Tag: How long O Lord

Roundup: Baby Jesus in the rubble of Gaza, a dragon at the Nativity, and more

Victoria Emily Jones7 Comments

CHRISTMAS CRÈCHE: After my Advent Day 2 post, a reader shared with me a photo of this jarring crèche from Bethlehem:

Rubble Creche, Bethlehem
Crèche, December 2023, Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem. Photo: Munther Isaac.

It shows the baby Jesus wrapped in a black-and-white checkered keffiyeh (Palestinian headdress) and lying in a pile of rubble while Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men, and the animals search for him. It is situated at the side of the altar in Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, which Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a prominent Palestinian Christian peacemaker, pastors. He said he wants the world to know that this is what Christmas looks like in Palestine this year, and for his own congregation to know the solidarity of Christ with the oppressed. Al Jazeera ran a news segment on the crèche on Tuesday, which features an interview with Isaac:

Since October 7, over 16,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, and almost 1.9 million Palestinians (over 80 percent of the population) have been displaced. Morgues and hospital halls are overflowing in Gaza, and many people remain trapped under buildings felled by air strikes.

“In Gaza today, God is under the rubble. He is in the operating room,” Isaac wrote on Instagram. “If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble. We see his image in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. In every child in incubators.” He expanded on these sentiments in a sermon preached October 22, titled “God Is Under the Rubble in Gaza,” reproduced in Sojourners. See also this video clip of Isaac explaining why his church chose to display such a scene in their sanctuary.

Besides serving as a pastor, Isaac is also the academic dean at Bethlehem Bible College, director of the Christ at the Checkpoint conferences, and author of The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope.

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“Alternative Advent 2023” by Kezia M’Clelland: I wrote about M’Clelland’s “Alternative Advent” last year and in previous years, an annual online project that thoughtfully brings together global photojournalism from the year with scripture. Following along with her daily Instagram posts @alternative_advent (which she will later compile at https://keziahereandthere.org/) has become an integral part of my Advent practice. Here’s day one:

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SONG: “How Long, How Long?” by Jordan Hurst: Worship musicians Jordan Hurst, Jaleesa McCreary, and Brian Douglas Phillips [previously] from Providence Church in Austin, Texas, perform an original lament song from Providence’s 2020 album Long-Awaited / You Arrived.

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BLOG POST: “When a Dragon Tried to Eat Jesus: The Nativity Story We Don’t Talk About” by Chad Bird: “I’m still searching for a Christmas card with a red dragon in the nativity, lurking amidst the cows and lambs, waiting to devour the baby in the manger,” writes Bible scholar Chad Bird [previously]. “None of the Gospels mention this unwelcome visitor to Bethlehem, but the Apocalypse does. John paints a seven-headed, ten-horned red dragon onto the peaceful Christmas canvas. You can read all about it in Revelation 12. It’s the nativity story we don’t talk about. A dragon trying to eat our Lord . . .”

I’ve been wanting to write a long-form essay on this topic for some time—the dragon as a character in the Christmas story; a cosmic battle underlying our cozy little crèches. I would pull in iconography of the Woman of the Apocalypse and the treading of the beasts, as well as some Christmas songs and poems that reference the dragon. I won’t get around to it this season . . . but it’s coming sometime!

For now, I simply offer Chad Bird’s wonderful blog post to get you thinking about it. Since it was published in 2016, I’ve started seeing more people bringing it up. In 2019, Glen Scrivener, a minister in the Church of England, released the kids’ video “There’s a Dragon in My Nativity,” with illustrations by Alex Webb-Peploe and animation by Diego M. Celestino:

In 2020, Rev. Yohanna Katanacho, a Bible professor in Nazareth, wrote “The Christmas Dragon” for Radix, a retelling of the Nativity story through the lens of Revelation 12. And in a Christianity Today article published last December, Julie Canlis recommended adding a red dragon to your nativity set! Apparently some families have been doing this for years, such as the Gowins and the Palpants:

Dragon at the Nativity
Left photo by Michael Gowin; right photo by Ben Palpant

This year I bought a little plastic dragon myself to add to my household nativity! Below are some photos my husband and I took. The clay figurines and adobe-style backdrop were made by Barbara Boyd, an artisan from New Mexico. (I bought them in 2016 at a festival in Albuquerque.)

