based on a biblical text, and intentionally using the practice of contemplative tapestry work. It's a form of visual exegesis, each one an engagement with the text at a serious level of scholarly study, but also with imaginative freedom nurtured by music, prayer and seeking to inhabit the text. For myself, it is a form of sacrament, a textured and tactile expression of something much deeper than the pattern, the colours and the action itself. By such a process of inhabiting the text, eventually and perhaps, there is a sense that the text is inhabiting me.