Good Friday Meditation: Four Paintings Of The Crucifixion By Salvador Dali

OK, here it is, I trailed this earlier in the week: this is what I’m doing tonight for something a little different for Good Friday.

Introduction
I am no artist: ask me to draw someone and you won’t get better than matchstick
man standard. And nor am I an expert on art, although I once enjoyed a holiday
where a Christian artist was exhibiting
work and talking about it. But tonight I want to try something different. Rather
than preach I have chosen four paintings of the Crucifixion by Salvador Dali. We’ll
show them on the screen; I’ll leave you some space for silent reflection on
them. I’ll then offer a few thoughts about what they say to me about the Cross
and the Gospel.

1. Christ Of St John
Of The Cross

Christ Of St John Of The Cross by Salvador Dali

This is perhaps Dali’s most famous image of the crucifixion.
We look down from above the Cross, which itself is raised above the world.
To me this reminds me that God’s view of the Cross is that it is for the whole
world. The Cross is for everyone and for all creation. The Cross is for the
brokenness of the world.

But then there is the detail at the bottom: can you see the
fishing boat? What Dali has painted at the bottom is the fishing village of
Port-Lligat on the Costa Brava. It is the place where he lived. For
me this makes the point that if the Cross of Christ is for the world, it is not
merely general it is also specific: if it is for the world, it is also for our
place and time.

2. La Crucifixion,
Paris

La Crucifixion, Montmartre, Paris by Salvador Dali

You can find this in
the Dali Museum at Montmartre, France. According to the
photographer who took this shot of the painting,

Dali used an arquebus (like a crossbow) to shoot paint blobs
at canvases to jump-start his Bible illustrations. This blob became the hair
and blood of Jesus.

But you may also be able to see that the blob which became
the hair and blood of Jesus has spattered also onto the female disciple by
Christ. The Cross, then, is not only for the world and for our location, as I suggested
with the first painting, it is also for us personally. We might find the old
language about being ‘covered by the blood’ quaint or worse, but it captures a
truth about the Gospel: Christ died for me.
And his death is for my forgiveness and holiness, and leads me to his risen
life as I follow him.

3. Corpus Hypercubus

Corpus Hypercubus by Salvador Dali

This one is downright peculiar, isn’t it? Dali also has a
painting of the three crosses – Jesus and the two criminals – where each cross
is painted as a ‘hypercube’. You may find this unnatural representation of the
Cross unsettling, but many depictions of the Crucifixion are, without going to
this extreme, because they sanitise Jesus (as this one does) by not showing him
completely naked, as he would have been. That was part of a condemned man’s
final humiliation. The recent controversy over the milk chocolate
sculpture of Jesus in New York got at least one thing right: Jesus was
naked.

But for all the unrealistic elements in this painting by
Dali, one thing grabbed me: it puts people at the foot of the Cross. Indeed it
was only a second or third time I looked at the painting that I realised there
was only one person at the foot of the Cross in the picture. For that is how I see
the Church: it is people who live at the foot of the Cross. ‘Jesus, keep me
near the Cross,’ says the old hymn. But keep us all near the Cross; keep us together
at the Cross. It never is a matter of ‘coming to church’; it is about ‘being
the Church’. And the place where we are the Church is when we gather at the
foot of the Cross.

4. Bare Crucifixion

Crucifixion painting by Salvador Dali

This is the only picture about which I have been able to
find no background information. I don’t know the title, date, provenance or
even the gallery where it hangs. I believe it may have been painted in 1954,
but that’s the best I can do.

I see it as a ‘bare crucifixion’. No adornments, no detail,
no distractions – just the crucifixion of Christ. And it therefore speaks to me
about the sufficiency of the Cross. When you’ve got the Cross, you don’t need
anything else. I can get ‘unleaded plus’ petrol if I want, but I don’t need ‘Cross
plus’ anything. In the words of Matt
Redman, ‘The cross has said it all.’

More than that, the cross has done it all. Jesus dies with a cry of triumph on his lips: ‘It is
finished’, or, perhaps, ‘It is accomplished.’ The Cross is sufficient. ‘Nothing
in my hand I bring, simply to thy Cross I cling.’ (Augustus Montague Toplady, Rock Of Ages)

And tonight we cling to the Cross. It is our hope, it is our
all in all, it is our reason for living and dying in the hope of Christ.

