Christ Nailed to the Cross, mola (reverse appliqué panel) from the San Blas Islands, late 20th century. Bowden Collections.
The Kuna (also spelled Guna or Cuna) Indians live on the San Blas archipelago off the east coast of Panama, a cluster of some 378 islands in the Caribbean Sea. They are politically autonomous, and much of their traditional culture is intact.
Since the late nineteenth century, Kuna women have been making what are called molas, reverse appliqué panels made in pairs for the front and back of women’s blouses. As mola collector Jane Gruver describes, “several layers of cloth are stacked together and the design is made by cutting through the different layers of fabric to expose the desired color. Once the specific shape is achieved, the area is stitched around. Sometimes embroidery and applique are also used to add detail.” This colorful, wearable textile art is an integral part of Kuna culture.
The earliest molas featured geometric designs, which the Kunas translated from their customary body painting designs, but now a vast variety of representational subjects are common, including animals, plants, domestic scenes, political satire, dragons, mermaids, superheroes, spacecraft—and biblical stories!
The first Christian missionary to the San Blas Islands was Annie Coope, a single woman from the United States who arrived in the first decade of the 1900s and established a school on the island of Nirgana in 1913. A significant number of the Kuna embraced Christianity, such that there are now churches on thirty of the islands, as well as eighteen Kuna churches in and around Panama City, according to Wycliffe. A Kuna translation of the New Testament was published in 1995, at the behest of Kuna pastor Lino Smith Arango, and a Kuna Old Testament was completed in 2014.
The mola above shows two men hammering nails into Christ’s palms as two mourning figures—presumably John and Mary—stand behind. This piece is from the collection of Sandra and Bob Bowden in Chatham, Massachusetts, who are among today’s major collectors of modern biblical art. It is one of forty molas in the traveling exhibition Eden to Eternity: Molas from the San Blas Islands, available for rental for a nominal fee.
Samuel Songo (Rhodesian, 1929–ca. 1977), The Prodigal Son, 1954. Soapstone, h. 26 cm. Source: Christliche Kunst in Afrika, p. 254.
Samuel Songo was a Shona artist who lived and work in what is today Zimbabwe. He used a wheelchair and had only partial use of his right hand, so he worked mainly with his left, executing stone carvings, wood reliefs, and paintings on both religious and secular subjects. He was associated with the Cyrene Mission School, where he began as a student and then became an instructor. He played a significant role in advancing modern art in Zimbabwe.
LISTEN: “When I Was Distant” by Matt Moore and Matte Cassidy of City Church Music, 2018 | Performed by Salina Turner, Allison Negus, and Joel Negus, 2020
When I was distant from my Lord Opposing his plans and ignoring his word My stubborn desire left me at war When I was distant from my Lord
When I was reckless on my own Avoiding the ruin my choices had sown A prodigal lost and far from home When I was reckless on my own
There in the shadow of my sin Unable to dwell with my Maker again Ashamed and afraid and wearing thin There in the shadow of my sin
Then came my loving Savior’s plea: “Lay down your burdens; find rest in me; All faint and all weary, come and see.” Then came my loving Savior’s plea
When I was distant, God came near Enduring the evil, the torment and fear That beauty and wonder could appear When I was distant, God came near
This song was part of the Digital Vespers service for Good Friday 2020 at City Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. To view the full service, click here.
Steven Homestead (American, 1982–), The Annunciation, 2020. Digital collage.
Artist, composer, writer, curator, and speaker Steven Homestead of Orange County, California, created this collage by overlaying and manipulating three photographs from Unsplash. It depicts the moment when the angel Gabriel came to Mary of Nazareth to tell her that she had been chosen to bear God’s Son. Though Mary was initially taken aback by this announcement, she ultimately gave her full assent, leaning into the future God had for her. Through her fiat, her yes, God worked the salvation of the world.
Gabriel and Mary are represented here by two Brazilian models whose raised arms—his right, her left—form near symmetrical arcs. It’s as if he’s calling and she’s responding. She’s bending to God’s will, but not with the sort of demure posture so often assigned to her in art history; instead, her stance is one of freedom and power and becoming.
