Michael Symmons Roberts – Art & Theology

NEW SONG + CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Sing the Prayer from BibleProject: To cap off their five-part podcast series on the Lord’s Prayer this month, BibleProject commissioned singer-songwriters Brian Hall (of the family band TENTS) and Liz Vice to write and record a new setting of the Lord’s Prayer, using the translation by Tim Mackie and the BibleProject Scholar Team:

Our Father who is in the skies, may your name be recognized as holy. May your kingdom come and may your will be done as it is in the skies, so also on the land. Our daily provision of bread, give to us today. And forgive us our debts, just as we also have forgiven those indebted to us. And don’t lead us to be tested, but deliver us from the evil one. Amen. (Matt. 6:9–13; cf. Luke 11:2–4)

(You may be wondering, as I did, where’s the final line, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” As Mackie explains, that line is not in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew or Luke; the addition first appeared in the Didache, an early Christian teaching manual.)

You can listen to and download Hall and Vice’s new setting of the Lord’s Prayer, which Vice sings to Hall’s guitar accompaniment, at the “Sing the Prayer” link above. In addition, the Good Shepherd Collective video-recorded a more fully instrumented arrangement for a digital worship service; see here. And here are links to the recent Lord’s Prayer episodes of the BibleProject podcast:

All you composers out there can get involved too! Through September 15, 2024, BibleProject is accepting submissions of musical settings of the Lord’s Prayer. You can sing the text verbatim using a translation of your choice, or you can rephrase it or write a song based on the prayer’s themes. Purely instrumental responses are also welcome. Send in a song file using their online form, and they will select some of their favorites to host on their website (for streaming, not download). View the early selections at https://bibleproject.com/singtheprayer/all.

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TV SHOW EXCERPT: Opening montage from season 3, episode 4 of The Chosen, “Clean, Part 1”: Several people have asked for my opinion of The Chosen, a television adaptation of the Gospels created by Dallas Jenkins. I think it’s great! Creatively (not woodenly, as is too often the case) written, culturally and historically immersive, high production values, and humanizing—it portrays the disciples (the Twelve and others, including the women) as complex, rounded characters with backstories, families, and distinct personalities. Jonathan Roumie is fantastic as Jesus; so is Liz Tabish as Mary Magdalene. If I were to identify a weakness in the series, it would be the portrayal of the Roman soldiers and rulers, especially Quintus, as cartoonish, one-dimensional—although that begins to shift with at least one Roman in season 3—and the occasional awkward dialogue that’s used to explain to the audience ancient Jewish practices and law codes with which we’re likely to be unfamiliar.

I’m in the middle of season 3 right now and was particularly struck by the opening montage of episode 4, a narrative embellishment of Luke 10:1, which says that Jesus “sent them [his appointed followers] on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” In the series, this is the first time the disciples perform healings. They’re surprised and confused by, and even a little fearful of, the power working through them; they don’t understand it and aren’t always sure how to wield it. This eight-minute segment shows them growing into their roles as they bring the gospel in word and deed throughout the region, preparing the way for Jesus.

Hear the cast discuss the montage.

The Chosen is streaming for free on its own custom app, as well as on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and Peacock.

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POEMS:

This coming Sunday’s Gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary is Mark 5:21–43, which recounts the Healing of the Woman with an Issue of Blood and the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter. Here are two poems based on that passage. (As a side note related to the previous item: The Chosen, season 3, episodes 4–5 center on these two healing narratives; “Veronica’s” arc is especially cathartic!)

>> “Haemorrhoissa” by Leila Chatti: In her early twenties, the poet Leila Chatti [previously] had uterine tumors and suffered from severe bleeding and pain for two and a half years. She explores the shame, discomfort, isolation, and trauma of that condition as well as cultural taboos surrounding women’s bodies in her debut collection, Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), influenced by her dual Islamic-Christian heritage. In this poem she finds kinship with the unnamed hemorrhaging woman in the Synoptic Gospels and admires her boldness in touching Jesus’s hem. The title of the poem, a transliteration of “ἡ αἱμοῤῥοοῦσα,” is the Greek term used in the New Testament to refer to this woman, often translated as the “woman with an issue of blood” or “bleeding woman.”

>> “Jairus” by Michael Symmons Roberts: The poetry collection Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts (Jonathan Cape, 2004) also centers on the body, especially on the relationship between corporeality, death, and resurrection. This poem from it, in which the speaker (a disciple of Jesus’s, perhaps?) addresses Jairus, celebrates physical appetite, an instinctive desire that helps keep us alive and that here also represents the hunger for living.

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NEW PODCAST: Curiously, Kaitlyn: Launched this spring under the aegis of Holy Post Media, Curiously, Kaitlyn is a weekly podcast hosted by author and theologian Kaitlyn Schiess in which she and other scholars respond to theological questions submitted by kids, unpacking complex concepts in simple terms. Questions so far have included “Is God a boy or a girl?,” “What will we look like in heaven? ’Cause I want my Nana to look like Nana, but she might want to look younger!,” and the clarification-seeking “Does God bring heaven to earth?” (the latter of which occasioned a super-helpful distillation of a key theme in N. T. Wright’s teaching). I’ve really been enjoying this!

