John 6.51-58: Bread...Again

Have you ever noticed how many times scripture talks about bread? Art&Faith Matters has talked about it here and here and here and here. And just for good measure, there is manna here. There is lots of bread in scripture, and in John 6:51-58 a connecting line is drawn between bread and manna:  This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate...

Master of the Gathering of the Manna. Gathering of the Manna from the Ashburnam Pentateuch. 

1470-1490. Musee de la Chartreuse de Douai.

The picture above is exactly what it describes (and the designation/naming of the artist is drawn from this work). What is interesting, I think, is the manner in which people are gathering the manna. Some are picking up the wafer-shaped manna from the ground. Men, women, and children are all engaged in the task. Babies are held in their mother's arms, and people embrace as the miracle occurs. This is clearly a celebration. As it should be. For the coming decades the people will be fed daily with manna and quail.

But there are others who are not waiting for the manna to fall. They have baskets raised in order to collect the manna as soon as possible. Compositionally, it works. The figure at the top center is positioned directly beneath the hole in the sky from which the manna falls. A dark funnel-shaped shadow leads directly to the opening of the vessel being held aloft. The dark shadow also highlights the light-colored manna as it falls. Others in the crowd echo his practice and position.

Jesus identified himself as the living bread that came down from heaven. How do we receive that bread? Do we wait for the bread to fall to the ground before we pick it up? Do we think, "Bread (or manna)...again"? Or do we reach above our heads in order to snag that bread out of mid-air so that we can have it at the earliest possible moment? There's a difference.

For thoughts on Solomon's request for wisdom, click here.
For one tradition's use of bread, see Food&Faith Matters here.

Matthew 4.1-11: Tempted

The first Sunday in Lent finds Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11, Lent 1A). He has been baptized and is "led up" by the Spirit. There follows forty days of testing for Jesus. He is offered the things of the world that signify success. He is encouraged to get for himself the things that would satisfy. He is taunted into proving that God loves him. And in all these things, Jesus resists. Resists satisfying human urges. Resists idolizing success in this world. Resists the need to test God.

Often artists paint the pinnacle of the Temple, the top of the mountain. Often the Devil is portrayed in demonic and threatening ways (which would seem to be easier to resist than temptation that is beautiful, easy and just-one-step-away). Which is why Briton Riviere's version of Christ in the Wilderness is so appealing.

Briton Riviere. Christ in the Wilderness. 1898, London: Guildhall Art Gallery. https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visit-the-city/attractions/guildhall-galleries/Pages/Collections.aspx

There is no architecture, no glory, no demonic presence. Just Christ alone in a barren landscape. Just Christ seated on a wave of rocky landscape. Just Christ seated with the weight of his shoulders resting on his hands and his head hanging low.

There is a story in Hebrew scripture that became a prefiguring of Christ in the wilderness. That story is David and Goliath. There are two combatants in the story. Both involve a time of forty days. David would not wear armor, Jesus wears no armor either. David's weapons are seemingly ineffective stones. Jesus' weapons are "mere" words. And yet. The giant falls. The temptations are resisted.

Have the temptations happened in Riviere's painting? Are they still to come? From where have they come? Did Jesus find the temptations in the wilderness? Or did they accompany him there? For Riviere it's just Christ and the wilderness.

Perhaps Jesus has been successful in this painting. Perhaps he is resting after his exertions. Jesus has won. And yet if you look along the horizon there is a glowing red line. So even if the battle is done here, there is something else ahead. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Yesterday's battles are done, but the sun is rising on a new day.

Check this pulpit in relation to the readings from Lent 1A. Click on this link to Facebook.

Luke 4.1-13: Wilderness

Wilderness is, I suppose, different things to different people. In the gospel reading for Lent 1C (Luke 4:1-13) Jesus moves from his baptism at the Jordan River into the wilderness where he is tempted for forty days. Most images show Jesus on the edge of a desert. He faces an empty landscape, spare cliffs, rock-strewn ground and a blazing sun. Perhaps he stands on one of those rocky cliffs and looks out. That's what we expect to see. But it isn't always the case.

One of the images below is Christ in the wilderness. All three show a single person - a man - sitting near or underneath a tree, surrounded by animals. At a first glance, do any of them show the wilderness as you imagine it?

                                                                        Picture identifications and links below. 

The left image, from the Paris Psalter, illustrates David singing and composing psalms. The image on the right is a Roman mosaic depicting Orpheus, the mythological musician whose ability to play the lyre could charm animals and humans alike. The middle image, remarkably similar in composition to the other two, is a painting of Christ in the wilderness. 

