Woman of the Apocalypse – Art & Theology

Bone chapel, anti-Nazi martyrs’ memorial, and contemporary stained glass at the Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

October 21, 2025October 23, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

(All photos in this article are my own, taken either by me or my husband.)

I knew very little about the virgin martyr St. Ursula before visiting the basilica dedicated to her in Cologne, Germany, last month. She’s the patron saint of the city, where, according to hagiography, she was murdered sometime in the fourth century.

There’s no historical veracity to her story, which is why her name was removed from the Catholic calendar of saints when it was revised in 1969. But her feast day is still observed by many on October 21.

St. Ursula alabaster — Johann T.W. Lentz, *St. Ursula* (detail), 1659. Alabaster. North transept, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne. This reclining figure of the saint lies over her Baroque tomb made of black marble.

As legend has it, Ursula was a Romano-British princess and a Christian. She was engaged to be married to a pagan prince. To delay the wedding, she successfully requested that she first be allowed to take a three-year pilgrimage to Rome, and that she be accompanied by eleven thousand virgins (a ridiculous number that was likely embellished from what was originally eleven). On their voyage, she converted all eleven thousand to the faith.

On their way back to Britain from Rome, they were traveling through Cologne when it was besieged by the Huns, a group of nomadic warriors from Central Asia. Ursula and her companions refused the soldiers’ sexual advances and were slaughtered as a result. One version of the legend says the women’s souls then formed a celestial army that drove out the Huns, saving Cologne.

The earliest possible reference to Ursula and company—though they are unnamed and unnumbered—is a stone plaque dated to 400. Now incorporated into the choir wall of the present Basilica of St. Ursula, it mentions a basilica restored on this site by the Roman senator Clematius to commemorate the “martyred virgins coming from the east, in fulfillment of a vow, . . . holy virgins [who] spilled their blood in the name of Christ.” This inscription not only provides the seed of what would become the Ursula legend; it’s also the earliest evidence of Christianity in Cologne, attesting to the presence of a church there in the fourth century.

It wasn’t until the tenth century that the name Ursula emerged, identified as the leader of the group of virgins, and that their number, which had previously ranged from two to thousands, became fixed at eleven thousand. The women were never officially canonized, but their veneration as saints grew immensely in the twelfth century after a large, late antique Roman cemetery was discovered in 1106 near the aforementioned Church of the Holy Virgins in Cologne during an excavation project to expand the city’s fortifications. The skeletal remains in the hundreds of graves were purported to be those of the martyred women (notwithstanding the presence of many men’s and children’s bones among them).

The discovery of these putative relics called for the rebuilding of the predecessor church to house them. Construction began in the second quarter of the twelfth century, and it’s that structure, with later renovations, refurbishments, additions, and (post–World War II) restorations and repairs, that stands today. The church was elevated to the status of minor basilica in 1920.

The nave and the main tower of the Basilica of St. Ursula are Romanesque, but the choir was rebuilt in the Gothic style.

Shrine altar in the choir apse, containing the relics of Ursula, Etherius, and Hippolytus. Behind it are grilled reliquary niches and paintings of the Legend of St. Ursula from from the “long cycle” of 1456.

Chancel windows by Francis William Dixon, 1892. Left: St. James the Greater, St. Andrew, and St. Peter, accompanied by angels; lower register: Isaiah, Isaac, and Abraham. Center: Christ enthroned, with Mary and St. John the Baptist (Deesis) at his side; lower register: St. Ursula of Cologne with her companions. Right: St. James the Lesser, St. Matthew, and St. Thomas, accompanied by angels; lower register: Daniel, Malachi, and Joel.

The reason the Basilica of St. Ursula was on my list of stops was I wanted to see its so-called Golden Chamber.

The Golden Chamber

The largest ossuary north of the Alps, the Goldene Kammer (Golden Chamber) is decorated with the bones of, allegedly, St. Ursula and her eleven thousand travel mates, which are artfully arranged across the walls in geometric patterns, rosettes, and even words! Unlike most other relic displays I had seen before, where the relics are kept in some kind of encasement and usually only partially visible, this one puts many of the bones right out in the open, making the whole room a walk-in reliquary.

