Welcome to the Vatican. More precisely, to the Sistine Chapel, and to Michelangelo’s masterpieces in it. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of this chapel in the early 16th C. Down the centre are narratives from the book of Genesis - the creation stories and the story of Noah and around them he painted the prophets and sibyls as well as representations of Christ’s ancestors.
Why are we here? To look at the prophet Ezekiel who is one of the seven OT prophets depicted around the edges of the ceiling. The others are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Zechariah, Jonah, and Joel.

[Overhead Projection of Sistine Chapel]

[Overhead Projection of Close up of ceiling Sistine chapel]

[Overhead Projection of Ezekiel]

So here’s Ezekiel, who gave us this morning’s OT lesson. How has Michelangelo portrayed this prophet? Well, he’s larger than life, powerful, like a Hercules figure. He’s an idealised, energetic male form. Michelangelo has portrayed him in this way to emphasise Ezekiel’s power, his powers of prophecy, his stern messages, his visionary nature, the words that came from him that inspired awe and wonder amongst believers. Also I think he is meant to embody God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness and the mystery of the messages from God spoken through the prophet. Michelangelo used the male form as a vehicle for expression and we see this in Ezekiel.

Peter Stuart:  I wonder why Michelangelo left out the other nine prophets? After all, there are four major prophets and 12 minor ones in the Old Testament (major or minor in relation to size, not importance). Perhaps Michelangelo ran out of room. Or paint. Or even inspiration.

Phyllis Mossman: Well, for a start, he had to leave room for five Sibyls.

[Overhead Projection of Left Delphic Sibyl And on same screen Overhead Projection of Right Cumaean Sibyl]
Like these ones in the ceiling: the Delphic Sibyl on the left and the Cumaean Sibyl on the right. 
In Michelangelo’s mind, Old Testament prophets and Sibyls belonged together. ‘Sibyls’ were understood to be wise women of the pagan world who inhabited shrines and temples and caves and who were able to foretell the future. ‘Sybil’ is from the Greek word for ‘prophetess’. The number of Sibyls was reckoned differently through the ages – medieval Christians thought there were up to 12 of them.
They could have been chosen here to represent a wide geographic coverage, with the sibyls coming from Africa, Asia, Greece and Ionia.
These women are like the prophet Ezekiel, painted as powerful idealised human beings – beyond the realm of naturalism. Indeed, we know from sketches of the nude figures that the artist drew in preparation for these paintings of the Sibyls that Michelangelo used male models.
The five depicted here are each said to have prophesied the coming of Christ. The Cumaean Sibyl, for example seen on the right, is quoted by Virgil as declaring that “a new progeny of Heaven” would bring about a return of the “Golden Age”. This was later interpreted by Christians as referring to Jesus.
Peter Stuart: I’ve been to Delphi, and I was unexpectedly impressed. It’s a wonderful place, reflecting the good side of pre-Christian paganism. I’ve got no difficulties with the idea that there was a measure of truth in pagan religion which in some sense prepared the way for Christianity.  But I do have a problem with the idea that predicting the future is the essence of ‘prophecy’. Even though this is the popular understanding of the word.

[Overhead Projection of Fra Angelico Mystic Wheel]

Let’s look at Fra Angelico’s ‘The prophet Ezekiel’s Mystic Wheel’. It’s in Florence, at another wonderful place, the Convent of San Marco, where so many of his paintings still are. Now there are two circles; the outer circle has 12 figures from the Old Testament, including Ezekiel and six other prophets. The inner circle has eight figures, including the four gospel writers, along with the epistle writers Peter and Paul and James and Jude. The idea here is that the Old Testament is a preparation for the New Testament, which is hidden within the Old.
Phyllis Mossman: It’s probably worth noting the significance of the numbers: seven and twelve….seven is a ‘perfect’ number, in the Scriptures and in the thinking of the time of Fra Angelico and Michelangelo. And ‘twelve’ also represents completeness.
Fra Angelico was another Renaissance painter who worked in the century before Michelangelo. He was an interesting combination of being an artist and a member of the Observantist Dominican convents of Fiesole and then San Marco in Florence. A biographer of the day Giorgio Vasari, makes much of how devout the painter Fra Angelico was and how appropriate he was to paint religious images. I quote from Vasari: 
“artists who devote themselves to work of a religious or holy kind ought themselves to be genuinely holy and religious… Fra Angelico lived chastely, withdrawn from the snares of the world. He would often comment that anyone practising the art of painting needed a quiet and untroubled life and the man who occupies himself with the things of Christ should live with Christ.”
But, back to our prophets and sibyls:  What’s the essential difference then between the Sibyls and the Old Testament prophets? What were the Old Testament prophets really all about?
Peter Stuart: The prophets and the whole Old Testament do prepare the way for Christ; they cumulatively point towards the coming of the Messiah. And within some of the prophets there are some specific predictions about the future which are remarkably fulfilled in the person of Christ. For example, the Suffering Servant songs in Isaiah take on huge significance when we look at Jesus. However, the Old Testament prophets are significant in their own right primarily as messengers of God to the people of their own day.
It’s sometimes said they were forth-tellers, not essentially foretellers of the future saying ‘this is what is going to happen’. Instead, they say to their generation, ‘this is what is going to happen if you keep on doing ABC or fail to do XYZ.’. They warn. 
AND they say ‘this is what I God am going to do to save you in spite of what you and the nations are doing. They promise.
AND they often allow for the possibility of God ‘changing his mind’ in response to new circumstances on earth.