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NEW DOCUMENTARY: God and Country, dir. Dan Partland: Released earlier this year, this documentary produced by Rob Reiner “looks at the implications of Christian Nationalism and how it distorts not only the constitutional republic, but Christianity itself. Featuring prominent Christian thought leaders, God & Country asks this question: What happens when a faith built on love, sacrifice, and forgiveness grows political tentacles, conflating power, money, and belief into hyper-nationalism?”

If you are an American Christian, you need to see this film. White Christian nationalism is becoming an increasingly larger threat in the US as it becomes more mainstream, and we need to be aware of it and denounce it. God and Country features interviews with several folks whom I’ve followed for years and deeply respect, including historians and best-selling authors Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Holy Post podcaster and VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, political commentator David French, and ethicist Russell Moore. Some of the footage from worship services is disturbing, to say nothing of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

God and Country is currently available on Kanopy, an on-demand streaming service that many public and academic library patrons have free access to.

VISUAL MEDITATION: “The Birth of Ecclesia”: On Sunday I wrote a piece for ArtWay on a thirteenth-century Bible moralisée illumination that pairs the creation of Eve out of the side of sleeping Adam with the birth of the church out of the side wound of the New Adam, Christ, our spouse, who “fell asleep” on the cross. The painting offers a great example of how art can do theology.

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POETRY LECTURE: “Believing in Poetry for a Secular Age: Michael Symmons Roberts and Mark Oakley,” October 5, 2017, 6:30 p.m., 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ: “If we live in a secular age, you wouldn’t know it from our poetry. Not only are some of the greatest poets of recent years overtly Christian, such as Geoffrey Hill and Les Murray, but many who are not remain drawn to and fascinated by ‘the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage.’” To facilitate discussion on poetry’s spiritual power, the religion and society think tank Theos has organized an evening with the award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts and arts writer and advocate Mark Oakley, who will draw on their most recent publications. General admission is £7.

Inspired by his hometown of Manchester, Roberts’s seventh poetry collection, Mancunia, released last month, has received critical acclaim. “Mancunian Miserere” is reprinted in full in the Guardian’s review, but here’s a taste: “As I walk west on Cross Street have mercy on me, O God, / . . . / for the wide berth I gave that man-cocoon asleep on the steps / of a new-closed bank where once I queued to find my balance.”

As canon chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of Mark Oakley’s responsibilities is to advance the church’s engagement with the arts. Last year he wrote The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry, a series of reflections on twenty-nine poems that speak into the life of faith. Earlier books of his include The Collage of God, A Good Year, and compilations of readings for weddings and funerals.

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ALBUM: Grace by Lizz Wright: Lizz Wright’s sixth album, Grace, dropped on September 15 to rave reviews. “A sophisticated straddler of down-home blues, jazz, gospel, folk, southern pop and confessional singer-songwriter traditions,” Wright, with the help of album producer Joe Henry, chose nine covers from an array of sources and eras and cowrote the tenth track with Maia Sharp. My favorite is “Singing in My Soul,” written by Thomas Dorsey and popularized by Sister Rosetta Tharpe—about the steadfast joy that is ours in Christ.

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FILM: The Birth of a Nation (2016): My husband never learned about Nat Turner in school, he recently told me when the name came up at an exhibition opening. So when we got home we decided to watch Nate Parker’s biopic of Turner, an enslaved black preacher who in 1831 led a revolt against the slaveholding families of Southampton County, Virginia, killing about sixty white men, women, and children. It was a watershed moment in American history that spread fear throughout the South and resulted in the execution of fifty-six slaves and the lynching of over a hundred nonparticipants.

As do most cinematic retellings of history, The Birth of a Nation contains inaccuracies, and in its attempts to be a hero’s story, it lacks nuance. But it effectively shows how entrenched Turner was in scripture—he was literate—and how his growing understanding of God’s will for his people, combined with supernatural visions and other pressings of the Spirit, impelled him to act decisively on the side of justice. Because of my pacifist convictions, I cannot commend Turner’s violent methods . . . but I say this as a free white woman in the twenty-first century, whose privilege has protected me from the kind of desperation that was present on the antebellum plantations of the American South; were I in a state of constant oppression with no other way out, and forced to witness daily the abuse of my spouse, my children, my mother, and others I love, maybe my feelings would be different. I can still appreciate Turner’s ministry to his fellow slaves and his hunger and thirst for righteousness, as well as his internal wrestling with what was an extremely difficult situation.

On a related note, Nat Turner’s Bible is one of the collection highlights at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Worth a visit!

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: “This is what hope usually feels like”: In October 2015 I wrote an essay on George Frederic Watts’s allegorical painting Hope and how it pictures the posture that my family and I assumed after my Aunt Marjie’s cancer diagnosis. I am sad to report that Aunt Marjie passed away in July. We spent so many fun times together, traveling, eating, singing and dancing, our weeklong excursion through Italy, along with my mom, being a main highlight. Aunt Marjie’s boundless enthusiasm, positivity, selflessness, and sense of adventure will continue to inspire me. Tomorrow I’ll be flying out to Montana for a party in her honor, where I’ll be telling 150-plus friends and family members what she meant to me—and then dancing it up, just like she wanted! Here are a few favorite photos from my albums.