A Baroque marvel, the Golden Chamber was established on the south side of the church in 1643 through a donation by the imperial court councilor of the Holy Roman Empire Johann von Crane and his wife, Verena Hegemihler. It replaced a smaller medieval camera aurea (treasury and relic chamber), where the bones had previously been displayed. Crane and Hegemihler oversaw the design and construction of the space, with its ribbed, star-studded, sky-blue vault, and the arrangement of the bones into their present form.

Above the altar, tibias, fibulas, femurs, humeri, and other bones spell out “Sancta Ursula Ora Pro Nobis” (Saint Ursula, pray for us). Also rendered in bones are the name Etherius—Ursula’s fiancé, who converted to Christianity at her insistence and met her in Cologne to die with her—and a mention of the holy virgins.

Other sections of the wall use vertebrae, pelvic bones, ribs, shoulder blades, and so on to create ornamental designs like hearts, spirals, webs, flowers, and crosses.

Similar visual displays of bones in charnel houses, writes art historian Jackie Mann, had become increasingly common in Europe by the late fourteenth century.

The shelving cabinets below the bone decor belong to the second phase of furnishings around 1700. They contain niches that house 112 reliquary busts (most of them produced between 1260 and 1400 and made of polychromed wood), as well as gilded acanthus tendrils that encompass some 600 skulls. Out of reverence, many of the skulls are at least partially wrapped in red velvet with gold and silver embroidery made by the nuns of the nearby Ursuline convent.

Occasionally, where the wrapping has slipped, you’ll see an eye hole staring back at you.

To account for the presence of men’s bones in the ancient Roman churchyard, the legend of St. Ursula was adapted in the twelfth century to include male martyrs—namely, Etherius and his retinue. That’s why the Golden Chamber contains several male busts alongside the female.

To the average person, the Golden Chamber is a weird, macabre spectacle. But for Catholics, displaying human bones is not meant to be creepy or horror-inducing. Rather, by bringing remnants of the dead into spaces of the living, we are reminded of: (1) our own mortality, (2) the community of saints that transcends time, and (3) the promise of universal, bodily resurrection (dem bones gonna rise again!).

Memento mori (“remember you will die”) was a common trope in seventeenth-century art and devotion, meant to increase one’s awareness of the fleetingness of life and to encourage one to live in light of heaven. Mann calls the Golden Chamber an “immersive memento mori.” Again, the traditional Christian summons to remember our mortality is not meant to frighten. It’s meant to inspire us to live whole and holy lives.

While death is an ending in one sense, it’s also an entry into life immortal. The Golden Chamber gathers together the fragments of local saints that had been scattered in ancient burial ruins, preserving them for the saints of later generations as a witness that our bodies will never be finally lost; they will be raised and renewed by God on the last day and reunited with our souls. Christians treat the remains of the deceased with honor in recognition that our bodies—including the framework of bones that support our soft tissues, protect our organs, enable our movement, store minerals for our use, and produce our blood cells—are not just temporary shells encasing who we really are, but rather are a part of who we are. Hence why we proclaim, in the Apostles’ Creed, that “we believe . . . in the resurrection of the body.”

Memorial for the Martyrs of Today

While the Golden Chamber is the primary draw for visitors to the Basilica of St. Ursula, there are other sights in the church worth spending time with, ones I was not expecting. One of them is the Gedenkstätte für die Märtyrer der Gegenwart (Memorial for the Martyrs of Today), a chapel in the south transept that commemorates the Christians in Cologne, both religious and lay, who were killed for resisting the Nazi regime—or, in the case of Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and Elvira Sanders-Platz, for being ethnically Jewish.

Made by the architectural and design firm Kister Scheithauer Gross, the chapel consists of a double-shelled, slightly transparent canvas construction printed on the inside with the names and dates of the martyrs, as well as quotes they gave before their deaths. Sunlight enters from the window to the right of the chapel, causing the space to glow. There’s a small bench on each of the three sides, for people to sit and pray or reflect.

In the center is a life-size wood crucifix. The gaunt Christ figure is pierced all over and bears a deep wound in his side where the centurion’s spear went through. Like those whose names surround him, Jesus preached and pursued love and justice, ultimately laying down his life—a loss that God turned to gain in the Resurrection and in the redemption of the world.

A language barrier prevented me from effectively asking the staff person, or understanding the answer, whether the crucifix was carved in the early 2000s specifically for the chapel, or if it’s medieval. There’s no info inside the church about this chapel.