Phyllis Mossman: And the Biblical prophets also look backwards in time. They look back to God’s Covenant with Abraham and Moses and David, and call God’s People to return to it. They denounce two main sorts of breaches of that Covenant - worship of other gods and cultic impurity, and social injustice. They are less often concerned with sexual morals.
They were stern characters, and artists have portrayed them as such. We haven’t a clue what they looked like really, so artists can have a field day.
[Overhead Projection of Left John the Baptist – Donatello  Overhead Projection of Right James K Baxter – photograph]
They’ve created a prophetic stereotype: think John the Baptist think James K Baxter. But in fact they came from various backgrounds and probably looked very different from one another. Isaiah came from within the royal court; Amos was a shepherd; Jeremiah was the son of a Priest. 
[Overhead Projection of Michelangelo’s Ezekiel again  Overhead Projection of with detail of his head –same slide]

Peter Stuart: The Biblical prophets usually got their message across by the spoken word, and also by prophetic action. The Old Testament record of their words is often disordered, sometimes chaotic. Prophets are portrayed as clutching scrolls, written parchments (as is Ezekiel here), but it’s highly unlikely this is how their contemporaries saw them.
 
They spoke or acted under direct inspiration.  (Just compare them with the considered polished reflections of the wisdom writers in the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes).
• Earlier prophets tended to say ‘The Word of the Lord came to me’ and launch into ‘Thus saith the Lord’. Later prophets like Ezekiel tended to say ‘The Spirit said to me’, and later still sometimes ‘an angel of God said to me’.
[Overhead Projection of Sebastiano del Piombo ]
• The word ‘angel’ comes from the Greek angellos, meaning messenger. So an angel speaking to a prophet is a heavenly messenger speaking to an earthly messenger. Thus this picture by the Renaissance artist Sebastiano del Piombo shows God being distanced from this world.
[Overhead Projection of Benjamin West]
• Prophets have to speak what’s given them, at whatever cost. And be obedient. This picture by the American artist Benjamin West portrays the grim little story about the unnamed prophet in the book of Kings who didn’t strictly obey God’s instructions and on his way home was killed by a lion.
• Each prophet has his own message for his own particular time though there is an underlying unity amongst them all.
[Overhead Projection of Raphael Ezekiel]
 Phyllis Mossman:  And now we come to Ezekiel:  Note that he
• comes after Jeremiah, who warned  about the fall of Jerusalem as God’s judgement on the disobedience of Judah. Jeremiah’s warnings came true. Ezekiel (who was among the first group of exiles taken to Babylonia in 597 BC) also warns very powerfully of judgement, and this morning’s reading is a call to repentance and the assurance of restoration for those who repent. 33:7 ‘You will take messages from me and carry my warnings to them’.
[ Overhead Projection of Blake]
• There’s a mysterious and compelling vision of God at the beginning of Ezekiel’s ministry as prophet. Ezekiel then tried to put the inexpressible into words – and painters after him tried to put the inexpressible into images.  
Peter Stuart:
• Ezekiel brings a new emphasis on individual responsibility as well as collective responsibility. And so when we read Ezekiel we notice his words about the judgement of penalty or reward for the individual - which is what today’s reading is about.  Ezekiel is saying we can’t hide behind others, even though we are implicated in the actions of others. And the individual has a duty to call others to repentance; if he doesn’t, then he’s implicated in the other’s sin; silence means condoning sin. This is especially true of the prophet, who is the sentinel, the watchman. Verse 7 ‘So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.’
[Overhead Projection of Gustav Dore Dry Bones Overhead Projection of Colin McCahon Dry bones (on same screen)]
• Ezekiel also offers collective hope in the midst of exile in Babylon and of the spiritual despair after the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of national freedom - the valley of the dry bones. Here is how two artists have pictured it: Gustave Dore and our own Colin McCahon. This image of the valley of dry bones is just that, an image or a metaphor, but artists and song writers get carried away with this one, ‘the head-bone connected to the neck-bone, the neckbone connected to the backbone, now hear the word of the Lord’ etc
• Within this overall promise of hope, Ezekiel prophesies the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple, and outlines the ideal worship in it.
• And Ezekiel assures Israel that God will come and shepherd His people Himself i.e. be a just ruler, replacing the false shepherds, the rulers of Israel and Judah who fleeced the people.
We could say a lot more about Ezekiel, but there’s no time.
Now with the coming of Jesus, who is the full and complete revelation of God, the ‘Word made flesh’, the prophetic task in one sense came to an end. Direct inspiration to reveal ‘the word of God’ ceased. Another way of putting this is to say that the canon of Scripture is closed. Christians don’t keep adding books to the Bible – unlike the Mormons, for example.
Phyllis Mossman:  However, God does still seem to raise up people who breathe the spirit of the Old Testament prophets, and who challenge and reapply the ancient truths in our own day. And like the Old Testament prophets, these people can come from unlikely directions and places. Some are artists, who make us look afresh at the world, sometimes uncomfortably. One such uncomfortable artist in our own country was Colin McCahon, who responded with a questioning prophet’s soul to the global currents and the darker depths of New Zealand in the last half century. His works often portrayed his explorations of personal religious faith and spirituality, using Ezekiel and many other Scripture passages.

[Overhead Projection of Colin McCahon Storm warning]

McCahon was a visionary, whose works exude a mystery and power that’s akin to the powerful images on the Sistine Chapel ceiling that we started with. And so we finish with this painting of his, Storm Warning, 1980-81, and with the words he uses within it (from the 2nd letter to Timothy):

YOU MUST FACE THE FACT
The final age of this world
Is to be a time of troubles.
Men will love nothing but
Money and self. They will be
arrogant, boastful and abusive;
 with no respect for parents,
no gratitude, no piety, no natural affections
they will be implacable in their hatreds.

Peter Stuart:  He that has ears to hear, let him hear.

A presentation in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 7 September 2008, by Phyllis Mossman and Peter Stuart.

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