Oscar Wilde’s famous story ‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray’ could have been written to illustrate today’s gospel reading. Dorian Gray has his portrait painted as a young man; it reflects his youthful innocence and beauty. As Dorian grows older he remains youthful but strangely the marks of his uncontrolled and selfish lifestyle begin to distort the features of his portrait until it becomes so ugly he decides to destroy it. In the moment he destroys the portrait he dies and a strange transformation takes place. The portrait once again shows him as a youthful man but the marks of his evil distort and disfigure his dead body.Rembrandt Self Portraits 1628-1669We can see a similar transformation over time as we examine Rembrandt's self-portraits. In the case of Rembrandt what we find is a growing sense of self-knowledge as life takes its toll and bankruptcy brings wisdom. The self-portraits thus create a visual diary of the artist over a span of forty years. They were produced throughout his career at a fairly steady pace, he was still painting portraits in 1669, the year he died at the age of 63.These self-portraits trace the progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful portrait painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance, and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face. Kenneth Clark stated that Rembrandt is "with the possible exception of Van Gogh, the only artist who has made the self-portrait a major means of artistic self-expression, and he is absolutely the one who has turned self-portraiture into an autobiography."The Beautiful lifeA rather cruel quotation, variously attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Coco Chanel, and others makes this point about our faces:“When you are young, you have the face God gave you. At 40 you have the face life molded, and at 60 you have the face you deserve”Jesus is challenged to answer the same question, ‘What makes a life beautiful?’ We are familiar with all the remedies that advertisers offer, but they can only help us look good on the outside, what we need is help on the inside.Servants and MastersIn Jesus' day, the secret of a beautiful life was ritual purity, eating and drinking the right foods, washing regularly, and touching only those things that were uncontaminated. These rules and regulations were encoded in the ‘traditions’ and were strictly observed by the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. The traditions and the law were indeed given by God to lead his people to holiness but over time they had become not servants but masters. Sadly this is what happens to many of God’s good gifts. Money, sex, power, and even food are all gifts of God that have been given to us as servants to enable us to lead good lives, but as our masters, they have become monsters.Prisoners of the law.Paul uses this phrase to describe the reality of evil. He calls himself “A prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.‘What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”Romans 7: 23-25.Paul, like Jesus, clearly points us to our own appetites and desires as the source of evil. Evil comes not from the outside but from the inside of us. We must face the reality that it is we who are responsible for the transformation of the beautiful gifts of God into the source of evil. When we allow these gifts to become our masters we become their prisoners. Even the Law of God, Paul points out, given to lead us to God, can become a cruel taskmaster turning us into tyrants and hypocrites when it no longer serves the purposes of God.Many of us have puzzled over the problem of evil, how can God allow it to exist in His world? The answer lies within us. As we consider our lives we must ask the question, ‘What drives us, who are our masters, and who are our servants?’ True holiness begins as we focus our desires and ambitions on God. Somewhere we all need a portrait of ourselves that reflects what is going on inside us! When we can see ourselves as we really are the answer to our dismay is not to destroy that image but to hand it over to the one who has put to death the sin that destroys us, and be transformed by the new life that he gives us.