The Memorial for the Martyrs of Today is an example of what Christian martyrdom looked like in Cologne in the twentieth century. Fr. Otto Müller, Br. Norbert Maria Kubiak, writer Heinrich Ruster, medical student Willi Graf, Catholic Youth leader Adalbert Probst . . . The stories of the many individuals who were executed for subverting Hitler, for calling out his evils, in the name of Christ are far more compelling to me than the fabulous and convoluted story of an ancient princess killed in a land invasion and then heroized—for her virginity?

Contemporary Stained Glass

I also liked the contemporary stained glass in the church. In the choir, there’s a set of eight windows by Wilhelm Buschulte—abstract compositions in yellow, white, and gray.

In the south aisle are two round-arched windows by Will Thonett, also abstract: a grid of blues, grays, and lavender, with yellow circles and thin vertical bands.

To the right of these are three Mary-themed windows by Hermann Gottfried. The primary scene of the first one is the Annunciation. A giant red rose appears in the background, probably a reference to Mary as the Rosa Mystica. Below this scene, to the left, is the Creation of Adam and Eve, and to the right, the Expulsion from Paradise; these contextualize Christ’s conception in the greater narrative of scripture. The peripheral scenes in the middle register show the magi following the star to Bethlehem.

Hermann Gottfried_Annunciation — Stained glass window by Hermann Gottfried (German, 1929–), 1984, south aisle, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

The central window portrays the Coronation of Mary. I believe both figures in the left lancet are Christ—crowning his mother as Queen of Heaven, and at the bottom, crushing the serpent, as the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15 prophesied. Beneath the enthroned Mary on the right is a smaller vignette, which I think may be Mary again, also stepping on the serpent’s head, since by her cooperation with God’s plan, she shares in the victory over Satan. This imagery is also related to Woman of the Apocalypse described in Revelation 12, whom Catholics interpret as Mary. The hand of God dispenses blessing from above.

Hermann Gottfried_Coronation of the Virgin — Stained glass window by Hermann Gottfried (German, 1929–), 1984, south aisle, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

The final window in this trio portrays the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The two quadrants at the bottom right show Moses before the burning bush, in which Mary appears; Catholic teaching compares Mary to the burning bush of Exodus because for nine months she held the fire of divinity within her womb (God incarnate) and was not consumed. On the left Moses is receiving the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai, an event often read in parallel with the story of Pentecost in Acts 2, where God writes his word not on stone but on people’s hearts by giving his Spirit to dwell within them.

Hermann Gottfried_Pentecost — Stained glass window by Hermann Gottfried (German, 1929–), 1984, south aisle, Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne

If you’re ever in Cologne, I encourage you to include the Basilica of St. Ursula on your itinerary. Entry to the church is free, but the Golden Chamber costs €2 (only cash is accepted, I believe). There are six large standing posters in the narthex that provide a timeline, in German, of the church’s history, and when I was there, there were two attendants who were available to answer questions, one of whom spoke some English.

For more comprehensive photos of the church’s art and architecture, see https://www.sakrale-bauten.de/kirche_koeln_st_ursula.html and https://www.winckelmann-akademie.de/wp-content/uploads/Koeln_St._Ursula.pdf.

Roundup: Adoration ’N Prayze, “Elogio all’Innocenza,” and more

December 10, 2024December 10, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

DANCE: “I Wanna Be Ready”: The African American spiritual “I Wanna Be Ready” forms the soundtrack to this iconic solo from Alvin Ailey’s contemporary ballet Revelations. The dancer in this first video is Amos Machanic:

In 2018, in honor of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s sixtieth anniversary, Matthew Rushing, who is currently the company’s interim artistic director, traveled to Ailey’s birthplace of Rogers, Texas, to dance “I Wanna Be Ready” at Mount Olive Baptist Church, one of the few landmarks of Ailey’s childhood that’s still standing in Rogers. He was accompanied live by five local singers. The performance was filmed, edited, and released on YouTube.

I’m so excited that in January, for the first time, I’m going to see AILEY live in New York! The company will be performing three pieces, including the brand-new Sacred Songs, choreographed by Rushing.

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SONGS:

>> “Time Is Running Out” by Adoration ’N Prayze: Adoration ’N Prayze was a female gospel quartet from Detroit that was active in the early nineties, consisting of Damita Bass, Marguerita Bass, Pamela Taylor, and Shontae Graham (later replaced by Audra “Dodi” Alexander). This original song is the title track of their first and only album, released in 1991. The live recording is from a concert they gave at Clowes Memorial Hall in Indianapolis in 1992.