UPDATE: I’m sorry, I’m not sure why the pictures haven’t appeared! Must be something to do with my OakFlickr plug-in for ScribeFire. Will see if I can solve the problem.

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Envisioning The Word

I’ve just started reading Envisioning The Word by Richard Jensen. Its arrival has been timely, because I had decided that for a Good Friday evening meditation this year I would show four images of Salvador Dali paintings of the crucifixion. Here is one important quote from page 24 of Jensen in the meantime:

We need images to give our words life. We need words to set boundaries on the plastic world of images.

Tell you more later about how things go.

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Blogging Code Of Conduct

Last week the BBC reported that
prominent blogger Kathy
Sierra has been the subject of online death threats. (Don’t’ click the
Kathy Sierra link unless you’re prepared to read some gruesome stuff.)  Tim
O’Reilly has called
for a blogging code of conduct. And so my mind has been working on what
Christians might contribute to such a code. Clearly the libertarian ethos
behind much of the Internet has come unglued here, as Christians with a
doctrine of original sin (however understood) would expect. So here are a few
brief thoughts as an obscure contribution to the discussion.

Freedom has a
distinct Christian understanding. It is not freedom to do what I want, it is
freedom from selfishness to serve and love others. The former kind of freedom
is always damaging. Free speech is important, but we need to ask what we are
doing with our freedom.

Journalling has a
long and honourable Christian history as a spiritual practice. People will ‘journal’
their lives as a way of prayerfully discerning the work of God. There are
consequently some similarities with blogging, which is characteristically an
online journal. However there are important differences. The historic practice
of spiritual journaling is a private document; blogs are public. With blogs,
therefore, some discretion must be observed. There are many things I would like
to write about on my blog but I cannot, because it is a public document. Not
everything should go on the web, however much the temptation may be there to
create a lively post or comment.

Jesus extended our
understanding of violence and so Christian bloggers cannot stand aloof with
a smug self-righteousness when reading about the threats of violent death made
against Kathy Sierra. “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient
times, ‘Do not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But
I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, and if you insult
a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you says, ‘You
fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:21-22) Jesus’ words
could be made for some Christian blogs, where there may not be death threats
but the epidemic of flaming is unworthy of a disciple. Flaming gets the hell of
fire, according to Jesus.

Speaking the truth in
love may have been reduced to a cliché in some Christian circles, but it
remains the gold standard. Not the ‘A word in love, dear brother’ that is
usually anything but: some of us are good at truth without love and some of us
think that love without truth is kind – it isn’t. So should anonymity be allowed? Yes if it’s to
protect the vulnerable and create a safe space; no if it covers the guilty.
Should we moderate comments? I do;
I’m happy to have debate and disagreement, but there is a difference between
criticism and a critical spirit.

Those are just a few thoughts that have been circulating in
my mind. Finally let me commend again Tim
O’Reilly’s guidelines, and in particular the way he draws attention to the BlogHer Community Guidelines,
which are very similar to those required by a lot of web forums. Why we should
have a different standard for bloggers from forums is a puzzle to me.

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Jim And Casper Go To Church

Today I had my regular Idealab email from Off The Map. There is a feature on the new book Jim And Casper Go To Church by Off The Map founder Jim Henderson and atheist Matt Casper. Henderson takes Casper to visit various churches across America and asks for his frank assessments. The foreword, introduction and first chapter (on Rick Warren‘s Saddleback Church) can be read on the web here in PDF format. It’s so illuminating it’s gone straight into my Amazon wish list, even though I’ve only just ordered some more books. Do read that first chapter online, it looks unmissable for those who want to connect church with the ‘lost’ (or ‘missing’, as Henderson prefers to say).

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Palm Sunday Mini-Sermon

I’m doing the short ‘adult talk’ in an all-age service this Sunday. That is, we believe ‘all age’ is for all ages and not just a children’s service where adults are ‘entertained’. Here it is.

Luke 19:28-40

Introduction
Several churches have their traditions for Palm Sunday, in addition to giving
out palm crosses. Here I’ve learned it’s to parade around the building singing ‘We
have a king who rides a donkey’ to the tune of ‘What shall we do with the
drunken sailor’ (very Methodist choice of tune, there). We’ve had to improvise
this year with the building expansion, of course. Parading inside isn’t quite
the same.

The neighbouring
parish church to my main church in the last circuit also had a regular
feature every Palm Sunday. Live in the sanctuary each year was a donkey – Dave The
Donkey. I was so glad I wasn’t there for them to associate the name. Especially
as Dave The Donkey had a reputation for impersonating a famous Blue
Peter elephant of years gone by.