Boris Johnson’s article in the Daily Telegraph Newspaper, some time ago now, on the issue of whether or not to allow Muslim women to wear the full face Burqua is still widely quoted as the kind of racist racist remark that can provoke riots on the streets. He argued that he was not in favour of a ban on these symbols of modesty, but used language about the the face coverings in a way that was heard to be demeaning of Muslim women, comparing them to ‘Letterboxes’ and ‘Bank robbers’.This sensitive issue of the way we dress and look is just one of a number of flashpoints between Muslim communities in Europe. Recent riots in England have been fuelled by false information identifying asylum seekers as Muslim terrorists, and as a result, Mosques have become a target of ‘Rightwing’ mobs. How, we might ask has the Burqua and the beards worn by Muslim men, become symbols not of religious piety, but of Islamic terrorism?St Francis and the Sultan.There is a story told about St Francis who, during the 5th Crusade, 1217-1221, during which the Crusader armies attempted to invade Egypt, was sent to mediate between the warring religions, offering his life in order to bring peace.Sir Hugh de Beauvois, who was one of the leaders of the crusade, sought an audience with the Sultan, Malek al-Kamil, the nephew of Saladin and a pious Muslim. The Sultan, in turn, requested that Francis, widely regarded as a ‘Holy man’ by both Muslims and Christians, be brought before him.“Is he a madman or a Saint?” Asked the Sultan.To answer his own question the Sultan pointed to the tunic of Sir Hugh de Beauvois, who as a Crusader wore the white robe and red cross over his armour.“Let us see if this man is mad or a Saint” The Sultan declared.“Let me have your tunic and I will lay it out on the ground in front of me so that he will have to tread on it if he is to pay obeisance to me. If he does he is no Saint, if he doesn’t he is a madman and will die!”Francis was summoned, and on entering the presence of the Sultan he walked over the tunic with its Cross and paid obeisance to the Sultan.“ Do you not see what you have done? You have abused your most holy symbol, the Cross, you are no Saint!”“ No”, Francis answered, I am no saint. I am a child of God as you are. The Cross of Christ obliges me to honour you as of infinite worth to God”“ You may leave my presence with your life for you are no madman” The Sultan replied.So impressed was the Sultan by Francis’ courage and faith that he allowed the defeated Crusader armies to retreat and leave Egypt with their lives.Bread and Wine.Christ spoke of himself in terms of symbols - The Bread and Wine, but the symbols speak of a deeper reality beyond the rite which we now call the Eucharist or Holy Communion.Christ spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, a statement that truly appalled and offended his Jewish listeners, and caused division amongst his disciples.Many thought that he was speaking literally and indeed many of the first Christians were accused of cannibalism, but Jesus' words do not, of course, refer to literal eating and drinking, but to a living out of the life and death of Christ.When Christ took up the five loaves and fishes the gospel writers record his actions of blessing, breaking and then giving the food to the people. In this dialogue that follows the feeding of the five thousand in the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus goes on to expand on his teaching. The breaking of the bread, he says, speaks of the offering of life to others.‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’ John 6: 52 To eat his body is to live out his self-giving life so that others are fed and nourished, or as Paul puts it elsewhere:‘Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice’ Romans 12:1 The words ‘Drink my blood’ can also be understood as an invitation to live his life. Blood was always understood to be the animating force in the body so to drink his blood is to share in the life of Christ, a life animated by a love for all God’s creatures.Maybe it was this realisation of the true cost of following Christ, and not that the disciples took the words literally, that led so many to turn away from him at this moment.To honour the symbol, then, means more than to reverence the bread and wine in Communion, however, we regard it, whether a literal or just figurative image of his body and blood. Honouring the symbol is meaningless unless it represents a living out of the life and death of Christ.In fact St Paul tells the Corinthian church that its celebration of the Communion meal is blasphemous:“ For where anyone eats and drinks without recognising the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.” Cor12:29By recognising the ‘Body’ Paul did not mean believing that the bread was the body of Christ, but that it was a symbol of the ‘Body’ of Christ, that is the Church.When the Corinthian Christians ignored the poor in their midst by leaving them out of their elaborate Communion meal they were in reality, not just symbolically, abusing the Body of Christ.Taking the symbols seriously, whether Christian or Muslim, requires us to recognise the true meaning of our faith. Yes, symbols mean something, but they mean something because they point to a respect for the dignity and indeed the divinity of all humanity as St Francis recognised we are all children of God, we all bear the image of God.