The artist was the painter known as Moretto da Brescia (real name Alessandro Bovicino). This canvas is a fragment of a larger piece and shows the rocky landscape one would expect of this subject. However it is dominated by cool tones rather than the warm colors typical of a desert. The wild animals surrounding Jesus are also an unusual addition to the composition.

Each of the animals is probably included because of its traditional symbolism in Christian art. Moving counter-clockwise from Jesus is a crane or stork (both birds are symbols of vigilance), a white dove (probably symbolizing the Holy Spirit which had descended on Jesus at his baptism), a dark bird that may be a raven (symbolizing the Devil) or an eagle (which has a variety of meanings..everything from the new life received at baptism to a ravisher of souls because it is a bird of prey), a stag (which sometimes symbolizes solitude because it lives in remote mountains). At the center of the composition there seems to be a basilisk (a half rooster-half snake that in its earliest form symbolized the Devil or the Antichrist), a fox (symbolizing guile and cunning and therefore the Devil) and perhaps a goat (which may refer to the scapegoat which was driven into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people on the Day of Atonement...Leviticus 16). The other animals will also have symbolic meanings that illuminate Christ's 40 days.

It may be that when Christ stands on the edge of the desert, the landscape looks so foreboding that we forget Christ's difficulties came from more than heat and desert. The temptations faced by Jesus are tendencies already inside every human, and they can appear in any landscape.

(Left) David Playing the Harp. Paris Psalter (MS. gr. 139). 10th century. Paris: Bibliotheque nationale de France. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10515446x/ (Center) Moretto da Brescia. Christ in the Wilderness. c. 1515-1520. Oil on canvas. NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/11.53/  (Right) Orpheus with animals. Roman mosaic, from Building A of the Piazza della Vittoria in Palermo. c 200-250 CE. http://www.regione.sicilia.it/bbccaa/salinas/

Click on the Art&Faith Matters Facebook page below for a poetry connection to Moretto's painting.
For additional thoughts on Luke 4:1-13, click here.

Mark 1.9-15: Into the Wilderness

The gospel reading for Lent 1B comes from Mark's gospel (1:9-15). It is remarkably more succinct than other accounts of Jesus' wilderness experience. A mere six verses move us from Jesus' baptism with descending dove and voice from the heaven to forty days in the wilderness (with wild beasts and angels) to the arrest of John and Jesus' proclamation to Galilee of good news. Other gospels expand the details we associate with the forty days: temptations, stones and bread, the pinnacle of the temple, mountain heights. But not Mark's gospel. For Mark the forty days pass in a blink. The days are important - note that it is the Spirit who drives Jesus into the wilderness - but no details are included.

British artist Stanley Spencer sought to give some form to the forty days that Mark passed by in the blink of an eye. In the 1930s and 1940s Spencer set himself the project of creating forty paintings, one for each day Christ was in the wilderness. The series, called "Christ in the Wilderness", never came to full completion. Eighteen drawings were made and eight paintings completed. Each of the designs explores the solitary figure of Christ interacting with various elements of the wilderness - a hen, a scorpion, lilies, eagles. The painting titled "Driven by the spirit into the wilderness" was inspired by Mark 1:12.

"Driven by the spirit into the wilderness." 1942. Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth. http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/collections/documents/spencer_conv.pdf

In the painting Christ strides through a sparse landscape grasping tree trunks and branches as he pulls himself up a hill. Nothing overt in the paintings speaks of Christ's forty days in the wilderness, a choice that echoes Mark's lack of narrative detail. The figure of Jesus is not the slim figure commonly seen in paintings. The bulky figure and billowing garment are common to all the finished paintings in the series. Spencer envisioned the pictures hanging as a group on the ceiling of a church. In such a position Jesus' garments would be perceived as billowing clouds. Interesting that part of the earthy reality of a wilderness experience was designed to be perceived as something as ethereal as clouds.    

The series of paintings conflates various gospel texts with Jesus' forty days. Paintings are based on the "consider the lilies" passage as well as 'foxes have holes", "the power to tread on snakes and scorpions" and others. All of those sayings, of course, came after the forty days. And yet the forty days are a foundation for all the days of ministry that came after. Perhaps Spencer's paintings and their scriptural pairings may offer opportunities for our own study during the forty days of Lent.

The image at left is a Last Judgment (Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua). It helps link the themes of Lent with the Lent 1B Genesis reading about the covenant God made with Noah. See how it does that by clicking on the link to the Art&Faith Matters Facebook page.

For a blog essay on the Genesis reading for Lent 1B (Genesis 9:8-17), click here.