The curve of Gabriel’s hand matches the curve of the stained glass leading, which encircles his head and frames a representation of the Holy Spirit as dove, flying forth from a sunburst.
The setting is outdoors in a wooded area. Mary is dressed in white, like a bride. As she surrenders to the Divine, she becomes filled with light, the sun’s rays converging on her womb. A mystical veil falls around the two figures, suggesting sanctity and mystery. Her body has become the temple of the Lord.
March 25—exactly nine months before Christmas—is when the church celebrates the miraculous conception of Christ in Mary’s womb, the first stage of the Incarnation. It’s an event that fills me with awe and wonder—as it has thousands of artists over the centuries. I’m building a Pinterest board of Annunciation art that I find compelling, which you may be interested to browse: https://www.pinterest.com/art_and_theology/annunciation/. Homestead’s piece is my latest addition.
LISTEN: “Lord, Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary” by Randy Lynn Scruggs and John W. Thompson, 1982 | Arranged and performed by the West Angeles COGIC Mass Choir and Congregation on No Limit, 2007
Lord, prepare me To be a sanctuary Pure and holy Tried and true And with thanksgiving I’ll be a living Sanctuary For you
And whatever you tell me, my answer will be yes Yes (yes) Yes (yes to your will, Lord) Yes (yes to your way) Yes (Lord, I’ll go where you want me to go) Yes (yes) Yes, yes (yes) Yes (whatever you tell me to do, Lord) Yes Yes (my will is your will for me, Lord) Yes (come on, let’s take it higher, say yeah)
Lord, prepare me To be a sanctuary Pure and holy Tried and true And with thanksgiving I’ll be a living Sanctuary For you
Hallelujah, hey! Now I want the Lord to mold me I want him to make me, I want him to shape me I want him to direct me, I want him to purge me I want him to wash me Whatever he wants me to be I’ll be just that, so I tell him:
Lord, mold me (mold me) What you want me to be (what you want me to be) Oh mold me (mold me) What you want me to be (what you want me to be) Oh and say mold me (mold me) Say what you want me to be (what you want me to be) Oh mold me (yes, what you want me to be) (mold me) What you want me to be (what you want me to be)
Mold and we’ll say yes (yes) Yes to your will say (yes to your will) Say yeah, yeah (yeah) Yes to your way, Lord (yes to your way) Say yes everyday (yes everyday) Yes to your way (yes to your way) Say yes, I’ll obey (yes, I’ll obey) Say yes to your way (yes to your way)
Lord, mold me What you want me to be Say what you want me to do Where you want me to go Say where you want me to go When you want me to go Say how you want me to go What you want me to do
And you will say yeah (yeah) Say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (yeah) Say yes to your way (yes to your way) Ooh ooh ooh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (yeah) Say yes to your will (yes to your will) Say, say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (yeah) Say:
Lord, prepare me To be a sanctuary Pure and holy Tried and true And with thanksgiving I’ll be a living Sanctuary For you
Hallelujah Lord, I say yes Lord, I say yes Lord, I say yes To your will and to your way Not my time, but yours
If there’s one word I most associate with the Annunciation, it’s “yes.”
This song doesn’t directly reference the Annunciation, but it does capture the attitude of surrender to God that Mary modeled for us. “Lord, I say yes to your will and to your way.” We can assume that throughout her girlhood she cultivated a devotion that made her open and receptive to God’s call when it came. She was ready to offer herself as God’s sanctuary, a house for his incarnate presence. She literally became pregnant with God!
In a spiritual sense, we too are called to bear Christ within us (Rom. 8:10; 2 Cor. 4:6–7; 13:5; Gal. 1:15–16; 2:20). To be temples of his Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19–20). And to answer yes when God invites us into some new adventure.
Caitlin Connolly (American, 1986–), Holding a Mystery, 2014. Oil on panel, 16 × 6 in.
Caitlin Connolly is an artist from Provo, Utah, whose paintings explore womanhood, sorrow, and faith. Her website, www.caitlinconnolly.com, contains an archive of original images dating back to 2013, many of which she sells as giclée prints from her online shop. She is featured in the first half of this episode of the BYUtv documentary series Artful.
