Diego Velázquez (1599 – 1660), Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1618, oil on canvas, 60 x 103.5 cm, National Gallery, London

Phyllis:
What do we ourselves bring to the experience of looking at a work of art? And what do we ourselves bring when we seek to understand a story in the Bible? Today we’re going to explore the importance of becoming aware of what has shaped the artist or the writer, and aware of what is shaping us. Aware of what we can call ‘context’, at least the context of the actual painting of the picture, or the writing of the story, and aware also of our own context. And there may be other contexts to become aware of as well.

This painting we’re seeing now gives us a good opportunity to explore simultaneously the idea of context for understanding both art and the Bible. Because this is a painting about a story in the Bible, one we’ve already heard read this morning. It’s a painting by Diego Velázquez, entitled Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, painted in 1618.

Peter:
Hold on, how do you and I know it’s about Mary and Martha? It doesn’t immediately look like that story to me – there are too many people in it. And was it always entitled Christ in the House of Martha and Mary?

Phyllis:
Don’t be difficult. Artists should always be allowed a bit of creative licence. But you’re right; the painting wasn’t always called Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. It may have just been called  Kitchen scene. So even the title of a work of art can shape the way we approach it.

Peter:
Just as the names that have been given to some of the parables shape the way we approach them. Like ‘The Good Samaritan’ which we heard read last Sunday – nowhere in the parable is the Samaritan called ‘good’, and were no other Samaritans ‘good’? Or like ‘The prodigal son’ – that concentrates our attention on the younger son, whereas in actual fact all three figures in the parable are important. But let’s get back to the context of this painting.

Phyllis:
I think we could talk about two contexts, the personal context of the artist who painted it, Diego Velázquez, and the time and place in which it was painted – in 17th century Seville in Spain

First, the artist’s personal context. Velázquez was born in 1599 in Seville in southern Spain, a wealthy city with a thriving artistic community. In 1617, Velázquez finished his apprenticeship and was granted the right to set up his own studio. A year later, in 1618, he married, so this painting was made in the same year that he was married.

It’s an early work painted before his rise to becoming court artist to King Philip IV, King of Spain in the 1620s. During his early years in Seville, Velázquez produced traditional religious works, as well as ‘bodegones’ – meaning ‘tavern scenes’ or paintings of everyday life, often combined with a still life as seen in the objects on the table here. These genre scenes show everyday people. 

In this work we see Velázquez combining the two subjects: the religious story with the genre scene of everyday life. The painting’s layout is influenced by Flemish paintings and engravings which also combined kitchen scenes with biblical subjects and where still life objects were often symbolic. (viz. The Four Elements: Fire, painted by Beuckelaer, 1570, which Velázquez may have seen as an engraving).

Peter:
And he may also have been happily watching his new wife dutifully cooking him dinner.

Phyllis:
I’ll ignore that. Then there’s the 17th century Seville context. Seville was one of the most important religious and wealthy commercial centres in Spain. Trade with the New World was based in Seville. It was also an important centre for the Spanish Inquisition. Velázquez trained under Francisco Pacheco, his future father in law, and the writer of a Treatise on Art which has a biography of Velazquez in it.

But Pacheco was also the art censor for the Spanish Inquisition during the time of the Counter Reformation. His Treatise on art includes rules for the orthodox treatment of Christian subject matter, setting doctrinal standards for religious painting, a serious matter in Spain during the Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition Tribunal gave Pacheco responsibility for inspecting the art of his colleagues in Seville to check if it fitted the set repertory of iconographic standards for religious painting. For instance, art had to be didactic, focus on the importance of the passion stories, and be realistic. Pacheco believed that the main aim of painting was to inspire people ‘to adore and love God and to cultivate piety’. So the Counter Reformation was very prescriptive in its approach to art-making.

Following on from that, we need to think about the part that art plays in the tradition of the interpretation of scripture. Here we see not only an artist interpreting the message of scripture himself within the traditions of the art making of his period, but also an artist following the prescriptions of the Inquisition about how scripture was to be portrayed.

# detail of two foreground figures

So the two figures in the foreground (seen in contemporary 17th century Spanish dress) could be symbolic. They may symbolise a Martha and Mary from Velázquez’s own time. The painting may be what is called a vanitas, influenced by Flemish art at the time – a moralising painting reminding us of our mortality – with the old woman a counter to the youthfulness of the maid, as a sharp reminder of the fact that we will all die and must live our lives with the aim of salvation always at the forefront.

Or extending this idea – the maid could be a rather unhappy contemporaneous Martha with an older woman who is reminding her of the story in the Bible of Martha and Mary and Jesus, as she is pointing to the scene (whether through an aperture or in a picture on the wall). The painting teases us, invites us to exercise our imaginations about what’s going on.

 # whole image again

Interestingly, the painting has in fact sometimes been thought of as having a second painting within it, a painting of the story of Jesus and Martha and Mary on the wall of the kitchen. Or it has been understood as a kitchen scene with a mirror in it reflecting the folk we see here. Velazquez liked to experiment with paintings within paintings.

The full title of the painting is Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, but this was not the original title. As you said earlier, the present title influences the way we approach the painting.

Peter:
I understand that restoration work was done in 1964 on the painting, at the National Gallery in London. And it revealed that, rather than a painting within the painting, or a mirror on the wall, what we see at the back right is actually an aperture or kitchen hatch in the wall, opening into the next room, with a view of three figures there.

# hatch with scene of Jesus, Martha and Mary

So this picture of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is a kitchen scene, but on the back wall is an actual hatch opening from the kitchen revealing Christ addressing Mary,  with Martha in the background.

Now when Martha complained to Christ that she was left to prepare the meal alone while Mary sat listening to him, Christ is understood to have replied: ‘Mary has taken that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.’

# whole image again

Phyllis:
To convey the scriptural message, rather than an idealised painting, Velázquez has used real models in his studio. So here we see un-idealised figures – the reddened hand of the hardworking maid, the wrinkled brow and veined hand of the older woman, the practical clothing they are wearing.

This was consistent with the ideas of Counter Reformation Spain in that the realistic figures are accessible to the viewer who can empathise with them and view them as historical fact. This places the picture very much into the context of 17th Century Spain.

# still life details on the table

The still life items too are amazingly realistic, and were probably painted from the artist’s own household, as they appear in other genre paintings by Velázquez from the same time.

On the table are a number of foods, perhaps the ingredients of an Aioli; garlic mayonnaise made to put on fish. We see eggs, chilli pepper and garlic cloves, and a jar of oil, as well as the fish. These are being prepared by the maid who represents Martha.

There’s painstaking attention to surface appearances. Look at the variety of textures and light effects – from the metallic sheen of the brass mortar and pestle to the glazed and matt finishes of the earthenware dishes and jug, to the amazing matt white of the two eggs and the sheen on the fish.

# whole image again

An intense beam of light falls from an unseen source into the dark kitchen. The dramatic contrasts of light and shade model both the figures and the objects giving them a 3 dimensional solidity.

Peter:
What I want to know is what the older woman is saying to the kitchen maid. Perhaps something like: ‘It looks like Mary’s not going to help you. So you’re on your own again. And by the way, you do realise, don’t you, that there are twelve disciples coming to dinner as well?’

Anyway, we need to think of the painting in this 17th Century context: it’s an early work by the artist in the year that he married and a painting made in the wealthy trade and religious centre of Seville where the effects of the Inquisition were being felt.