However, the donkey is not a figure of fun in the Palm
Sunday story. The colt is there to show us that this is the king who is
arriving in Jerusalem. Jesus sends his disciples to find ‘a colt that has never
been ridden’ (verse 30), because you can’t give anything second-hand to the
king. The entry into Jerusalem invites us to see Jesus as king, but we see a
very different king from normal expectations.

1. Poverty
What kind of king has to borrow a donkey? Not your usual king with the
trappings of wealth, power and attendant minions. Jesus has no wealth, his only
earthly power is his influence on the crowds (and that will disappear in the following
few days) and he has an unreliable group of followers.

It’s not exactly like our cult of celebrity, is it? He doesn’t
quite compare with overpaid, underperforming footballers who struggle to get by
on £100,000 a week. He doesn’t compare with those who are famous for being
famous (step forward, Jade Goody). We don’t know whether he had the looks that
would have guaranteed a television career today with associated coverage in
Hello magazine.

And we are lured by similar approaches in the church. We feel
that unless we have the latest thing we can’t compete as a church. So you’re
nobody unless you’ve been to the latest conference, read the latest book or
installed a video projector. I’m not against conferences, books and video
projectors – indeed I enjoy all three – but by making the latest and greatest
the focus of our attention we forget the primary approach of Jesus, which is
that he accomplished his mission with simplicity and in poverty. His poverty
calls us back to priorities, the priorities of sacrificial love.

What kind of king has to borrow a donkey? One who by the end
of the week would also be in a borrowed tomb. Take away the trappings and look
at the core.

2. Peace
Jesus the king enters on a donkey, not a charger. According the prophet
Zechariah that was a sign of a peaceful,
victorious king, not a warmongering one:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
(Zechariah 9:9)

Perhaps you recall the story of James and John asking Jesus
to send down judgment against villages that rejected Jesus. Not for nothing
were they nicknamed the ‘sons of thunder’ – first-century Hell’s Angels, if you
like. However, Jesus said ‘no’ to that approach, however much he warned of the
consequences of rejecting him. Jesus was the king who would conquer in peace,
not by threats and violence. He would not take life; he would lay down his own
life.

And you know what? Jesus’ peaceful reign even transformed
the sons of thunder. James himself would die a martyr’s death (Acts 12:2). John
would become ‘the apostle of love’, writing his entire first epistle around the
theme of love.

The peaceful reign of Jesus enthroned on the Cross still
transforms people like nothing else. Armies can make people cower into
submission or force them into resistance, but they can’t change the sickness of
the human heart. The peaceful reign of Jesus can, forgiving and conquering sin,
providing the model for a different way of life.

3. Praise
Witnessing this poor and peaceful king the crowd bursts into praise:

‘Blessed is the king
   who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
   and glory in the highest heaven!’
(verse 38)

‘Blessèd is the king who comes in the name of the Lord’ – a quote
from Psalm 118:26, which we often adapt and use in our Holy Communion services,
where we are going to take bread and wine in memory of his death and marking
his covenant with us. For Christians looking back these words are part of our
holy rejoicing that Jesus the king died for us and for the world.

Then look at the other words of the crowd’s praise here: ‘Peace
in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven.’ What do those words sound like? Are
they not reminiscent of the angels’ song to the shepherds when Jesus was born:

‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
   and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’
(Luke 2:14)?

The words of praise ‘Glory in the highest heaven’ bookend
the birth and death of Jesus in Luke. At his birth they celebrate his coming;
at Palm Sunday they anticipate what he is about to accomplish through his
rejection, suffering, death and resurrection.

All of which means that Palm Sunday has implications for
Good Friday. I recall as a child asking my mother why we called it Good Friday, and she tried her best to
explain to me. And there are people in our churches who barely notice that it’s
Good Friday. Some think that our
services on that day should only be characterised by grief and shame. I once
had a church steward pray in the vestry before a Good Friday service and refer to
the day as a ‘tragedy’.  He missed the
whole point of the day.

Palm Sunday calls us not to miss the point of Good Friday. In
highlighting the poverty of Jesus the king who majored on sacrificial love and
Jesus the peaceful king who conquered hearts and minds that way rather than
with violence, we are led to praise. Reverent praise, to be sure. But praise
nevertheless.

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