The women in Connolly’s paintings are often shown holding something—the world, “holy things,” a book, a truth, a child, tears—or they might cup or cradle an absence that hurts. Here the figure carries a beautiful, tangled mass, a mystery, which is strangely both heavy and light. She doesn’t try to untangle it but simply hugs it close, resting.
Lord my God, I don’t know how to start, So I pray today that you would teach my heart Where and how to find you, God, O where and how to search. How can I know unless you show me first?
My God and my All, I’ve never seen you. You created me, and you have made me new And given me the good things in my hands and in my heart, But still I don’t know who it is you are.
[Refrain] Let me seek you in all my desire, Desire you in everything I seek. Let it be by loving you I find you, And when I finally find you, let it be lovely.
I come to you confessing gratefully. It was in your image you created me So that I may remember you and find the living course On my way back to the loving source.
But that image is so worn and dim, Darkened by the fault and by the smoke of sin, That it can no longer do what you made it to do Until it is refashioned and renewed.
[Refrain]
I’m not trying to ascend your heights; My mind’s in no way capable of such a flight. I do desire to know a little of your truth above Which my heart already trusts and loves.
I seek to understand not so I can believe, but I believe so I may understand. And what is more, I do believe that unless I do believe, I’ll never understand this mystery.
Originally from the Midwest, the Rev. Nick Chambers lives with his wife Katlyn and two sons in Atlanta, where he serves as the worship and formation pastor at Trinity Anglican Northside. His academic background is in philosophy and theology. “I love writing songs in, with, and for the church, and I’ve been doing it for years but only recently started seeking to share them beyond my local community,” he told me. He has contributed to twoPorter’s Gate albums (Advent Songs and the forthcoming Climate Vigil Songs) and will be releasing his first solo EP later this year.
On Chambers’s YouTube channel you will find some of his original settings of psalms, prayers by Ephrem and Augustine and from the Book of Common Prayer, a poem by Pádraig Ó Tuama, and even a reworking of a Swedish hymn that he encountered through a few spoken lines from the Ingmar Bergman film Wild Strawberries!
“Lovely (Anselm of Canterbury)” is adapted from a prayer by the eleventh-century Burgundian-born monk, and later archbishop, named in the title. A doctor of the church, Anselm had a tremendous influence on the development of Christian theology and spirituality. The “combination of theological veracity and personal ardour is what most distinguishes Anselm’s writings from similar prayers, and makes him both traditional and revolutionary,” says Sister Benedicta Ward, a preeminent scholar and English translator of Anselm.
Anselm wrote the Proslogion (Lat. Proslogium, “Discourse”) in the 1070s while he was prior of the abbey of Notre Dame at Bec in Normandy. Chambers’s song is based on the passage that ends chapter 1:
Teach me to seek thee, and reveal thyself to me, when I seek thee, for I cannot seek thee, except thou teach me, nor find thee, except thou reveal thyself. Let me seek thee in longing, let me long for thee in seeking; let me find thee in love, and love thee in finding. Lord, I acknowledge and I thank thee that thou hast created me in this thine image, in order that I may be mindful of thee, may conceive of thee, and love thee; but that image has been so consumed and wasted away by vices, and obscured by the smoke of wrong‑doing, that it cannot achieve that for which it was made, except thou renew it, and create it anew. I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe—that unless I believed, I should not understand. (translated from the Latin by Sidney Norton Deane, 1903; emphasis mine)
In her 1973 translation of the Proslogion (pp. 243–44), Benedicta Ward sets this prayer in broken lines “in an attempt to convey the rhythm of Anselm’s complex rhymed prose, which is closer to our conception of poetry” and which aids a more meditative reading:
Teach me to seek you, and as I seek you, show yourself to me, for I cannot seek you unless you show me how, and I will never find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you by desiring you, and desire you by seeking you; let me find you by loving you, and love you in finding you.
I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving, that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you, and love you. But that image is so worn and blotted out by faults, so darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do that for which it was made, unless you renew and refashion it. Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height, for my understanding is in no way equal to that, but I do desire to understand a little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves. I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe I shall not understand.