The dragon was part of a cheap multipack from Amazon, and there are twenty-three other dragons that I don’t know what to do with—so if you live in the US and you want one, shoot me an email at victoria.emily.jones@gmail.com and your physical mailing address and I’ll send you one! The first three respondents get a red one. None of them are seven-headed or horned per Revelation (a gap in the Christmas market, perhaps?!), but they still convey the gist.

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LECTURE: “What Is God’s Future for the World?: An Eschatological Vision for the Kingdom on Earth” by N. T. Wright: This talk on inaugurated eschatology, on heaven and earth coming together redemptively and new-creatively, was delivered at the Fuller Forum at Fuller Theological Seminary on May 3, 2014. Any time we talk, sing, or preach about the return of Christ and the end, Wright says, we’re really using signposts that point into a bright mist. But we need those signposts. Wright seeks to dispel the popular belief that humans’ ultimate destination is some disembodied existence “up there” and instead have us embrace the ancient vision of this world as the site of the Messiah’s eternal reign and these bodies as participants, a vision of creation made new from the old. To believe that God will eventually abandon the world to the forces of human wickedness or entropy and decay instead of claiming it as his own undermines the entire narrative of scripture. Wright makes his case by way of the books of Genesis, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Psalms, the Gospels, Romans, and Revelation—the whole gamut.

“The Jewish vision of God’s ultimate future was never that people would leave this world and end up somewhere else called heaven in the company of God. . . . When eschatology comes into full focus, . . . it is all about God’s kingdom being set up on earth as in heaven, and indeed on earth by means of heaven.” He continues, “Heaven is the place where God’s future purposes are stored. And the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth so that the dwelling of God is with humans.”

There’s so much more I could say—but instead of reading my takeaways, listen to the talk itself! It ends at 1:04:45 and is followed by an hour of Q&A. Here is a list of the questions with time stamps:

  • 1:05:33: What is your reading of 2 Peter 3:10–12, which says that the earth will be burned up?
  • 1:08:18: What does Paul mean in 1 Thessalonians 4:17: “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever”?
  • 1:13:05: Where do you land on premillennialism, amillennialism, postmillennialism?
  • 1:15:42: If earth is already crowded, how will everyone fit in the renewed creation after the resurrection?
  • 1:21:42: If this world is going to be renewed, why should we make economic and lifestyle sacrifices now to protect endangered species and such?  
  • 1:24:18: How do you interpret John 14:3: “I go and prepare a place for you; I will come again and take you to myself”?
  • 1:27:48: How do you understand hell? What are your thoughts on the teaching of universal restoration, the idea that everyone will eventually be saved?
  • 1:33:48: Since you take issue with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, what would you have painted at the east end of the Sistine Chapel instead?
  • 1:34:17: How does Paul’s “now and not yet” correlate with Jesus’s teaching that “this generation will not have passed away before all this has happened” (Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32)?
  • 1:36:59: What is the role of departed saints (the “cloud of witnesses”)? What are your thoughts on the intercession of the saints?
  • 1:41:17: What are your words of advice for preaching on these subjects and for pastorally caring for congregants who come with certain stock images of and language about heaven?
  • 1:44:30: Since we believe in Jesus’s bodily resurrection, where is Jesus now?
  • 1:46:28: Please give us some guidance on Paul’s view on homosexuality and how to address this complex issue in the church.
  • 1:52:16: Is there any sense in which the State of Israel founded in 1948 could be the fulfillment of biblical prophecy?
  • 1:56:40: What impact do you hope your work has on Christian discipleship?
  • 2:10:34: What’s the relationship between faith and action?

Oh, and at 1:18:58, Wright offers this rousing sidebar on Christian art:

We are starved imaginatively as Christians. Christian art easily collapses into sentimentalism, just as contemporary postmodern art easily collapses into brutalism. Both of those are ways of seeing something but not the whole picture. Sentimentalism is what you get when you’re determined to smile even if the whole world is falling apart; it becomes inane, this sort of silly grin, and sadly, there’s a lot of Christian art like that.

But actually, Christians ought to be at the forefront of the art and the music, because that creates the imaginative world within which it’s possible to think differently about things. I think the secular world has done a pretty good job, and we’ve colluded with that, of keeping our imaginative levels down to the level of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Epicureanism or deism, so that heaven is just this odd place, etc., etc. We need the new art and the new music which will create a world in which it makes sense to think of these things.

