Between two moments

Though I'm artistically hopeless, I was fortunate to sit under a painter yesterday at a mom's Bible study to learn about Byzantine art. After his talk, he recommended to us a modern painting we could find at St. Giles Church. I jogged to the church this morning so that I could see it. Wet from the rain outside and embarrassed by my attire, I quietly entered and received a warm greeting by a volunteer, and I said, "I was told there was a beautiful painting housed here that I should see." She replied, "I wouldn't say it is beautiful. I try not to look at it." She led me to the back of the church, motioned toward the wall and said she would leave me to study it.


Overcome with emotion, I stared at this horrific scene. Didcot Power Station towering over the background. The central smoke stack with the appearance of a crematorium. The grief stricken onlookers wearing clothing reminiscent of concentration camp garb, stepping in residual water. And in the midst of this, Jesus on the cross: dwarfed by the rising towers as if to highlight the absurdity and apparent insignificance of one more routine state execution. An unsettling display of humanity's capacity to perpetrate inhumane acts of utter devastation and disaster.

Yet even amidst this mournful depiction lies great hope. Wagner wants us to see the Menorah in those cooling towers and smoke stack, a seven-branched candlestick, a symbol of the presence of God. And behind the Menorah the big sky, draped like the tent of meeting. God is not absent. This causes us to reconsider the death in the foreground - now as taken up in the purpose and presence of God.

Then tonight I attended a benefit concert at my church. Four teenage girls from a housing estate (i.e. a project) will be going to Kenya to serve the people there. One of the girls sang tonight, a girl whose life has been one of great struggle and grief. Her voice is beautiful, and the closing song was "This Is Our God" (seen here performed by the original artist):



This girl does not know Jesus, but she sang the words,

Freely you gave it all for us,
surrendered your life upon that cross.
Great is your love,
poured out for all:
this is our God.

She was singing of suffering from a position of suffering, unknowingly asking for redemption. Her words filled me with hope, and I am sure many of those who heard her sing with such passion are praying for her to one day bear witness to their reality.

So today in these two events I was reminded once more that we carry in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Cor 4:10). We suffer, and sometimes profoundly so, but even the most horrific suffering of death cannot claim the ultimate victory.

In the liturgy found in the Book of Common Prayer that we use for our church's communion, we say, "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." At the end of this most impressive and oppressive day, I experience anew the tension and the hope of living between the second and third of those two moments.