Could you allow me to start with a silly story from my school days? I remember two brothers at school who were almost identical twins. Their father had a business making plastic mouldings and, on a school visit to the factory, I remember, joking in a rather unkind teenage way, that his sons must have been fashioned in the same mould as they looked just like their father. A bad joke, I know!Who is this man?I begin with this story because today we continue with John’s account of the ways in which the disciples, the crowds, and the religious authorities, all attempted to understand Jesus. They tried to place him in a ‘mould’ that would make sense to them. ‘Who is this man?’, the disciples asked when he calmed the wind and the waves. Was he another Moses the crowds asked, as he had fed them with bread in the desert as Moses had?No, the religious authorities replied, ‘This is the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know.’ John 6: 42That was, in a sense true, but it did not explain or contain the whole truth, because Jesus escaped and continues to escape all attempts to categorise or contain him, either within philosophical, religious, scientific, or any human definitions. Instead, Jesus talked about coming from heaven.‘How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’? John 6: 42That is a question we continue to ask today, and indeed struggle to answer because he continues to escape us, or at least escapes the mould in which we attempt to place him.MatisseThe artist who best expresses the uniqueness of artistic genius is, to my mind, Matisse, but before he discovered his own unique style he went through many others. Starting as a student at the ‘École des beaux- arts’ he was trained in the grand traditions of French painting, but he soon moved on. He was introduced to Impressionism by the Australian artist John Russell, but moved on, again, to the Post Impressionists, and then the Neo-Impressionists before launching out in a new movement ‘Fauvism’. The Fauvists were called ‘Wild beasts’ because of their bold use of colour and it was with colour that Matisse discovered his own vision.The Red Room 1908 ‘The Red Room’ is the painting in which Matisse finds his own voice or, more correctly his own vision. Using colour alone to define the spaces he creates what is, at first sight, a red room, but the flat surfaces and spiral patterns suggest that this is more than a painting of a room, it urges us to think further and imagine more. Matisse has given us a room so we can locate ourselves within it, it is solid and we can identify the objects in it, but it suggests that beyond what we can see is another world of wonder and beauty. This is the artist’s eye giving us an insight into their world and their unique vision of it. The Bread of HeavenI want to use that image as a way of speaking of Jesus' words ‘I am the Bread of life’. We all know what bread is and how it sustains life so we can begin to understand what Jesus is saying. He is the one who sustains life, but then we get lost when he repeats the words adding:‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.’ John 6: 50Here we are asked to think beyond the bread we eat to a mystery that escapes us, as Jesus escaped the crowds, as Jesus still escapes all attempts to put him in a box and market him as some kind of wonder loaf! The words ‘From heaven’ are, I think, a way of saying ‘This is beyond you’But there is another way of understanding these words because Jesus adds that ‘the bread comes down from heaven’, in other words, it is given to us, and it comes down to us so that we do not have to attempt the impossible and reach up to heaven with our own ideas.‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven.’ John 6: 51This is the bread that Jesus gives to us, not bread we can grasp at for ourselves. It is all gift or as Paul describes it ‘Grace’. More than this Jesus has left us a meal in which we can actually eat this bread, it is real bread, though in wafer form. It is physical bread just as Jesus was really physically present on earth, and as he promises, he is now present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.Son of the FatherThe religious authorities thought they could identify Jesus because they knew his parentage. They were wrong about that, but if they had listened to him they might have guessed what he was saying:‘Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father’ John 6: 46Jesus was not the son of Joseph, he was and is the Son of God, and like those two boys I remember from school, he is the very image of the Father. If we truly want a taste of heaven we are invited to the heavenly banquet today.‘Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’ John 6: 51