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BLOG POST: “Advent Love and Anselm Kiefer’s Alchemist” by Alexandra Davison: I grew up, and my parents and sibling still live, in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, so I’m a somewhat frequent visitor to the North Carolina Museum of Art. Their untitled triptych by Anselm Kiefer is one of my favorite pieces in their collection—it transfixes me every time—so I was delighted to see that Alexandra Davison [previously], a creative director of Artists in Christian Testimony International whom I bump into at arts conferences now and again, wrote about it a few years ago. She describes it as an image of “cosmic drama that waits for resolution,” conveying “an unflinching Advent longing.” I sense that too when I stand in front of it.

Kiefer, Anselm_Untitled (NCMA)
Anselm Kiefer (German, 1945–), Untitled, 1980–86. Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, lead, charcoal, and straw on photograph, mounted on canvas, with stones, lead, and steel cable, overall 130 1/4 × 218 1/2 in. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

Kiefer is the subject of an acclaimed new documentary by Wim Wenders (which I’m eager to see when it comes to streaming!). He was born in Germany at the tail end of World War II, and his art, which often incorporates materials such as lead, ash, and straw, is inextricably connected to the ravaged landscapes and haunted history of his country.

Roundup: Why Art Matters, “Spirit and Endeavour” exhibition, and more songs in lockdown

Victoria Emily Jones5 Comments

VIDEO TALK: “The Breath of Life: Why Art Matters in a Pandemic” by James K.A. Smith: In this half-hour Zoom talk released June 2, Image journal editor in chief Jamie Smith [previously] discusses the ability of the arts to stimulate our cultural imagination in much-needed ways. “The arts matter in a pandemic,” he says, “because they shape us for the work of reshaping and rebuilding society. In other words, we all need artists to continue creating for us so the rest of us can cultivate the imagination we need to re-create our common life, our social bonds.” And again: “The arts train our imagination so that we relearn to see what we need to see. . . . It’s art as imagination therapy, it’s art as an ophthalmology of the soul that we need in order to build and sustain and restore the institutions of a healthy, flourishing society. . . . If we’re going to imagine the world otherwise, we need imaginations that are trained in subtlety, that have been humbled by mystery, and that are infused with infinity.”

At 14:44 Smith introduces three ways in which art matters during and after a pandemic: art helps us (1) attend, (2) transcend, and (3) mend. That is, art helps us attend more carefully to the world and our neighbors, calling sometimes for gratitude, sometimes for grief, often both; art helps us transcend despair, attesting to the “something more” we long for (“the arts enable us to transcend the tragic when they invite us into a joy that forgets nothing”); and art helps us mend our tattered social fabric by helping us to better understand one another and to imagine possibilities. For each of these functions he provides a few concrete examples, including the current Home Alone Together exhibition.

Kitchen
Photo by Yola Monakhov Stockton, May 17, 2020, for the “Home Alone Together” exhibition

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Along these same lines . . . at the end of the Makers & Mystics podcast episode “Art as Healing,” recorded live last year at The Farm House in Charlottesville, Virginia, and released June 5, 2020, host Stephen Roach reads an excerpt from a book he’s writing:

In our present day, it can be easy to conclude from the various crises taking place around the world, all the injustice and political unrest, the rampant poverty and environmental threats, persecution and killings, diseases and displacements, that art and beauty are mere luxury. It could even make some feel that to focus on art and beauty is insensitive or shortsighted. However, I want to suggest that it’s precisely because of these desperate situations that the artist is called upon to beautify the world with art and engage these issues from a vantage point of hope.

The desperate situation in our world calls for the artist to emerge as a prophetic voice for change and to offer heaven’s alternatives. I’m reminded of the example of Iraqi cellist Karim Wasfi, who countered the tragedy of war by playing music at the sites of car-bomb explosions, with smoldering buildings in the background of his concertos. Wasfi said, “The other side chose to turn every element, every aspect of life in Iraq into a battle and into a war zone. I chose to turn every corner of Iraq into a spot for civility, beauty, and compassion.”

This is the call of the artist in collaboration with God: we are called to be the architects of hope and to counter the destruction of life with the opposite spirit in beauty and creativity.