I particularly love lines 8–9: “Let me find you by loving you, and love you in finding you.” Or, as Deane translates it, “Let me find thee in love and love thee in finding.” Chambers highlights these lines by making them, and the two that precede them, the refrain of his song: “Let me seek you in all my desire, / Desire you in everything I seek. / Let it be by loving you I find you, / And when I finally find you, let it be lovely.”
For Anselm, our desire for God must precede our understanding of God. We cannot know God except through love; those who pursue him without loving him will not find him. And it’s not as if our “finding” God ends the pursuit, as there is always more of God to discover. We catch small glimpses, and that’s invigorating. In this life we are never granted a full and complete vision of God but rather are always searching and often finding—and that search, undertaken with loving belief, is a delight.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
—Song of Solomon 2:4
I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou hast lifted me up . . .
—Psalm 30:1a
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ . . .
—Ephesians 1:3
LOOK: Ethiopian Angels, Debre Birhan Selassie Church
Painted wood ceiling, early 19th century, Debre Birhan Selassie Church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: A. Savin.
Debre Birhan Selassie (Trinity and Mountain of Light) Church in Gondar, the imperial capital of Ethiopia from 1636 to 1855, is famous for the colorful paintings that cover every inch of the interior walls and ceiling. The south wall concentrates on the Life of Christ, while the north wall depicts various saints. The focal point—on the east wall, in front of the holy of holies—is a Crucifixion scene and an icon of the Trinity. But the most celebrated visuals inside the church are the hundred-plus winged heads painted in rows between the wooden beams of the ceiling, representing the cherubim and God’s omnipresence.
The original church, which was round, was consecrated in 1693 by Emperor Iyasu I, but lightning destroyed it in 1707. The rectangular stone church that stands on the site now likely dates to the late eighteenth century, and it is the only one of the forty-four Orthodox Tewahedo churches in Gondar to survive the 1888 sack of the city by Mahdist soldiers from Sudan. (Locals say the marauders were miraculously rerouted by a swarm of bees.)
According to Ethiopia (Bradt Travel Guide) writer Philip Briggs, “The paintings are traditionally held to be the work of the 17th-century artist Haile Meskel, but it is more likely that several artists were involved and that the majority were painted during the rule of Egwala Seyon (1801–17), who is depicted prostrating himself before the Cross on one of the murals.”
The church is part of a larger imperial compound, known as Fasil Ghebbi, that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 and that includes palaces, monasteries, and public and private buildings.
Photo: Alan Davey
LISTEN: “His Banner Over Me Is Love” by B. C. Laurelton (pseudonym of Alfred B. Smith), 1965 | Performed by Christy Nockels on Be Held: Lullabies for the Beloved, 2017 | CCLI #28579
I am my Beloved’s and He is mine— His banner over me is love. I am my Beloved’s and He is mine— His banner over me is love. I am my Beloved’s and He is mine— His banner over me is love, His banner over me is love.
He brought me to His banqueting table— His banner over me is love. He brought me to His banqueting table— His banner over me is love. He brought me to His banqueting table— His banner over me is love, His banner over me is love.
He lifted me up to the heavenly places— His banner over me is love. He lifted me up to the heavenly places— His banner over me is love. He lifted me up to the heavenly places— His banner over me is love, His banner over me is love.
I sang a version of this song in children’s church regularly when I was little (with hand motions!) and have carried it with me all these years, a gentle assurance that I am divinely loved and protected. I’ve quoted the scriptures it’s drawn from above. Its refrain comes from Song of Solomon 2:4: “his banner over me was love.”
The Song of Solomon, aka the Canticle of Canticles, has traditionally been read, at least on one level, as an allegory of the love between God and the human soul—or, more specifically in the Christian tradition, Christ and his church.
From the root “to cover,” the Hebrew word for “banner” in this verse refers to a military standard. It is being used figuratively here to indicate that we enlist ourselves under Love’s banner, which goes forth in triumph and protects those under its billows. We belong to love, commit ourselves to love, overcome through love. The verse is perhaps an allusion to the names of generals being inscribed on the banners of their armies. God’s name is Love (1 John 4:8).
