A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”—Isaiah 40:3–5
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
—Mark 1:1–8
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SONG: “Prepare the Way, O Zion” | Text by Frans Mikael Franzen, 1812; trans. Augustus Nelson, 1958; adapt. Charles P. Price, 1980 | Music: Then Swenska Psalmboken, 1697 | Arranged and performed by Chicago Metro Presbytery Music, on Proclaim the Bridegroom Near, 2011
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In A Tourist in Africa (1960), the British writer Evelyn Waugh describes St. Mary’s Church in Serima, Zimbabwe, as the “African Chartres.” Designed by the Swiss Catholic missionary Fr. John Groeber, it was built in 1956–66 and filled with hundreds of carvings, murals, and ecclesiastical artworks by the Shona people. To see more photos of the church and to learn more about it, visit ZimFieldGuide.com or, if you can get your hands on a copy, check out the bilingual (English-German) book Serima: Towards an African Expression of Christian Belief (Gwelo, Rhodesia: Mambo Press, 1974), edited by Albert B. Plangger and Marcel Diethelm.
Another great resource for learning about the Serima Mission, and African Christian art in general, is Christliche Kunst in Afrika by Josef Franz Thiel and Heinz Helf (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1984), whence I scanned the above photo. The text is all German, but there are hundreds of magnificent art images from all over the African continent that make this volume one of my favorites from my personal library.
This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your e-mail or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.
To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, cycle B, click here.
Art & Theology 