>> “Oil in My Vessel,” traditional gospel song performed by Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem: Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem are a New England–based folk quartet made up of Rani Arbo (fiddle, guitar), Andrew Kinsey (bass, banjo, ukulele), Anand Nayak (electric and acoustic guitars), and Scott Kessel (percussion). This song they perform is based on a recording by Joe Thompson (1918–2012), who was raised in a Holiness Church in Alamance County, North Carolina. Thompson said the song was in his church hymnal, and that he learned it from his mom when he was about five years old (in the 1920s). Its refrain is a statement of intent to “be ready when the Bridegroom comes,” and its stanzas are taken from the seventeenth-century hymn “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?” by Thomas Shepherd and, from the eighteenth century, “Amazing Grace” by John Newton.

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PHOTOGRAPH SERIES: Elogio all’Innocenza (In Praise of Innocence) by Gloria Mancini: Gloria Mancini is an Italian artist working mainly in photography. One of her recent series, divided into three parts, is based on Revelation 3:1–6 (Gli Innocenti, or The Innocents), 12:1 (La Donna Vestita di Sole, or The Woman Clothed with the Sun), and 5:1–7 (L’Agnello, or The Lamb). “Becoming small to become great has been the aim of my exploration of the Book of Revelation,” she writes in her artist’s statement. “Inspired by the visionary and magnetic power of the Kyrios (the Christ, the Lamb), I chose to focus my reflection on innocence as a fundamental and revolutionary value of being, reaffirming its virtue.” She says she is compelled by how in Revelation, it is a meek and vulnerable lamb who defeats evil.

Jesus’s message to the church in Sardis, a wealthy city in west-central Asia Minor, is so seldom (or not at all?) visualized in art history—I’m grateful to Mancini for drawing attention to this passage through her thoughtful work! Jesus tells the church to “wake up,” to “remember . . . what you received and heard; obey it and repent,” following the example of the few there “who have not soiled their clothes.” Those people, he says, “will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.” He admonishes the Sardis Christians to be watchful and to strengthen and perfect their good works so that they might conquer evil and their names be preserved in the book of life.

Mancini pictures the faithful remnant at Sardis praying, keeping watch, persevering in purity, and gamboling about in the life of the Spirit.

Mancini, Gloria_In Praise of Innocence — Gloria Mancini (Italian, 1992–), photograph from the *Elogio all’Innocenza* series, 2023

The Woman Clothed with the Sun from Revelation 12, on the other hand, is widely represented in art, and since the twelfth century has been associated with the Virgin Mary, because the woman gives birth to a son who is pursued by the Dragon. In church tradition Mary is also likened to the burning bush in Exodus, because she bore the fire of divinity—God in Christ—within her but was not consumed. Mancini plays on both associations, showing Mary cautiously holding a flame, bringing it closer to her breast: she accepts the Incarnation and is set alight.

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ART SPOTLIGHT: “Yellow Silence: Miniature from the Silos Apocalypse (ca. 1100),” Public Domain Review: One of the most dramatic pauses in scripture comes about a third of the way through the book of Revelation. John has just described the nations’ loud and jubilant praises around the throne of God, and then he opens the next chapter, “When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour” (Rev. 8:1). This is the calm before the next storm of judgment breaks with the blowing of the seven trumpets, through which God purges the earth of evil.

While artists have historically relished the chance to visualize the rain of blood, fire, locusts, and such initiated by the trumpet blasts, the anonymous artist of a twelfth-century copy of an Apocalypse commentary from Spain saw fit to also visualize the sonic absence that preceded these spectacular occurrences. He did so with a rectangular swath of yellow.

Silence in Heaven (Silos Apocalypse) (detail) — Miniature from the Silos Apocalypse, northern Spain, 1091–1109. British Library, Add MS 11695, fol. 125v.

This swath calls readers to somber, speechless awe and reflection. God’s earlier word spoken to and through the prophet Zephaniah is appropriate here: “Be silent before the Sovereign LORD, for the day of the LORD is near” (Zeph. 1:7).

Click here to browse more images from the Silos Apocalypse.