The image is at once vigorous and gentle. The NRSV translates the phrase as “his intention toward me was love.”
The song “His Banner Over Me Is Love” was written by Alfred B. Smith (1916–2001), an itinerant song leader, songwriter, and Christian music publisher. Smith compiled and published his first songbook, Singspiration One: Gospel Songs and Choruses, while he was a student at Wheaton College in 1941, to support the evangelistic meetings he was running with his roommate, Billy Graham (yes, that Billy Graham!). Two years later he founded Singspiration Publishing Company, which published several popular series of songbooks. In 1963 he sold Singspiration to Zondervan, but he ran other publishing ventures (i.e., Better Music Publications and Encore Publications) for the remainder of his ministerial career.
According to Music in the Air: The Golden Age of Gospel Radio by Mark Ward Sr., Smith composed “His Banner Over Me Is Love” in 1965 as an impromptu offertory while serving as a visiting song leader at First Baptist Church–Laurelton in Brick, New Jersey. Afterward he received requests from the congregation for the music. His original notation read “B. C. Laurelton” (for “Baptist Church Laurelton”) to designate where he wrote the song, and it was copied as such as people shared the music with others—so when the song was later published in 1972, Smith decided to adopt “B. C. Laurelton” as a pen name.
Singer-songwriter Christy Nockels [previously] sings “His Banner over Me” on an album of lullabies to a twinkling piano accompaniment.
May this truth—that God’s banner over you is love—soothe you and give you confidence.
How condescending and how kind Was God’s eternal Son! Our mis’ry reached his heav’nly mind, And pity brought him down.
When justice, by our sins provoked, Drew forth its dreadful sword, He gave his soul up to the stroke Without a murmuring word.
He sunk beneath our heavy woes, To raise us to his throne; There’s ne’er a gift his hand bestows But cost his heart a groan.
This was compassion like our God, That when the Savior knew The price of pardon was his blood, His pity ne’er withdrew.
Now though he reigns exalted high, His love is still as great: Well he remembers Calvary, Nor should his saints forget.
Here we behold his bowels roll, As kind as when he died; And see the sorrows of his soul Bleed through his wounded side.
Here we receive repeated seals Of Jesus’ dying love; Hard is the heart that never feels One soft affection move.
Here let our hearts begin to melt While we his death record, And with our joy for pardoned guilt, Mourn that we pierced the Lord.
Virginia musician Timothy Seaman plays a variety of instruments, including the hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, various flutes and whistles, bowed and plucked psalteries, and guitar. He has recorded fifteen albums featuring his instrumental arrangements of traditional music (especially American mountain and Scots-Irish tunes), as well as original compositions, many of them inspired by local wildlife and nature and by the Christian faith. He has eight years’ worth of videos on his YouTube channel, a mix of tutorials and informal performances. For this time of year especially, I’d also commend to you another of his Appalachian folk hymn arrangements, “Behold the Lamb of God” on hammered dulcimer.
Of “Condescension,” he writes,
In 1986 I found this profound folk hymn in an old book, and I’ve loved to play and sing it ever since—but not till now have I recorded it. I’ve considered ensemble arrangements with intriguing chords and rhythms, etc., but I keep coming back to a cappella bamboo flute, or voice. Here it is in its instrumental form! The tune is anonymous, and the words are by the master hymn writer Isaac Watts.
The mention of rolling bowels in the sixth stanza may sound strange to us today (sounds like a digestive issue!), but traditionally, the bowels were regarded as the seat of tender and sympathetic emotions—felt in the gut. Several of the biblical authors mention the moving of that organ in relation to yearning, anguish, compassion, or mercy (e.g., Gen. 43:30; Isa. 63:15; Jer. 4:19; 1 John 3:17). The KJV translation preserves the expression, still commonly used in the seventeenth century, with literalness, translating the Hebrew mēʿêand Greek splagchnon as either “bowels,” “belly,” or “inward parts.” Today we locate such emotions in the heart instead.
This stanza is actually my favorite in the hymn. There’s such a poetic quality to it! Watts is meditating on Christ exalted, who is not at all impassive in that high estate, but rather is still moved to compassion for humanity, every bit as much as when he hung on the cross. He still bears the wounds of crucifixion, and, in a figurative sense, those wounds still bleed for us.