Incidentally, let’s not forget that part of that context is the position of women in 17th Century Spain. A couple of years ago I was in the ancient university town of Salamanca – a sort of Spanish Oxford – and there seemed to be a lot of women around. I doubt whether there would have been any women students there in 17th Century Spain, let alone lecturers in Art History. In those days women knew their place – the place God, or at least men, had assigned to them.

Let’s turn now to the context of the scriptural sources for this subject matter – the context of Luke’s story written in the 1st century. 

The account of Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary comes after the story in Luke chapter 10 where Jesus is seen resolutely journeying to Jerusalem, appointing his seventy helpers to spread the word, as he knew that his time on this earth was to be short. So there’s a sense of urgency here.

It also follows the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus teaches about what it means to be his follower. So Jesus was at this time focusing on teaching about ministry, knowing that his time on this earth was short.

The story of Martha and Mary is set in Bethany just over 3 kilometres east of Jerusalem. In John’s Gospel, you remember, Martha and Mary were the sisters of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead.

But before we explore this Scriptural context, we need to deal first with some problems about the text itself.  You see, the text of the story is what we call ‘corrupt’. In other words, the original manuscripts have variant readings of what Jesus actually said. The four main ones are:
1. Martha, Martha, Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken from her (some very brief words from Jesus)
2. Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful. For Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken from her
3. Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but few things are needful, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken from her. And then one from a scribe copying manuscripts who has both (2) an (3 ) in front of him and decides to play safe:
4. Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but few things are needful, or one, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.    

The scholars opt for either the 2nd or 3rd, and argue for ever. And it can affect our interpretations – of which there are a number.

Phyllis:
A very significant part of the 1st Century Palestinian context is the social importance of the duty of hospitality, and the social prestige of a household rightly performing (or failing to perform) that duty, and the weight of that duty falling on women.

So one interpretation, building on one of the variants – ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but few things are needful’ – is that Jesus is saying ‘Martha, Mary’s got it right, don’t go to all that trouble, we only need something simple‘.  Who knows? That could perhaps have been what actually happened. But there seems to be more to it than that. It doesn’t explain the reference to the ‘good thing’ which Mary has chosen ‘which shall not be taken away from her.’ And it’s the question about what that ‘good thing’ is or symbolises which has teased the minds of the interpreters down the centuries.

There’s another part of the context, and that’s the fact that women in 1st Century Palestine were not permitted to be disciples of a Rabbi and instructed by him in Torah, the Jewish Law. And so some modern feminist interpreters have said that the real meaning of the story is that Jesus the Teacher was breaking this pattern and treating Mary as a disciple, while Martha was still trapped in the traditional role for women. So for them this is a story about gender equality; they bring their feminism to the story. Of course some equally feminist women get uptight about the story and identify with Martha against Mary, while not seeing the significance of being with Jesus.

Peter:
Not so long after Luke’s Gospel was written, people started to bring their own agendas to the story, agendas arising from their own context. For example, the context of the tension with Judaism (both within and beyond the Church) resulted in two rather similar interpretations:
- Mary is seen as the ‘type’ or exemplar of Gentile Christianity, Martha the ‘type’ of Jewish Christianity, or
- The ‘few things’ Jesus refers to stand for the Gospel commandments of love in contrast to ‘the many things” which stand for the numerous commandments of the Jewish Law. A variant of this interpretation is a contrast between the simplicity of Christ and his disciples, and the petty legalism of Jewish leaders.

Phyllis:
A later interpretation, one which was still part of the context at the time Velazquez was living, was that Mary is the type, the examplar, of the contemplative life, Martha of the active practical life. By the Middle Ages this had developed into the teaching that the monastic life is superior to ordinary lay life. Monasteries were a very important part of medieval society, and of 17th Century Spain. This interpretation of the Gospel story is often still heard, even though modern monks and nuns would repudiate any such superiority, and contemplative prayer is seen nowadays as the potential spirituality of all baptised Christians.

There’s another interpretation arising partly from the Reformation and Counter-Reformation context. During that period there were huge arguments about the relationship of ‘faith’ to ‘works’. But this particular interpretation also plausibly rises from the context of the Mary and Martha story within Luke’s Gospel itself. You see the story in Luke follows immediately after Jesus’ telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan (which we heard last Sunday). Is Luke himself re-contextualising the original Martha and Mary story, to emphasise that practical benevolence is not enough, and must be combined with faith in Jesus and communion with Jesus? 

Peter:
And then there’s the context of the whole sweep of Scripture, in which single-mindedness is commended so that we concentrate on one thing rather than dissipating energies on many. For example, see Ecclesiastes 11.9 ‘Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgement’. Mary would thus stand for single-mindedness, whereas Martha was multi-tasking, focussing on lesser material things and in the process losing the plot.

I’m attracted to this interpretation, but I think it’s making too general a point, and ignores the specific context of Jesus’ ministry.  I think that the key to the interpretation of the story may be Jesus’ words in Luke 12:29-31: ‘Do not set your minds on what you are to eat or drink; do not be anxious. These are all things that occupy the minds of the Gentiles, but your Father knows that you need them. No, set your minds on his kingdom, and the rest will come to you as well’. So Mary would stand not simply for single-mindedness in general, but the single-mindedness of those who seek the Kingdom of God above all things. Whereas Martha, who is immersed in her little corner of the workaday world, fails to discern the crucial meaning of the moment, to discern the signs of the times. Jesus is preaching and bringing in the Kingdom of God. Mary is with him, where the action is.

 Phyllis:
 So – you can make your own choice about the options, which by the way are not all mutually exclusive. Where do you find yourself in the story and in the painting? What are you bringing to them? How do they speak to you? Are you a Martha, or a Mary, or both?

And perhaps most importantly – do you really want to sit at the Lord’s feet and be with him? And walk with him into the Kingdom? And are you doing it?

A presentation given by Phyllis Mossman and Peter Stuart, in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 18 July 2010.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne by the Ven Damon Plimmer, on Sunday, 27 June 2010

 A sermon preached in St Alban’s Church, Eastbourne, on Sunday 30 May 2010, by the Venerable Damon Plimmer.

So what to do to get it right – living right?
I suggest that in the words of Dave Andrew, Our mission is to restore the reputation of God. Not ourselves, not the banks or financial managers, but God.

The Gospel for the day gives us an insight into how easy it is for the church itself to damage the reputation of God either by turning people off or driving them away to search for a better life in materialism, lotto or chemical self-medication.
The story in John 2.13-22, of the money changers and Jesus treatment of them is a story about losing the plot:
No not Jesus, although at first sight his violent action might have us wondering, but the money changers who as part of the Temple Corporate had smothered the meaning of the temple and so damaged the reputation of God.
In Jesus time the temple in Jerusalem had become an industry employing about 10,000 people one way or another.
Worshipping God became buried under a layer of industrial enterprise.

And we face the same risks today, of getting sidetracked so that the trimmings, the add-ons can easily get in the road of worshipping God. And in doing so, we risk harming the reputation of God.
I think the test we can run on whatever we do as church, is to ask ourselves if what we are doing is for God’s mission –to ask if worship, witness, nurture, serving and caring are our priorities and govern what we do and how we go about that.
As well,
• Are we an hospitable people?
• Are we a righteous people – seeking to be fair in the way we relate to others.
• And above all, does what we do reflect the Love of God for that is what Jesus wants us to do.

