During a service of readings, reflections and prayer at the foot of the cross at St Andrew's Cobham, we focused around some of the images and themes in John’s Passion Narrative. The text of John Donne’s sonnet series La Corona were woven into our mediation, rooting the recollection of crucifixion in the mystery of incarnation.
We moved from fire and cock-crow to power and customs; from robe and crown to wood and words; from hyssop and spear to the linen and spices. The section numbers refer to images used during the mediation which are not all re-produced below.
Graham Sutherland - The Deposition
Methodist Modern Art Collection
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/reflecting-on-faith/the-methodist-modern-art-collection/index-of-works/the-deposition-graham-sutherland/
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/reflecting-on-faith/the-methodist-modern-art-collection/index-of-works/the-deposition-graham-sutherland/
At the end of the three hours we left in silence; entering into this time of watching and waiting at the tomb; returning to our own homes. Graham Sutherland’s painting The Deposition reflects the reality of death; of being entombed.
To quote John Donne's 'Resurrection' in La Corona:
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrified,
But made that there, of which, and for which it was;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
Even those who had cared for Jesus’ body after he’d drawn his last breath, are beginning to slip out of view. And yet, for all the starkness and finality, there is in Sutherland’s work, an almost light. It is neither darkness nor dazzling; a setting sun perhaps; a looking towards the break of day. The body is lifeless, lifelike and life giving.
Fire and Cock-Crow
[John 18:12-27]
1.
Fires conjure up an atmosphere of ‘togetherness’. Whether it’s making toast on the dying embers of an open fire, the noise and roar of bonfire night or the easy companionable conversations around a camp fire.
The warmth is literal and relational.
But there are times when sparks do fly: when we see things only in part against shadows and flickering flames; when the conversation gets heated, more volatile. It might be on a picket line or at a guarded gate that difference, suspicion, protest and disagreement converge.
2.
Peter is caught up in such a scene of tension: of questioning both inside and outside the gate.
It was cold.
The slaves and police, both the men and the women, were warming themselves.
The desire for warmth draws him out of the shadows; draws him into this unpredictable intimacy by the fire.
A woman catches his eye: are you one of this man’s disciples? Are you not?
I am not.
It’s cold. The question isn’t followed up. They’re too intent on keeping warm. Perhaps wondering what is being said in the court yard; waiting to hear a more intriguing line of questioning.
There in the cold - as they warm themselves - Peter stands together with them. He stands apart from his Lord and teacher.
I am not.
3.
We cut away from the fire.
Here Jesus faces a different line of questioning: about his disciples, about his teaching.
Is it possible that Jesus has caught his eye; is Peter looking across the courtyard?
The one who said “I am”: I am the bread of life, the light of the world and the true vine has spoken openly.
The one who is the way, the truth and the life has said nothing in secret. All his teaching is a matter of public record.
Ask them, says Jesus. Ask those who heard me. Accusers and disciples are breathing the same air, sharing the same space.
There, standing in the courtyard, warming himself by the fire, is one who had followed. Peter had seen miracles performed; he’d heard the challenge and hope of the teaching; he’d witnessed the power of love to heal.
A split second after Jesus had spoken, one of the police struck him.
What flashed through Peter’s heart and mind?
Did he have a moment to take in what had happened? Did he gasp or look away?
Jesus mean while calls his accusers out on the injustice they perpetrate: they neither acknowledge what is right nor give evidence for what is wrong.
Accusers and disciple are silent. He’s led away. Bound.
4.
And Peter stays at the fire, warming himself.
This time, it’s not one voice that asks; not just one finger pointing or one elbow nudging in curiosity.
Now they asked him. Are you not also one of his disciples? Are you? Are you? Are you not also?
I am not, he said. He denied it again.
His words eat away at relationship; they eat away at his identity.
Something deep inside of him is burnt away. This is no longer a comfortable warmth, protecting against the cold.
As he warms himself, Peter confronts a painful and bitter truth.
Does the fire kindle disappointment or anger, despair or regret?
The questioning doesn’t stop: did I not see you? In the garden? With him?
Again Peter denies it.
Having denied all that he had scene and heard, he now denies something of his own existence. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t seen at that scene.
5.
And at that moment, the cock crowed.
He had been there. He denied it. And now he is seen again.
Is this fear?
He’d swung from bold declarations of allegiance to denial - furtive at first; but repeated, sucked into a narrative beyond him and within him.
6.
And as the cock crowed, he finds that all he’s committed to has crumbled around him.
Peter confronts his own brokenness.
He had been seen in the garden and now sees himself not just in the dying embers of a charcoal fire, but in the breaking dawn.
It is a day that breaks on so many levels. It reveals the brokenness of those who brutalise and condemn the one who’d restored Lazarus to life; it reveals the brokenness of Peter’s ideals and assertions.
7.
Peter is outside of what we might call his ‘echo chamber’: imprisoned by his own self-image, false idols and certainties.
This more than fear; more like a breakdown.
Yet even at this moment of self-condemnation, Jesus is walking alongside him.
He leads us beyond our false idols and certainties; he meets us in our times of denial and paralysing fear and disintegration.
His love is utterly self-giving to the point of weakness and vulnerability: it reaches out to us in our hypocrisy and failure. In the midst of our desire for self-preservation, our resistance to change, our need to manage our image… the one who wears a crown of prayer and praise bears those things too.
8.
The one who is ‘all changing unchanging Ancient of days’ takes upon himself a crown not of our prayer and praise, but the crown of thorns.
The one who is God with us, takes on our loneliness and melancholy.
This is no victor’s crown of leave which fade.
This crown of thorns is a crown of glory.
Our hands and our works are redeemed in him.
Can Peter’s heart and voice be lifted high? Can ours?
In the face of fire and cock-crow salvation is nigh.
© Julie Gittoes 2017