Here we behold his bowels roll, As kind as when he died; And see the sorrows of his soul Bleed through his wounded side.
Fernando Botero (Colombian, 1932–), Cabeza de Cristo (Head of Christ), 1976. Oil on canvas, 185 × 179 cm. Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia.
Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero is South America’s best-known artist. He is influenced by the Old Masters, which he studied in his twenties in Madrid, Paris, and Florence, and by the Mexican muralists. But his style—marked by plump, often childlike figures—is distinctively his own and has even been given the name “Boterismo.”
Throughout his career he has remained adamant that he does not paint “fat people” or “chubbies.” What he paints, he insists, is exaggerated volumes that highlight the body’s natural shape and the “sensuality of form.” In addition to religious subjects, he also paints Latin American street scenes, domestic life, nudes, and political portraits.
At age eighty-nine, Botero continues to be active as an artist, living and working between Paris, New York, and Tuscany.
LISTEN: “Legend (The Crown of Roses),” Op. 54, No. 5, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1883/89 | Based on a text by Richard Henry Stoddard, 1856 | Performed by the University of Pretoria Camerata, dir. Michael Barrett, on Written in the Stars, 2021
When Jesus Christ was yet a child He had a garden small and wild, Wherein he cherished roses fair, And wove them into garlands there.
Now once, as summer-time drew nigh, There came a troop of children by, And seeing roses on the tree, With shouts they plucked them merrily.
“Do you bind roses in your hair?” They cried, in scorn, to Jesus there. The Boy said humbly: “Take, I pray, All but the naked thorns away.”
Then of the thorns they made a crown, And with rough fingers pressed it down. Till on his forehead fair and young Red drops of blood like roses sprung.
In 1877 Tchaikovsky found a Russian poem by Aleksey Pleshcheyev published in a journal; it was a translation of the English-language poem “Roses and Thorns” (1856) by American poet Richard Henry Stoddard, an allegory of the Crucifixion. It’s about the boy Jesus who tends a rose garden and dreamily weaves together crowns from the branches’ yield. One day a bunch of rowdy children comes by and carelessly yanks the flowers off the bushes, scoffing at Jesus for being soft, a flower lover. In a spirit of gentleness, he tells them they may have the flowers, but to leave the thorns. Continuing their derision, the children bend the bare, thorny stems into a crown and press it into Jesus’s head. From his flesh then bloom “roses” of blood.
Tchaikovsky first set the Russian poem to music in 1883, arranging it for solo voice and piano and publishing it as part of his Sixteen Songs for Children, Opus 54. In 1884 he arranged it for solo voice and orchestra, and in 1889 for unaccompanied choir.
When English-language choirs sing the song, instead of using Stoddard’s original text, they typically use a 1913 adaptation by British poet Geoffrey Dearmer—which I believe is the superior version. See a side-by-side presentation of the song’s textual history.
Stan Smith (British, 1929–2001), Kites Over Twickenham, ca. 1985. Oil on canvas, 82 × 121 cm.
What is this unfolding, this slow-
going unraveling of gift held
in hands open
to the wonder and enchantment of it all?
What is this growing, this rare
showing, like blossoming
of purple spotted forests
by roadside grown weary with winter months?
Seasons affected, routinely disordered
by playful disturbance of divine glee
weaving through limbs with sharpened shards of mirrored light,
cutting dark spaces, interlacing creation,
commanding life with whimsical delight.
What is this breaking, this hopeful
re-making, shifting stones, addressing dry bones,
dizzying me with blessings,
intercepting my grieving
and raising the dead all around me?
Samuel Salcedo (Spanish, 1975–), Heavy Rain, 2011. Polyester resin and aluminum powder, 185 × 180 × 260 cm. From the solo exhibition That’s Why I’m Light, Light like a Sunday Morning, October 16–November 11, 2014, Osnova Gallery, Moscow. Photo courtesy of the gallery.