If we are all that then we are helping to restore the reputation of God in the eyes of a questioning world.
As we celebrate our centennial here at S.Albans it is an opportune time to re-commit to the mission of the church for in doing that we can show others the One True Holy God we know to be caring, just, accepting and accessible. That’s our job. And that is the plot.

A sermon at the St Alban’s Centenary Service, at St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 16 May 2010, by The Right Reverend Dr Tom Brown.

# IMAGE
Gordon’s Tomb or the Garden Tomb

For myself, I have two main mental images, both drawn from my time in Jerusalem during one Holy Week many years ago. The first is my memory of what’s known as Gordon’s Tomb or the Garden Tomb, a lovely serene spot in Jerusalem which came to prominence a century and a half ago and which Protestant pilgrims often make the centre of their devotion today. I think many Sunday School pictures of the Resurrection draw on this particular ‘Garden Tomb’. When I read the Gospel accounts of the empty tomb, my memories of Gordon’s Tomb automatically surface within me, even though my mind is saying ‘no, no, no’. ‘No’, because the problem is, archaeologists are certain that that’s not the place where Jesus was buried. But no matter, we all need visual aids for our meditations.

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Church of the Holy Sepulchre

My other mental image is very different. It’s one of light bursting out, driving out darkness. And it comes from the Easter Eve service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or as the Orthodox Church calls it, the Church of the Resurrection), in Jerusalem.

This building covers the traditional site of Jesus’ tomb, and of His crucifixion nearby, and archaeologists and other scholars make a strong case for the accuracy of the tradition. Unfortunately the building itself is an ugly hotchpotch – so be warned if you’re going there. But the Easter Vigil there is incredibly powerful. In the darkness a light is kindled within a hollowed-out rock space believed to be what’s left of the original tomb, and the flame is handed out to runners holding bundles of tapers which they light and race with to every corner of the labyrinthine building, and then light each worshipper’s taper. There’s an explosion of light, and utter pandemonium. Not at all ‘Anglican’- but this picture actually comes from Peter Benge, Vicar of St James Lower Hutt, who’s on study leave in Jerusalem right now!

#IMAGE
Jose Clemente Orozco,  (1883-1949), The White House, 1925-28

Phyllis Mossman:
But back to the Biblical sources. What actually happened at the actual resurrection of Jesus? After all, no witnesses were there inside the tomb. And the oldest Gospel account, that of Mark, is very mysterious. The women found the tomb empty, and were afraid, and fled. Full stop.

This painting by Mexican artist Jose Clemente Orozco, painted in the 1920s, captures something of the starkness of the description in Mark… ‘Then they went out and ran away from the tomb, trembling with amazement. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ (Mark 16:

# IMAGE
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606 – 1669), The Resurrection of Christ, oil on canvas ca. 1635/39,  Munich

The Bible doesn’t really tell us what actually happened at the moment of the Resurrection, so artists have had to use their imagination and artistic licence. Matthew, of all the four Gospels, seeks most to fill in the gaps of the mystery. The 17th Century Dutch artist, Rembrandt, paints the moment, described by Matthew (28:2-4) when the guards flee from the angel descending from heaven.
‘Suddenly there was a violent earthquake; an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone, and sat down on it. His face shone like lightning; his garments were white as snow. At the sight of him the guards shook with fear and fell to the ground as though dead.’
Powerful words and a powerful painting to illustrate the passage. The use of light and dark is very dramatic as is the strong diagonal across the composition.
Now compare that image with this one by …

# IMAGE
Piero della Francesca, ‘The Resurrection’

… the 15th century Italian artist, Piero della Francesca, of ‘The Resurrection’

Here’s a very powerful muscular Christ rising out of his tomb, holding his winding sheet around his body and in the other hand the red cross banner of his triumph over death. He stares directly and compellingly at us. The tomb has been portrayed as a classical coffin or sarcophagus, rather than a Palestinian rock tomb. The guards are sleeping, as described in Matthew.

It also reminds us that when Christ had earlier predicted he would rise from the dead. He challenged his enemies by saying: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.’ He was speaking about his body (John 2:19-22). We see this risen body then as a strong victorious body.

# IMAGE
Michelangelo ‘The Risen Christ’, marble, c. 1518-21

Peter
How are we to imagine the Risen Christ? (and therefore our own resurrection)?

Like Piero della Francesca’s image, here’s an immensely solid Christ, this time in marble. It’s difficult to imagine this Christ going through walls to appear among the disciples. Strong, yes, and triumphant, and rather like a Greek god. The outward symbols of the Passion are there, but to me the statue speaks more of timeless immortality than of the Resurrection of the Crucified and Incarnate One. Somewhere along the road Apollo has picked up a cross which happened to be lying around.

Phyllis

Michelangelo carved this marble figure for a Church in Rome in the early 16th century. It’s interesting that this work was not well received at the time, and it has probably remained his most unpopular sculpture since. The nudity of Christ was part of the reason. But, decorum aside, the physical beauty of Christ’s body can be seen as a visual metaphor for his spiritual perfection. By being raised from the dead, Christ has overcome mortality and imperfection.

Peter
# IMAGE
Frederick Horsman Varley (B. England 1881 – d. Canada 1969) ‘Liberation’   

This is a modern painting, with its muscular Nordic Christ. However we respond to it, it does manage to combine three essential elements: physicality, power and yet a new mysterious otherness, a translucency. This Christ perhaps could appear and disappear in our midst.

And it also made me think of C.S. Lewis’s image of the waterfall to describe the continuity of the human person both within this life and also into the next. When we look at a waterfall, in one sense its material identity is utterly different from one moment to the next. We’re not looking at the same water. And yet it makes sense to say it is the same waterfall, because the continuing form is there. Now you and I are slow waterfalls of matter; there’s not one atom in our bodies which was there seven years ago. But we’re still the same person. Our recognisable ‘form’ remains. What happens at my resurrection will not depend on the reassembly of a finite number of specific atoms which are peculiar to me. Who knows what other bodies some of these atoms in my hand have been part of?

Here in this picture, the ‘form’ of Jesus continues, and yet the fluidity of his and our physical human nature is captured, at least to some extent.

The artist was Frederick Varley who worked in Canada in the mid 20th century.

# IMAGE
Titian’s Noli me Tangere, about 1514

Phyllis
And how did the disciples know that this being they were encountering was indeed Jesus? There was some confusion, to say the least.

Think of Mary Magdalene in the garden. Here is Christ appearing to her on the first morning after the Resurrection as painted by the 16th century Venetian artist Titian. At first the Magdalen thinks Jesus is a gardener; and when she realises who he is, he tells her not to touch him – ‘noli me tangere’ (do not touch me) – as we are told in John 20: 14-18. Jesus does not want his followers to hold onto his physical presence.

Or think of the reference in Matthew to the eleven disciples seeing Jesus on the mountain in Galilee where ‘When they saw him, they knelt in worship, though some were doubtful’ (Matthew 28:17).  And there was genuine doubt.

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Caravaggio ‘The Incredulity of St Thomas’ 1601-02, Oil on canvas, 107 x 146 cm, Sanssouci, Potsdam

John’s Gospel contains the classic Resurrection story of Doubting Thomas, a story which ends in a declaration of faith after Christ shows Thomas His wounds and invites him to touch. (By the way, there’s no reference in the text to Thomas taking up the invitation, and some artists have therefore gone well beyond the written record.)