Here’s a video of Wasfi playing an original cello composition in the destroyed buildings of Al Shifa Hospital in Mosul, Iraq, in September 2018, where some two thousand explosive hazards were removed by UNMAS (United Nations Mine Action Service):

It reminds me of a photograph by Julie Adnan that I saw in National Geographic a decade ago and that, of all the extraordinary photos published in that magazine, has stuck with me the most. Its caption reads, “Some 160 miles northeast of Baghdad, in a Sulaymaniyah music hall ravaged by war, looting, and neglect, a violin-playing boy sounds a note of hope. His teacher, Azad Maaruf, lives there, instructing scores of students.”

Boy playing violin
Photo by Julie Adnan, taken in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, published in the February 2010 issue of National Geographic

The expression “fiddling while Rome burns,” which legend says the emperor Nero did in 64 CE, is used deprecatingly to refer to the doing of something trivial and irresponsible during a crisis. But beauty is not trivial, and its pursuit during times of crisis does not indicate apathy. I love that this little boy wants to play music while bombs sound out around him. Making art can be a daring act of resistance, an assertion of and call to common humanity, a better way. It’s life-affirming. As artist Laura Bon says: “Artists need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy.”

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NEW SONG: “The Medicine” by Dee Wilson: Dee Wilson of Common Hymnal premiered this song on his YouTube channel on May 27, and then Good Shepherd New York and friends put together a beautiful arrangement for the church’s June 7 virtual worship service. It’s a prayer that God would save us from the virus of racism, which harms and divides. The chorus goes: “We don’t know what to do, so we turn our eyes to you. We’ve run out of words to say. But if you come and have your way, you can save us from ourselves before our wounds hurt someone else. We need you now.” The video features Wilson on lead vocals, Liz Vice on background vocals, Orlando Palmer and Charles Jones on keyboard, Franklin Rankin on guitar, Michael Decena on bass, and Terence F. Clark on drums.

Every Sunday since March 15, Good Shepherd New York (“an interdenominational church helping New Yorkers embody the love of Christ for the good of our neighbors”) has been releasing a worship service video with liturgy, prayer, sermon, open communion—and phenomenal music led by associate pastor David Gungor, which engages current events. The whole services are worth watching/participating in, but here are a few musical highlights I’ve queued up. I especially like the medleys, which blend together excerpts from a range of songs:

  • June 21, instrumental prelude: “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol, arr. Edward W. Hardy
  • June 7: MEDLEY: “What’s Goin’ On?” by Marvin Gaye / “Which Way Are You Goin’?” by Jim Croce / “Will We Ever Rise” by the Brilliance
  • May 31: “Let the Waters” by Michael Gungor (also a standalone video)
  • May 10: MEDLEY: “My Brother, My Sister” by David Gungor / “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood
  • March 22: MEDLEY: “All Who Are Thirsty” by Brenton Brown and Glenn Roberts / “Take Me to the River” by Leon Bridges / “Amazing Grace” (with traditional English folk tune RISING SUN)
  • March 15: “Until These Tears Are Gone” by Young Oceans

A link to the digital worship guide for each week is provided in the video’s YouTube description field.

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NEW COVER SONGS

“Something Has to Break” – Written by Kierra Sheard, Mia Fields, and Jonathan Smith – Performed by Tinika Wyatt, Andy Delos Santos, Julia Carbajal, Eric Lige, and Shawn Halim (members of the Urbana Worship Team) – Premiered at InterVarsity Live! on June 5, 2020 [HT: Global Christian Worship]

“Way Maker” – Written by Sinach (Osinachi Kalu) – Performed by Zanbeni and Benny Prasad – This husband-wife duo [previously] brings a fusion of R&B, jazz, and Indian classical music to this 2015 gospel song.

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EXHIBITION / VIRTUAL ART TOUR: Celebrating 800 Years of Spirit and Endeavour: To celebrate the eight hundredth anniversary of the laying of its first foundation stone, Salisbury Cathedral organized a major exhibition this year, which was three years in the making. After the art was sited and installed both inside the building and outside on the lawns, COVID-19 hit, and the cathedral was forced to close. But the planning team adapted to the setback, developing a virtual tour that uses panorama technology to enable the viewer to enter the cathedral virtually, watch a video introduction, and navigate around the exhibition space by clicking on thumbnail images of the works and links to the corresponding catalog pages.

