11th. July. 2020. Daily Devotion
A powerful message from Peter Millar, sent last week:
Words to encourage us in tough times. ionacottage@hotmail.com
We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living: we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. The writer of these words may have been Richard Rohr.
John 19:16-22
16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So, the soldiers took charge of Jesus.
17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).
18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.
20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
Marc Chagall’s – White Crucifixion:
All my adult life I have had a passion for art and architecture of all kinds and from all periods. My soulmate the late Dorothy used to say to me that it was more important for me to have a painting on the wall, then food on the table! Chagall (1887- 1985) and his wonderful paintings have helped me on my spiritual journey and in his book ‘My Life’ he wrote: “ What counts is art, painting, a kind of painting that is quite different from what everyone makes it out to be. But what kind? Will God or someone else give me the strength to breathe the breath of prayer and mourning into my paintings, the breath of prayer for redemption and resurrection?”
In 1938, shortly before his own life as a Jew in Germany was to be dislocated in multiple ways, he painted his ‘White Crucifixion’. In their excellent book on Chagall, published in 2000, Ingo Walther and Rainer Metzger write about this particular painting in a way which totally speaks to our time of global chaos. The painting now hangs in The Art Institute of Chicago, but you can easily see the image on Google. (Marc Chagall – White Crucifixion.) This is their observation on this powerful painting:
“In 1933 Chagall had described his aesthetic aims in these words: ‘If a painter is a Jew and paints life, how is he to keep Jewish elements out of his work! But if he is a good painter, his painting will contain a great deal more. The Jewish element will be there, of course, but his art will aim at universal relevance.’ In the figure of Christ on the cross, symbolising the passion of the prophet of the Jews and the death of the Christian God who took on the form of a man, Chagall located a universal emblem for the sufferings of his time. Like the “arma Christi,” or the tools and implements shown in traditional crucifixion scenes, images of confusion are grouped around the cross.
Revolutionary hordes with red flags rampage through a village, looting and burning houses. Refugees in a boat shout for help and gesticulate wildly. A man in Nazi uniform is desecrating a synagogue. Distressed figures in the foreground are trying to escape. Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, is passing by in silence, stepping over a burning Torah scroll. Old Testament figures are seen hovering, lamenting against the background of desolate darkness.
Still, a bright beam of light breaks in from on high, illuminating the white figure on the cross. All traces of his suffering are gone, and worship of his centuries-old authority is seen as a path of hope amid the traumatic events of the present day. Belief in him, as Chagall makes clear in this work, can move mountains of despair.”
In this challenging painting we are brought face to face with that central belief about Christ as the hope of the world, both in 1938 and now. Given the huge uncertainties of the human future we can easily doubt. Millions do doubt, and millions more feel the Christian God has nothing to say to us. Belief is hard in these times and yet if it was not hard it might not be life-giving belief. Within the spiritual journey we are always being invited to see the tiny ‘shafts of light’ ‘which come from God even in the darkest times. In the painting, Christ may be on his cross, but that very cross is set in the midst of human confusion and suffering.
Cecil Frances Alexander’s words bring this truth home to us who believe and to those who long to believe that God is present in their lives. At heart we are all seekers and pilgrims in this short life, one way or another ……
“We may not know we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear.
But we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there.”
*** There are nights that are so still that I can hear the small owl calling far off and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake – listening to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic rising and falling, rising and falling – wave on wave on the long shore that is by the village that is without light and companionless. And the thought comes of that other being who is awake too, letting our prayers break upon him, not like this for a few hours, but for days, years, for eternity. ***
R.S. Thomas. ‘The Other.’
Prayers
Walking in the Way of Jesus
Almighty and ever living God, in your love for the human race you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.
By the Passion of Your Blessed Son
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Give Us Courage
Almighty God, whose beloved Son willingly endured the agony and shame of the cross for our redemption: Give us courage to take up our cross and follow him who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
Give us Grace
Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Joy of His Resurrection
O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; who lives and reigns now and for ever.
Amen.
In the Way of the Cross
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.
Amen.
Book of Common Prayer.