Caravaggio was an Italian early Baroque artist. His work is confrontational and extreme in its realism. Caravaggio insisted that reality was his teacher, so he was a master of naturalism, using local street people as his models, striking light and dark effects, and dramatic composition.

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Michael Smither ‘Christ and Doubting Thomas’

This painting by contemporary NZ artist, Michael Smither, is entitled ‘Christ and Doubting Thomas’.

In a similar way to Caravaggio, Smither displays a powerful rendering of the Gospel narrative, using pared down figures, simple folk as the protagonists, in understated settings.  Gestures and facial expressions are exaggerated to forcefully convey the scriptural message.

Think also of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. It took a while for the penny to drop with them. Clearly there was both continuity and discontinuity. Here are two pictures of this moment of recognition at the Supper at Emmaus:

# # IMAGES (2 side by side)
Caravaggio ‘Supper at Emmaus’
and
Ivo Dulcic ‘Supper at Emmaus’ 1916, oil

On the left is Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus’ and once again we see insistent realism, and striking light and dark effects. And on the right  Ivo Dulcic ‘Supper at
Emmaus’ 1916, oil – a more modern take, by the Croation artist, Ivo Dulcic, painted in 1916. Duclici uses vibrant colours and distorts form in an expressionistic way.

This is from Luke 24 when two of the disciples were going to Emmaus, near Jerusalem, and talking about the death of Jesus and the finding of the empty tomb. They encountered Jesus but didn’t recognize him. His response was to say they were “slow of heart” in not recognising that resurrection was exactly what the prophets of the Old Testament, starting with Moses, had said would happen. Jesus then interpreted Old Testament scripture to them while they walked. When they arrived at their destination, they invited him in to eat with them. It wasn’t until Jesus broke the bread and blessed it and gave it to them that they actually recognised him, “that their eyes were opened”.

Thus in this Emmaus story we see a parable, a foreshadowing of the way Jesus walks with us today, and touches us through the ministry of the Word and this Sacrament of the breaking of the bread.

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Duccio di Buoninsegna ‘Appearance on Lake Tiberias’

Peter
We have something else to explore; the difference between the disciples’ encounters with the Risen Christ, and that of Paul on the Damascus Road. Thinking of the disciples, take for example, Peter on the shores of Galilee, in this morning’s gospel.

This is illustrated by the early 14th century Sienese artist Duccio, in a panel from a large double sided Altarpiece called the Maestà commissioned by Siena Cathedral. On the back of the Altarpiece are scenes of the Passion of Christ. This is one of them, and it’s typical of Duccio, with warmth of feeling, gravity, drama and a lovely setting.

This post-Resurrection encounter has strong echoes of the earlier call of the disciples at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, when there was also a miraculous haul of fish.  It’s almost a repeat, though it’s also significantly different, because it has the restoration of Peter after his denial of Christ, and his renewed commissioning.  (Note the emphasis in the story on eating together, in a familiar setting, and Peter again impulsively entering the water.)

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Michelangelo, The Conversion of Paul

Phyllis
And now the encounter of Paul with the Risen Christ in a painting by Michelangelo. This was painted for the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican, created for Pope Paul III, the great Church reformer at the time of the Reformation when the Catholic Church was under threat from Luther and the other reformers. This was painted at a time when the Catholic Church commissioned works that expressed judgement, salvation, the passion story, and conversion, in order to help reform the Church from within so it could withstand the threats of Protestantism.

Peter
What’s missing from this story about Paul in the Acts of the Apostles is the physicality of the Galilee story about Peter. True, there’s a light, and a voice, and somehow Paul (who had never met Jesus in the flesh) accepted that it was Jesus he was encountering. But it’s less ‘earthed’. And yet Paul places his experience on a par with the earlier appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples. (1 Corinthians 15:5-8 ‘….he appeared to Cephas, and afterwards to the Twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred of our brothers at once, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, and afterwards to all the apostles. Last of all he appeared to me too…’

Paul’s experience seems to be a bridge between the mysterious but definitely physical encounter of the disciples with the Risen Christ, and the subsequent experience of Christians down the ages, including our own experience.

Whatever else the Ascension of Christ means – and it has a rich and varied meaning – it means the end of the encounter of the disciples with a physical Jesus they could see and touch and hear, and whom they knew from their pre-crucifixion knowledge of Him. 

How have Christians subsequently experienced the Risen Jesus? In many and various ways, by countless people. Some experiences seem to come close to that of Paul on the Damascus Road. Others are far less focussed and yet no less convincing to those who receive them. The Easter message of our Archbishops this year puts this helpfully.

‘Because the New Testament does not try to explain the actual mechanics of the Resurrection, neither do we. We can only stand under the grace of the resurrection and let it understand us as an unrepeatable miracle of love. Love is its only meaning because love is the only survivor of death, and because God is love all the way through. The only people to whom the Risen Christ appeared were people who loved him – or, as Luke says, the witnesses that God had already chosen.

‘The Resurrection, therefore, is made physical, visible and possible for those who experienced it through the love that was in them. This is because God is love and because God loved the world so much that he gave Christ to these people in a new and living way. With them, if you believe that this divine love is stronger than death, then you can believe in the message of Easter.’

Phyllis
And the Archbishops quote Jay B. McDaniel :

‘We understand resurrection when we taste a freedom and freshness that lies in the very depths of our lives. From my perspective as a Christian, this freedom and freshness is the living Christ, the resurrected One. He does not have a body that is located in space and time. He is more like the wind, or our own breathing, or the sky. The resurrected One is the very freshness of God, the very freedom of Holy Wisdom, as a centre that is within us and beyond us, ever-present yet ever-new. There is a freshness and freedom in the very centre of things. In this freshness and freedom, we find our roots and wings.’

How on earth (literally) are we to image this?  Perhaps our last two images this morning may go some way to helping us.
 
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Robert Lentz ‘Tree of Life’ 

Robert Lentz is an American Franciscan friar of Russian origin, who paints icons and writes about art and spirituality.  Lentz here is drawing on the same basic idea as we at St Alban’s have been doing this Easter with our ‘flowering Cross’ outside the church doors – the Cross as not only an instrument of death, but as living wood, a tree, the tree of life foreshadowed in the Genesis Creation story of ‘the tree of life’ in the Garden of Eden. From Jesus’s loving sacrificial offering of Himself on the Cross comes life. Life for Jesus, life for those who are united to Him, life for the New Creation which flows from Him. The renewal of all things begins at the Cross, and is rooted in sacrificial love – which issues in Resurrection Life. And looking at this picture we also think of the organic metaphor of Jesus as the True Vine, with us as fruit-bearing branches when we abide in that Vine. And it links the Risen Jesus with creation, with this earth, hidden though He may be.