Curated by Jacquiline Creswell, who has led the cathedral’s visual arts program for the past eleven years, the exhibition features twenty-nine works of art by significant artists of the modern and contemporary eras, including Henry Moore, Elisabeth Frink, Antony Gormley, Mark Wallinger, Shirazeh Houshiary, and Subodh Gupta. Nine of the works are from the cathedral’s permanent collection, while the other twenty were specially brought in, of which two were newly commissioned: the abstract, solar-powered mobile in the nave by Daniel Chadwick, and the light installation in the north porch by Bruce Munro.

The beautifully photographed, ninety-page exhibition catalog is available for free download from the Spirit and Endeavour page of the cathedral website. Besides providing commentary on all the artworks, it also includes an essay by Sandy Nairne that discusses significant art commissions by British churches in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the difference between viewing art in a cathedral versus a museum gallery. Another available resource is a guide for kids with questions and activities. While I do hope the interior portion of the exhibition is able to open to visitors soon, I’m grateful that the online resources enable me to “visit” from my living room in the US.

Chadwick, Daniel_Somewhere in the Universe
Daniel Chadwick (British, 1965–), Somewhere in The Universe, 2019–20. Acrylic sheet, stainless steel, solar-powered motor, 1,000 × 1,000 cm. Temporary installation at Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Ash Mills.

Woodrow, Bill_Clockswarm
Bill Woodrow (British, 1948–), Clockswarm, 2001. Bronze, 25 × 35 × 11 cm. Photo: Ash Mills.

Young, Emily_Angel Gabriel
Emily Young (British, 1951–), Angel Gabriel, 2008. Purbeck stone, 90 cm. Collection of Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Ash Mills.

View more photos here.

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PSALM 13 SETTINGS FROM INDIA: In November 2015 a group of musicians from Poona Faith Community Church in Pune, India, composed and recorded worship songs in several of the country’s languages. Because Psalm 13 is assigned in today’s lectionary, here are three settings of that lament, in Marathi, Hindi, and Nepali. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

(This psalm has also been impactfully adapted by Isaac Wardell, as “How Long,” on Bifrost Arts’ 2016 Lamentations album.)

How Long? (Artful Devotion)

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Guayasamin, Oswaldo_The Cry
Oswaldo Guayasamín (Ecuadorian, 1919–1999), El Grito [The Cry], 1983. Oil on three canvases. Fundación Guayasamín, Quito, Ecuador.

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted.

—Habakkuk 1:2–4

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SONG: “How Long, O Lord?” by Justin Ruddy, July 13, 2016

About this song, Ruddy wrote,

I haven’t really known what to say about the violence in our nation and around the world. There are specific events that I’m grieving, and then there’s just the toll of senseless violence stacked on senseless violence. I’m exhausted, and I’m not even a member of any of the affected communities. Lord have mercy. This lament just kind of poured out of me last week. How long O Lord?

Justin Ruddy is the founding pastor of Resurrection Church in East Boston, which just launched this fall. As a former minister at Citylife Boston, where I attended for five years, he has been influential in shaping my faith—especially my appreciation of liturgy and my practice of lament. When he wasn’t preaching or singing/playing music in worship, he often served as “presider” over the service, connecting together the various liturgical elements, weaving a narrative through line that illuminated the gospel for me week after week. When he spoke theology, he did so in such thoughtful and relevant ways. He also occasionally led us in responding to national or global tragedies or crises. His prayers in the wake of such events, such as the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, have taught me a way to pray through suffering. His song “How Long, O Lord?” exemplifies his approach—a biblical one—of bringing pain, grief, anger, exasperation fully before God.

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A theology that has no place for lament is left only with thin, inadequate murmurings. The covenantal relationship is reduced to a mere shell, maneuvered about with smoke and mirrors rather than serious and faithful engagement. . . . A theology which takes our covenantal relationship with God seriously must then also take the laments seriously. One cannot happen without the other.

—Logan C. Jones, The Psalms of Lament and the Transformation of Sorrow

Guayasamin, Oswaldo_El Grito I
Oswaldo Guayasamín, El Grito I

Guayasamin, Oswaldo_El Grito II
Oswaldo Guayasamín, El Grito II

Guayasamin, Oswaldo_El Grito III
Oswaldo Guyasamín, El Grito III

This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 26, cycle C, click here.