LISTEN: “Water” by Gregory Porter, on Water (2010)
This is the title track of multi-Grammy-winning jazz vocalist and songwriter Gregory Porter’s debut album. The live performance posted below took place in November 2010 at Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center in New York City. It features Chip Crawford on piano, Alex Han on alto saxophone, and Yosuke Sato on alto saxophone.
Water pouring down the sidewalks Cleaning widows clear to see Washing gumdrops down side gutters Rusting chains and cleansing me
Greening gardens, drowning ants Changing rhythms, bruising plants Graying vistas soulfully And again it’s saving me
Ooooo Ooooo Wash me, wash me, wash me Let me rest in you Let me flow away to glory Save me, save me, save me
Carved and painted wood by Tony Nwachukwu (Nigerian, 1959–)
I retrieved this image years ago from https://anthonynwachukwu.com/, but the domain has since expired. Nwachukwu didn’t give a title or a date there, and I couldn’t find his contact information to ask. The scene on the far left appears to me to be a Nativity—Christ in the manger, his mother and father standing behind. Then there’s what I’m guessing is Jesus’s anointing with the Spirit at his baptism; hands outspread, he receives his commission. The wineglass and flatbread refer, of course, to the Last Supper, and to Jesus’s declaration that he is the bread of life and that he is initiating a new covenant in his blood. The overturned cup may be a reference to the cup of wrath poured out on Christ at his passion. The open palm with nail wound and adjacent blood-stained cross are shorthand for the Crucifixion. Next to that is the dark cavern of Christ’s tomb. But in the final segment the mouth of the tomb is open and bright, and Christ bursts forth in resurrection.
Tony Nwachukwu studied art at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. Since 1987 he has lived in Owerri in Imo State, where he runs an art gallery. In addition to painting and carving, he also makes batiks (dyed cloth artworks) [previously] and liturgical vestments. In 2009 the German Catholic organization Misereor commissioned him to design that year’s Hungertuch, a liturgical veil hung in churches during Lent [previously], which was reproduced throughout Europe; his theme was climate change.
I been washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus
Well, I’m gonna tell you about the life of Jesus I’m gonna tell you about the life of Jesus He lived a long time ago He still lives today He came down from his Father in heaven To show us a better way
And I been washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus Washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus
He was born in a lowly place Smack-dab in the middle of the human race He grew up to spread the word of God Living and loving and sweating as a man Working and hurting and all that you can Living and dying, he knew that too
Washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus
He went through the land Preaching the gospel and the truth to man Healing the sick and saving the lost Driving the demons back to hell Then he came to Jerusalem Where trials and tribulations waited for him He wound up nailed on Calvary’s tree
And that’s where I was washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus Washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus
He was laid in the tomb He descended into hell He arose on the third day To angel horns and heavenly bells And when his disciples came looking for him He was not to be found Angels had rolled the stone away And Jesus was heaven-bound
Now I am washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus Washed in the blood of the Holy Lamb Washed in the blood of Jesus
This song is from a gospel album by North Carolina singer-songwriter, roots musician, and bandleader David Childers (b. 1952). (Read an album review here.) I learned about him through Bob Crawford, bassist for the Avett Brothers and a close friend and sometime collaborator of Childers’s.
“Life of Jesus” originated in the 1990s with Bill Noonan, one of Childers’s bandmates in the Gospel Playboys at the time. Noonan was just playing around, but Childers “took it seriously and wound up writing out some words and finding a song structure,” Childers told me. His son Robert Childers and Neal Harper produced the version of the song on Serpents of Reformation, released in 2014 on Ramseur Records. “The song . . . has continued to evolve with each performance,” Childers said in an email. “It usually gets the room moving and grooving, which might freak out some Baptists; but it makes me happy. I also think Jesus liked to see people happy, and maybe did not frown on dancing or demonstrable rejoicing.”
There are a handful of live performances of the song on YouTube, including this one from a house concert in Charlotte shortly after the album release:
In addition to writing and recording music, Childers practiced law for thirty-five years, serving as an attorney for those on social security and/or disability. Those two careers ran parallel for a while, but in 2016 Childers decided to quit the legal profession to focus on his music. He is also a poet and a painter.
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Art & Theology 