In this phase of history as we journey towards Christ’s Second Coming, we have to hold two things in tension: the Risen Christ’s eternal authority as the Son of God reigning in the glory of the Trinity, and that same Christ’s presence within us as we continue to journey through the darkness of this world, though now with the light of the Easter dawn on our faces.  Artists down the ages have struggled with this tension, and tended to emphasise the present glory of Christ in Heaven, sometimes in a way which unhelpfully distances Him from us. The story of the Risen Jesus journeying with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus can help us here, including His sacred meal with them, which He continues with us around the Table of Sacrificial Death and Risen Life which we know as the Eucharist

Peter
St Paul wrestles with this tension in Romans 8. ‘Up to the present, as we know, the whole created universe in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of childbirth. What is more, we also, to whom the Spirit is given as the first-fruits of the harvest to come, are groaning inwardly while we look forward eagerly to our adoption, our liberation from mortality.’ How does an artist go about expressing that cluster of vivid images?
And balancing that passage in Romans are Paul’s words in Colossians 3: ‘Were you not raised to life with Christ? Then aspire to the realm above, where Christ is, seated at God’s right hand, and fix your thoughts on that higher realm, not on this earthly life. You died, and your life lies hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you too will be revealed with him in glory.’
And a little earlier in this Epistle Paul wrote the marvellous phrase, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ (Colossians 1:27.)

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John August Swanson, ‘Festival of Lights’.

So here is our final image, John Swanson’s ‘Festival of Lights’. We’re on our way. Think of it next Easter when we follow the paschal candle into the church – follow Christ the Way, the Truth, the Life. We’re on our way. For Christ is Risen, Alleluia!
A presentation in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 18 April 2010, by Phyllis Mossman and Peter Stuart.

Well, the nuclear peril has ebbed and receded, for the time being at least, with the end of the Cold War (though the nuclear weapons are still there). But last month in Copenhagen we’ve seen something of that same intensity of street protest again. What is this a symptom and symbol of? Let’s put out of our minds any distaste for protests, and our perhaps too easy scepticism about “rent-a-crowd” politics, so open to manipulation and confusion. Let’s ask, what is this protest a symbol of? What is this energy, this deep emotion, which is being tapped into?

Essentially it comes from the convergence of two streams: the social justice stream rising from the growing poverty of so huge a proportion of the world’s population, and the environmental stream, rising from the progressive deterioration of the world’s ecosystems. Another and more respectable symbol of this convergence is the existence within the World Council of Churches of the “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation” section and its conferences. It’s now more and more recognised that world poverty and environmental deterioration are inextricably intertwined; we can’t tackle the one without tackling the other, or the other without the one.

Now there are those who say that all this is going to be terminal for the Earth. Certainly it’s the frustration and fear and desperate hope swirling around this which was manifest on the streets of Copenhagen. To paraphrase my ten-year old son: “They’ve been thinking about world poverty and the environment, and they don’t want the world to die.”

When you start reading at any depth in environmental studies, the profound pessimism of so many writers, including scientists, is quite chilling. Not all writers, but many. And some years ago there was a timetable put out by the Worldwatch Institute, which saw the forty years 1990-2030 as the crucial period – a timetable regarded by others as relatively optimistic. Well, we’re now halfway through that.

Personally I’m not overly impressed by apocalyptic timetables, religious or secular. I am impressed by trends, and from what I can see these are proving the pessimists more right than wrong.

What’s all this got to do with Epiphany? Well, quite a lot. You see, Epiphany is about Christ being manifested as the Hope of the world. Epiphany is a season when we dare to face the world’s darkness and our need for a saviour from that darkness, and dare to proclaim “see, here there is hope”. And the darkness is real, very real.

In New Zealand we don’t encounter the absolute poverty and the massive environmental destruction in so much of the wider world. For the moment, we and privileged pockets throughout the world are protected from these realities – though not indefinitely. And if you say, “surely the real darkness is sin”, well, yes. But is there no link between sin and the poverty of God’s children? between sin and the destruction of God’s creation? Of course there is. And some of us may need to broaden and deepen our understanding of sin.

Sin touches every aspect of our existence. And our Christian hope must embrace the whole of our existence. And Christ our Saviour must save the whole of us.

“I’ve been thinking about world poverty and the environment, and I don’t want the world to die”. How would you reply? “There, there, my child. Yes, in theory it could happen, but it’s not going to happen, because God won’t let it happen.” At first hearing that sounds like a good, trusting, Christian response. But it doesn’t square with the Biblical record of how God has dealt with humankind. In the very first chapters of the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve portrays clearly how God permits us to sin and to bring suffering and death on ourselves. God seems to have a sometimes worrying respect for human freedom. God seems to give us freedom to destroy ourselves and each other individually and collectively – then why not as a species?  And if we do wipe ourselves out as a species, we still have to go on and face the judgement of God, somewhere, somehow.

How would we then answer these questions when the Lord puts them to us? “What have you done to the earth I created? Have you sought to prevent this final catastrophe, or have you consented to it? What have you done with my precious gift of life?” How would we answer these questions? 

Some years ago Jonathan Schell wrote a fine book, a noble book, called The Fate of the Earth, about the nuclear war crisis. His words can easily be adapted to the environmental crisis slowly enveloping us now. I quote:
“At present, most of us do nothing. We look away. We remain calm. We are silent. We take refuge in the hope the holocaust won’t happen, and turn back to our individual concerns. We deny the truth that is all around us. Indifferent to the future of our kind, we grow indifferent to one another. We drift apart. We grow cold. We drowse our way to the end of the world. But if once we shook off our lethargy and fatigue and began to act, the climate would change. Just as inertia produces despair – a despair often so deep that it does not even know itself as despair – arousal and action would give us access to hope, and life would start to mend: not just life in its entirety but daily life, every individual life…. We would no longer be the destroyers of mankind, but, rather, the gateway through which the future generations would enter the world.”

In short, “don’t curse the dark, light a candle; but don’t deny the darkness is there.”  (In fact our greatest danger is to deny that there is danger.) And to quote words too often used and too little acted on, we should – “think globally, act locally.” Or the advice in the provocative title of a brief article Bishop Tom Wright has written: “Jesus is coming, plant a tree.” And at Epiphany, kneel, like wise men and women, at the foot of the crib.

What gifts are we in 2010 to place there? I think a living tree would in fact be not a bad symbol of the host of actions, little and large, that we must take if we are to reverse the steady ecological destruction of planet Earth. Which is undoubtedly what we must grapple with this century. Copenhagen was a disappointment, though perhaps not an absolute failure. But at best it took only a very, very modest step forward on a long journey to recovery, and some are saying that it took ten steps back.

So listen to today’s equivalents of the shepherds in the Epiphany story: the poor and marginalised who suffer first when the environment degenerates. Already there are years when environmental refugees outnumber the refugees from armed conflict.  

And listen to today’s equivalents of the wise men in the Epiphany story: the scientists – whether Christian or not – when they confront us with inconvenient truths and tell us that they cannot wave a magic wand and solve the problems by themselves. There is no technological fix; we must all change our life styles.

Dale Aukman wrote these words at the height of the Cold War: “Ours is the confidence that he” [Christ] “will lift us out of death’s abyss. Blessed are those who, in the midst of whatever may come, live in yet more ardent faith that the Risen One, at the moment of God’s choosing, will lift a resurrected earth, a new humanity, out of the shambles of the old.”

And we are to live in this faith, whether the pessimists are right, or whether there is still time if we act now.

So bring a living tree to the foot of the crib, and kneel there with shepherds and the wise men. And trustingly worship Him who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 3 January 2010, by the Revd Canon Peter Stuart.