Lammas, an old English word first found in the writings of King Alfred, meaning ‘Loaf Mass’, is celebrated on the first Sunday of August, when the first wheat and barley from the harvest are brought to the mill to be ground. Some of that wheat flour is then made into the loaves that will be used to celebrate Mass in thanksgiving for the gifts of creation.Bread, of course, has a central role in our Western world where it is considered a staple of life, and has become a symbol of God’s gift of life itself in our religious traditions. In most European countries and South America, it is put on the table first, and no meal would be complete without it. In Asia it is rice that plays this role as a staple of life, in East Africa, Manioc or Cassava, in West Africa and the Caribbean it is Plantains. I remember a meal I had once as a young volunteer in Kenya, where I was given a large plate of ‘Ugali’, which is what manioc is called. It is served as a porridge and eaten before any other food is served, the idea being to fill your stomach so that you do not leave the table hungry! In China they speak of having two stomachs, the rice stomach and the stomach, that only if any other foods are available, can be satisfied. All this speaks to an understanding of life’s essentials, only when they have been satisfied can we move on to other foods.Pieter Claesz. ‘Still life with Turkey’ 1625This thought is taken up in many of the Dutch still life genres that served as decorative additions to the rich and as a vehicle for moral instruction. In Pieter Claesz's ‘Still Life with Turkey’ all the trappings of the rich man’s table are on display as advertisements of his wealth and international connections. The turkey from the Americas, the spices from the Dutch spice islands, the fruit and olives from Southern Europe, the fruit bowl from China, in addition to the expensive silverware.The message is not, however, one of wealth and well-being but of waste and wantonness. The pie is half eaten, the meal abandoned and the bread in the centre of the painting untouched. The essential staple of life ‘Bread’ is ignored and the luxuries have taken its place. This message is accentuated by the precarious way in which the plates are arranged. In the foreground, the plate is balanced on the edge of the table, to the right the fruit bowl is tipped at a strange angle resting, again precariously, on a bowl. The apples appear to be maggoty, and the stuffed turkey is very dead! All things pass, so seek the things that are eternal.The Miracle and the ‘Sign’The miracle of the loaves and fishes brought the crowds following Jesus to the other side of Lake Galilee to the town of Capernaum where he had gone with his disciples. They are looking for another miracle but are disappointed when Jesus points them away from the miracles and instead tells them not to seek for food that perishes but for ‘The food that endures for eternal life’ John 6: 27The miracles of healing and feeding are in one sense incidental to the ministry of Jesus, they are described by John as ‘signs’ pointing to a greater truth, the truth of Jesus’ identity.‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’ John 6: 29It is as if Jesus is speaking of that second stomach, not the one he has filled with food, but the one that can only be filled with ‘The bread from Heaven’John 6: 32Jesus has come not only to fill our stomachs but to satisfy our souls, our second stomach, with foods that: ‘Endures to eternal life’ John 6: 27As the Dutch still life artists so creatively described in their paintings, there is a part of us that neither riches nor power can satisfy, and that is the part of us that has, as sometimes described, a ‘God-shaped hole’. That space can only be filled as we ‘feed on Jesus’.‘It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' John 6: 32-33John makes it clear that these words were not heard or understood by the crowds, indeed the disciples themselves were confused. This should not surprise us as they are words that are not heard or understood by us either. How do you ‘feed on Jesus’? The expression sounds barbaric, the Roman authorities interpreted the words as evidence of cannibalism. Those questioning Jesus used their knowledge of scripture and tradition, citing Moses in the desert, but none of what Jesus says can be comprehended by the tools we usually employ to make sense of our world, just as none of the identities that we employ to understand Jesus make sense. He is not a King, as they had thought nor is he a Prophet, Priest, or Rabbi, he is all and he is none of these.Jesus, however, has left us with a meal, the Eucharist, in which we can ‘Feed on Jesus’. We may not understand what that means, and many have disputed the sense in which the bread and wine are indeed the body and blood of Jesus, but I believe, it is not necessary to understand, only to receive in humility the gift of God that ‘Comes down from Heaven’‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ John 6: 35John Calvin when asked to explain the Eucharist said he would rather ‘experience it than understand it.’As we receive the bread and wine today we are reminded that all that we have is a gift of God, not to be grasped but to be received with humility and thanksgiving.Rev. Simon Brignall