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Waitangi Wharenui Te Tiriti o Waitangi Whare R?nanga, Master carver Pine Taiapa and others, opened 1940, exterior

Since then I’ve been welcomed on to a number of marae, and gone on to talk and sleep in the wharenui, as I know some of you have also, you who went up to Tokomaru Bay on parish visits in the late 1970’s & early 1980’s.  But as a matter of interest, how many here this morning have in fact slept in a wharenui? How many of you have been welcomed on to a marae? How many of you have never been inside even an empty meeting house (like the ancient one at Te Papa)?

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Waitangi Wharenui, Te Tiriti o Waitangi Whare R?nanga, Interior

Now, it’s one thing to be surrounded in a wharenui by the warmly hospitable tangata whenua, as we clergy were at Otaki, before heading back to our own beds elsewhere. It’s another thing to sleep there (or try to), to lie there in the dark enclosed by the symbolism of the surrounding art – the carving, the woven tukutuku panels on the walls, the painted kowhaiwhai on the ceiling, and the very shape of the building, to lie there being interrogated by the living past And not just by another culture, but by the culture of the people who preceded pakeha in this land and who live alongside pakeha in this land.  This is what Phyllis and I want to explore this morning.

(Phyllis)                                                                            
My earliest experience of entering a wharenui was at Waitangi. This is the wharenui on the treaty grounds at Waitangi. This is a large meeting house and was erected in 1940 on the centenary of the Treaty of Waitangi. The carving was the work of the famous Maori woodcarver Pine Taiapa. It incorporates all the different regional styles, a national meeting house representative of all tribes as well as a powerful acknowledgement of Maori identity.

Living in nearby Hokianga, I remember going to Waitangi often as a child. I recall being impressed by the beauty of the building as well as its sense of solemnity and history: the links with the past. This is a grander wharenui than the many smaller regional wharenui that stand on the marae (ceremonial/communal areas) of most Maori communities. As a child, the wharenui was a slightly frightening place – with its ancestor figures in the poupou panels and the dark, closed-in architecture, and the importance of ritual there. A wharenui seems very much linked to the past – to those who have gone before us, the ancestors; and about one’s identity, who we are; where we came from, whanau and Maoritanga (what it means to be a Maori). It is very much linked to the earth, to being enduring. Having Ngapuhi blood in me still makes the experience of entering a wharenui like sending shivers down my spine – it’s my link with the past, a pull. When I enter a church, it seems to me to be more to do with uplift, looking forwards and while the enduring links to the past and ritual are there of course as a basis – the church is more about a way forward for me. Both are important though to one’s identity.

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Waitangi Wharenui interior – detail

(Peter)
As the name implies, the wharenui functions as a building for assembly, for discussions, as a meeting house. It can function symbolically as well, in three ways:

• As representing the body of an ancestor or a god
• Or as capturing, embodying  the whakapapa (the genealogy, the inherited identity)
• And also as a model of the Maori cosmos, the Maori world.

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Diagram of Layout of a Wharenui

(Phyllis)
Meanings differ from wharenui to wharenui, but some wharenui are viewed as representing the body of an ancestor or a mythological figure.

So the koruru gable head is the head of the figure
The maihi or bargeboards are the arms
The raparapa at the end so the bargeboards are the fingers
The tahuhu or ridgepole is the backbone of the figure
The rafters or heke are the ancestor’s ribs
The interior column or supporting post, the pou-toko-manawa, is seen by some as the heart of the body.

Because the wharenui is symbolic in this way, some orators will address the wharenui as if they were talking to a living ancestor.

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Waitangi Wharenui Te Tiriti o Waitangi Whare R?nanga, Master carver Pine Taiapa and others, opened 1940, exterior      

(Peter)
Other orators will interpret the wharenui as a whakapapa, genealogy. The tekoteko seen here stands in place of the gable head. The tekoteko is then seen as the main ancestor from whom the people in the wharenui claim their descent. Then along the roof are the descendants of the ancestor – along the ridge pole (tahuhu) – in the kowhaiwhai forms or as carvings.

This relates to the myths about Maui. Maui had been abandoned by his mother at birth and when he was reunited with her she asked him to stand on the ridgepole of their home to symbolise his return to the whanau and to his whakapapa.

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Interior poupou

These descendents of the characters on the ridgepole are shown in the paintings on the rafters (heke) and their descendents in turn are shown on the wall carvings – the poupou. Significant descendents are portrayed on the interior support column, the poutokomanawa, with some identifying characteristics.

So if you meet in a wharenui you are entering the body of your ancestor, and your whakapapa.

(Phyllis)
The wharenui can also be seen as a model of the Maori cosmos. This reading provides various interpretations of the architectural layout of the wharenui. For example, the front porch often faces Hawaiki in the east – that is, the land of the gods and legends as well as the resting place for the dead to return to. Churches also traditionally ‘face east’, but in a different way, using the end with the main altar and ‘east’ window. (So St Alban’s orientation is in fact Maori.)

The interior of the wharenui is considered by some to be the place of the living. The transition between the two worlds is the pare or door lintel, so you pass from one state to the other by passing under the pare.

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Waitangi Wharenui Te Tiriti o Waitangi Whare R?nanga, exterior, Master carver Pine Taiapa and others, opened 1940

And some see the roof as representing the sky God, Rangi, and the (earthen) floor as Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother, and the vertical columns as trees, as Tane, tearing his parents apart, separating them.

The marae and the meeting house can also be read as metaphors for war and peace respectively. The marae outside is considered the domain of Tu, the god of war – where people are challenged, and where serious debates occur; while the wharenui is the domain of Rongo, the god of peace, with constructive debate, conversation or sleeping.

(Peter)
But at this point we need to do a little history. How ancient is all this symbolism in the wharenui, and its interpretation? And how much has evolved since the Christian missionaries? This is murky territory for a pakeha like me to enter; my knowledge is rudimentary at best.

But it seems that the 19th Century – a time of massive change for Maori society and culture as a whole – was a time of change for the wharenui. In pre-European times the wharenui was also the chief’s home. It did have some wood carving, but the various arts were diffused amongst the whole society, and carving was mainly for war canoes. These disappeared after the Maori conversion to Christianity – not to mention the arrival of European-type coastal trading vessels.

In the 19thCentury, Maori identity is under threat. And the meeting house becomes a focus for its defence. There’s a multiplication of meetings in the meeting house; the chief moves out; the wharenui becomes an expression or distillation of the Maori arts, and wood carving eventually ‘moves in’ in a big way (though paradoxically it also nearly died out and had to be rescued by Sir Apirana Ngata). And a lot of painted decoration develops in the wharenui. During all this, tradition tends to ‘freeze’ defensively, including the older cosmology expressed in designs.
 
Christian worship also often moved in. So worship happened (and still happens) in wharenui, but sometimes a church was built nearby on the marae.

The mix differs from marae to marae. It was and is a two-fold mix, the mix of Maori artistic culture interacting with pakeha culture, AND at a deeper level of Maori cosmology with Christian Gospel.
 
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Hapai Winiata at Ngatokowaru wharenui near Levin

(Phyllis)
We’ll now look briefly at two wharenui which break out of conservative conventions of both form and of religious/ cosmological content of the traditional wharenui.

Hapai Winiata’s adaptation of the wharenui can be seen in Ngatokowaru Wharenui near Levin. This wharenui was carved in the late 1970s (1977-78) by the late Bishop Hapai Winiata, a master-carver seen in this photo as a young man. This wharenui is more whanau-based, more to do with family ancestors. However, a visitor to Ngatokowaru from another tribe was once overheard to say, ‘I can’t read it’.

I once interviewed Bishop Hapai Winiata about this wharenui, and he expressed the hope that in terms of materials and ideas, the carver could feel a freedom to explore; to go back to the past, but also to incorporate the present and the future.

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Poupou panel, Ngatokowaru Meeting House, and detail of cross and adze, Hapai Winiata

So here we see traditional Maori poupou slabs imbued with Christian iconography – the weapon overlaid by the cross.

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Bishop Octavius Hadfield and the Catholic Father Delach.

And new ancestors: the Anglican missionary, Octavius Hadfield of the Church Missionary Society, (later Bishop), who arrived in the Otaki area in 1839 at the invitation of two leading chiefs (Tamihana Te Rauparaha and Matene Te Whiwhi).   And the Roman Catholic Father Delach, a later Roman Catholic Missionary. ……

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Ngatokowaru wharenui near Levin

This wharenui combines the motifs of a wharenui and a Christian church. The back wall has two windows with large red crosses with these images on either side along with the poupou of the two chiefs who invited Hadfield to Otaki in 1839.

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Hapai outside St Michael’s in Palmerston North

(Peter)
Here’s Bishop Hapai again with another of his creative achievements – St Michael’s in Palmerston North. This one is more based on the Church community, while still drawing on Hapai’s hapu relationships and resources. I was present at its crowded opening, and I’ve subsequently met there, worshipped there and slept there on several occasions. You pakeha would blink a little about taking your shoes off to come into St Alban’s, then worshipping here, and going on to have a conference here, and then sleeping here – but all that is what happens at St Michael’s.  And it feels good. By the way, you would certainly not eat in St Michael’s, as we do here in the foyer of St Alban’s.

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Palmerston Nth St Michael’s Anglican Church – exterior with cross

See the cross in place of the tribal ancestor. And the prow of the waka or canoe – the church as the waka, taking the place of the tribe as waka.

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Palmerston Nth St Michael’s Anglican Church kowhaiwhai

Inside, the building is more simply decorated and lighter than many wharenui.  But note these two kowhaiwhai:  new designs within the basic traditional design shaped like koru, the top of an unfurling fern frond, symbolising new and ongoing life. One (on the left), called Te Kakenga, is of Christ ascending and bestowing the Holy Spirit to empower our love. (Compare this with the stained glass window of the Ascending Christ here in St Alban’s).) The other kowhaiwhai design is called ‘Whanautanga’, or birth: the birth of a baby and above it new birth through the cross of Christ. It would take too long now to go through all the symbol adaptations Hapai Winiata made, often radical, fusing Christian truths with Maori art forms.

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View of Pulse, Darryn George

(Phyllis)
Modern Maori art is often very creative, anything but frozen in past cultural forms, yet it remains recognisably Maori.

Look at this image called ‘Pulse’ by contemporary Maori artist Darryn George.  This art work symbolises the wharenui, doesn’t it? The colours of red, black and white – traditional Maori wharenui colours – and the hard-edged look of kowhaiwhai painting or carving. It’s probably the first recreation of a painted meeting house in an art gallery setting – Christchurch Art Gallery.

Note the importance of the central post, pou-toko-manawa, the pillar holding up the roof. George said that this post refers to the ancestor Christ. Christ as the protector of his descendents, as the spiritual ancestor.

Also we see the word ‘Waru’ everywhere and George said that this means the number eight in Maori; so again we have Christian iconography – Christ rose on the eighth day, bringing us a new Christian era.

(Peter)
Andrew Panoho is another contemporary Maori artist, and a Christian; his faith is expressed in his painting (which is a long way from Hapai Winiata’s woodworking art forms). Yet he has a dream that the whole New Zealand Church can take hold of the unique basic art form which is the wharenui, and imbue it with the identity of Christ and the story of the Gospel and of the community based on the Gospel. Replace the ancestor by Christ; the wharenui then becomes the body of Christ which we enter when we assemble in it as Christians for worship and renew our own identity as the Body of Christ. (Just as when Maori go into the wharenui of their hapu, they are entering into their ancestor, renewing their identity with him and in him.) And we would have the Christian story celebrated all around us, in art forms of one sort or another. Now there’s a thought for you. Though I hope it’s not a new one, if you know your church history.

Let’s now have a flight of creative imagination. The marae where we, the congregation of St Alban’s, welcome our guests is outside, between this building and the hall. In your minds, enlarge the front barge boards of St Alban’s and turn them into maihi – the welcoming arms of Christ. With a somewhat stronger Christian tekoteko (gable figurehead) than we currently have. Come into the church (forget about the porch for the moment, though we’re going to have to banish the tea facilities from there to the hall which has become our dining room). Empty out the pews, but keep some moveable seats round the walls. Decorate the rafters – the ribs – with Christian designs. Carve the uprights. One of them should be St Alban, perhaps here, with Mary on the other side, and the four Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on the four uprights among you. Tukutuku panels on the walls, with Christian symbolism. (And somewhere we can include the tukutuku panel woven here by Ngoi and Ben Pewhairangi when Tokomaru Bay came to stay with us in the late 1970’s.) The windows – well – they should tell the story of the Gospel and the People of God (as did medieval cathedrals). We dispense with the organ and store the mattresses there. We lower the chancel, and carpet the whole of the church. The altar of course stays, and so too does the window of the Ascending Christ, our ancestor, our older brother, and our Lord and Saviour. Here is where we meet, here is where we talk on important occasions, here is where we have our AGM’s and Vestry meetings, here is where we sometimes sleep, especially for our now extended funerals – and here is where we worship.

What have we gained by this? What have we lost? I don’t think we’ve lost much, and I think we’ve gained quite a lot, especially in our bonding together with each other in Christ, on a number of levels. Think about this – and think especially about those sticking points you might have. Perhaps they are simply pakeha reflexes; perhaps the Gospel may need to correct them. Our individualism certainly needs to be transformed by the Maori sense of community, which is much closer to that of the Gospel.

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Ngatokowaru wharenui near Levin (with people)

(Phyllis)
Again and again the Church and its gospel have penetrated a culture, transformed it, but been enriched by it in the process. Let’s journey on in Aotearoa New Zealand with our eyes and ears and hearts and spirits open to new insights into the Gospel, truths which are already there but which need the lens of another culture for them to surface properly – or to resurface again. 

We journey into Light. Te Ao Marama, the Realm of Light. The light who is Christ, Christ who is Lord of all peoples and of their cultures.
A presentation in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 22 November 2009, by Phyllis Mossman and Peter Stuart

Well, of course, bread is made from wheat which grows in the ground, and the communion wafer is a form of bread. That’s one obvious linkage, one obvious level of meaning. Though even on this level some urban children might find the link between soil and bread as difficult as they do the link between cows and milk; and also we seem to do our best to disguise the link between the bread we eat in the Eucharist and the bread we eat at home.

But linkage on this particular level of meaning is only the start.

Let’s reflect on each of these three separately.

Soil.
o It’s alive.
o It grows other life (as the waters and seas of this planet also do)
o In the creation story, Adam is formed from it. The word ‘adam’ comes from Hebrew adamah or earth, ground. Genesis 2:7 -Then the Lord God formed a man (Hebrew adam) from the dust of the earth (Hebrew adamah) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus the man became a living creature. . In this second creation story, ‘Adam’ is male, is a personal name, and ‘Eve’ comes from him. (In the first creation story the word ‘Adam’ is not a personal name; it refers to human beings as such, male and female.) But for our purposes this morning, let’s focus on the simple truth that we humans are given life by God who fashions our very being from the earth. From this stuff. We come from it; we are part of the web of life. And when we die our bodies go back to the earth – ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the cycle of life. Life on this planet is interdependent – an obvious, even banal statement.
o So soil is a symbol of our mortality, our creatureliness, our dependence on the rest of the God-given web of life. Within the providence of God, soil gives life to other living things and is itself alive, and we feed on those living things and depend on them for our life. Yet we’ve been living for centuries as though it’s not true, as though we can trash the planet and escape the consequences.

Now, bread.
o It comes from the soil, in the form of wheat (and some other soil-derived ingredients)
o It’s shaped by human labour and skill
o It’s a staple food, giving life to ‘Adam’, the creature made from the dust of the earth
o It becomes a symbol of the means of life: in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, ‘give us this day our daily bread’
Now, the Communion wafer
o It’s a form of bread
o Along with wine, it’s the outward and visible sign of the sacrament of the Eucharist we are gathered for today
o The inward and spiritual grace or gift of this sacrament is the body (and blood) of Christ, Jesus who became fully human
o Christ is the new Adam – human, and therefore He was as much dependent on bread and soil as you and I, and part of the web of life. But Christ is also the divine Word – and therefore at the root of the created soil’s very being. Christ is the ‘ground’ of the earth’s being, Christ is ‘immanent’ within His creation, including this living soil.
o Christ is the Bread of Life, giving us ‘eternal life’, the Life of the Age to come, beginning now.

So soil and bread and communion wafer seem to go together quite well. The Eucharist is, amongst many other things, a sort of weekly harvest festival, where we human creatures offer back to God through Christ what we have made of His gifts in creation, and He accepts them, and gives them back to us, and gives Himself along with them. So the altar amongst other things is a sort of ‘Table of Life’ around which we gather as a community.
 
But three questions to ponder about the soil:
1. Who owns it? Really?
2. What’s it for?
3. Is this soil inexhaustible? infinite?

And now for a change of gear.
We human beings were originally hunter-gatherers. Then we made a momentous shift, into agriculture, perhaps ten thousand years ago. (I’m using the term ‘agriculture’ broadly, to include pastoral farming as well as crop growing). Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly, agriculture expanded, until now nearly all the productive land on this planet is exploited for agriculture. (What remains is either too steep, too wet, too dry, or too lacking in soil nutrients.) Along with this expansion of agriculture went a steady growth in human population until the beginning of the industrial age based on fossil fuels.  However, when coal and especially oil and gas came along, population shot up sharply. Why? Basically because this fossil fuel energy enabled the industrialisation of agriculture: fossil fuel-based fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation, and agricultural and processing machinery, and global transport of food products.

But there are two basic problems:
o What happens when this fossil fuel runs out (as we are assured will happen this century)? We’re now at what’s called ‘Peak Oil’ – discoveries of new oil and gas fields are tailing off while global demand keeps rising, along with human population.
o What has been happening to the soil in the meantime? We’ve broken the natural, closed life-cycle of soils. We’ve brought in ‘massive amounts of nutrients from outside’ of the local ecosystems, abusing it in the process. ‘Then we ship the products out of this ecosystem to be consumed by humans and ultimately to be disposed of in landfills and sewerage systems. Conventional agriculture’, globally viewed, is in fact ‘a gigantic through system that depletes our resources, exhausts our farmlands, and results in overwhelming mountains of garbage’ (from Eating Fossil Fuels, by Dale Allen Pfeiffer.) And in the same period, along with that loss of soil quality have gone great losses in actual soil quantity through erosion and desertification. Globally we are said to lose 75 billion tons of soil per year.

The so-called Green Revolution in agriculture is grinding to a halt, and industrial agriculture is heading for a cliff  The world is in effect eating fossil fuels, but they are about to become a diminishing resource. The food security of the world will therefore be increasingly under threat. For what happens when we humans no longer have fertilisers derived from fossil fuel, no longer have the oil to drive our farm machinery, no longer have the fuel to ship our food long distance? Where does that leave an urbanised world with an exploding population? (6.8 billion today, 9.5 billion in 40 years time.) And just as greed and bloodshed have often accompanied the expansion of agriculture, so they threaten to accompany its decline, and would certainly accompany its uncontrolled collapse. Genuinely sustainable agriculture is a matter of life and death.
A Christian journalist called Justin Fung writes pungently:
      ‘…here’s my take on the story of environmental stewardship, according to the Bible: God created the earth (Genesis 1:1); God created human beings (Genesis 1:26); God told human beings to look after the earth (Genesis 1:28); human beings screwed up (a large portion of the rest of the Bible.)  And that’s that. Or at least, that’s the (over-)simplified précis. A theology of ecology, a theology of creation care, is part of — and is consistent with — a grander biblical theology, woven through with themes that can be found throughout scripture.’
And he goes on to talk about these themes: about stewardship, about God’s appreciation of His creation, about the poor, about relationship and community, about children, and about justice.
Back to this particular soil with which I started. It’s not simply soil; it’s soil from a ‘community garden’, the one at the back of our church. Now community gardens have a range of legitimate purposes, though some people are confused about them. And they are popping up in many places around the Western urban world, including our prosperous and favoured New Zealand. Several weeks ago we had a meeting in Taita and identified at least twenty three ventures in the Hutt Valley we could call ‘community gardens’. Some are simply cooperative ventures, with the produce going to those who work them. Some meet genuine local need, the produce going into a local foodbank. Some meet need which is not so local, with the produce going into foodbanks further away. Some are therapeutic. Some are educational (teaching either adults or children how to produce food). Some are primarily seen as a means of building community – and they’re a great way of drawing people together. Some are seen as part of the strategy for reducing carbon in the atmosphere by reducing ‘food miles’ – the distance which food has to transported using fossil fuels. I think this is the origin of the community garden out the back.
All these various uses are valid. But the real importance of the handful of small community gardens existing now is that they are stepping stones to the future, when urban food production must become more and more the norm. Real change is on the way, if not in my lifetime, then in the lifetime of most of you, and certainly of your children and grandchildren. We human beings will have to grow our food closer and closer to where we consume it, and learn again how to grow it in a sustainable way – and to do it together.  The community garden on the other side of that sanctuary wall is profoundly related to this altar here, which I described earlier as a ‘Table of Life’ around which we gather as a community. How could the two not be related?
Wendell Berry, an American farmer, a radical Christian, and a writer and poet, is someone whose works I’m starting to appreciate and explore. Listen to some lines from his poem, The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of the Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union. (The Union is the American Union, not a trade union.)
‘From the union of power and money,                                                                      From the union of power and secrecy,
From the union of government and science,
From the union of government and art,
From the union of science and money,
From the union of ambition and ignorance,
From the union of genius and war,
From the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
The Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

From the union of self-gratification and self-annihilation,
Secede into care for one another
And for the good gifts of Heaven and Earth.’
Or again (from Wendell Berry’s prose this time):
‘The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed, or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.’

Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant when he said ‘Blessed are the meek (the gentle, the humble), for they shall inherit the earth.’

Think about it.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 15 November 2009, by the Revd Canon Peter Stuart.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, by the Venerable Damon Plimmer, on Sunday 8 November 2009.