Christ as Sun, Bridegroom, and Runner: Psalm 19, Revelation 12, and Advent

December 20, 2023March 19, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

“Glory Glory / Psalm 19” by Daniel Berrigan

The heavens bespeak the glory of God.
The firmament ablaze, a text of his works.
Dawn whispers to sunset.
Dark to dark the word passes: glory glory.

All in a great silence,
no tongue’s clamor—
yet the web of the world trembles
conscious, as of great winds passing.

The bridegroom’s tent is raised,
a cry goes up: He comes! a radiant sun
rejoicing, presiding, his wedding day.
From end to end of the universe his progress.
No creature, no least being but catches fire from him.

This paraphrase of Psalm 19:1–6 by Daniel Berrigan is from Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms (University of Michigan Press, 1978; Orbis, 1998). Used by permission of the Daniel Berrigan Literary Trust. www.danielberrigan.org

The first section of Psalm 19 is about how the natural world declares the glories of its Maker. The night sky, the psalmist describes, is like a tent that spreads its cover over the sun, parting open every morning to release it on the world. The sun is compared to a bright-eyed, handsome, and happy bridegroom emerging from his chamber, and to a vigorous runner who tracks a massive course.

I like to read Psalm 19:1–6 for Advent, especially the poet-priest Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s paraphrase of it, as his use of he/him/his pronouns instead of it/its draws out a Christological connection I hadn’t seen before in this text, made even more pronounced by the apocalyptic tone Berrigan adopts and the sense of excitement he conveys. The poem can, of course, be read as simply the glorious waking of a day, as the psalmist intended. But there’s another layer I want to explore: signs in the heavens, and the coming of Christ.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus is compared to both a sun and a bridegroom, and he, too, like the skies, “bespeak[s] the glory of God.” “Oriens”—Dawn or Dayspring—is one of the traditional titles of Christ, typically invoked in liturgies on December 21 as part of the O Antiphons cycle. From the Church of England’s Common Worship: “O Morning Star, splendor of light eternal and sun of righteousness: come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death” (cf. Luke 1:78–79; John 8:12; Mal. 4:2). The coming of Jesus—in Bethlehem, in human hearts, and on the last day—illuminates and sets ablaze, revealing who God is and who we ourselves most truly are and exciting the world, flinging abroad the divine light.

As for the bridegroom, Jesus uses this metaphor for himself in his parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matt. 25), as God does in Isaiah 62:5, and indeed one of the major motifs in the book of Revelation is a wedding between Christ and his people. Christ will return to us, scripture suggests, like a husband coming to bring home his new bride.

One of the antiphons for First Vespers of Christmas, I’ve just learned, sung the evening of December 24, connects the bridegroom of Psalm 19 with Jesus. Cum ortus fuerit sol de caelo, the church chants, videbitis Regem regum procedentem a Patre, tanquam sponsum de thalamo suo. (“When the sun shall have risen in the heavens, ye shall see the King of kings coming from the Father, as a Bridegroom from his bride-chamber.”)

Butler, Tanja_Woman Clothed with the Sun — Tanja Butler (American, 1955–), *Woman Clothed with the Sun*, 2008. Acrylic paint, collaged painted paper, and cotton fabric on gessoed acid-free paper, 14 × 5 in. Collection of Victoria Emily Jones.

Artist Tanja Butler further extends Psalm 19’s fittingness for Advent by drawing the passage into conversation with Revelation 12:1–6. This section of John’s Apocalypse introduces us to “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”; she gives birth to a baby boy “who is to rule all the nations” but whom a great dragon seeks to devour. In most Christian interpretations, this Woman of the Apocalypse is associated with the Virgin Mary, and there’s a robust iconographic tradition in this vein.

Butler innovates on that tradition with her mixed-media work Woman Clothed with the Sun by showing the infant Jesus busting out of his mother’s womb like the strong athlete of Psalm 19:5. (Ready. Set. Go!) He has a race to run, a mission to fulfill. He is also shown as the sun that clothes his mother and that emerges from a dark (uterine) tent. He is the source and center point of the explosive rays of colorful light in the painting.

In an ArtWay profile, Butler describes her piece as follows:

Mary is represented with the unborn Christ, Light of the World, ready to “come forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course” (Psalm 19:5). She holds a ladder, referencing both Jacob’s vision and the cross, the ladder of ascent between earth and heaven.

This is a cosmic birth necessitated by a cosmic struggle that will resolve in a cosmic victory: the reunion of God and humanity.

Daniel Joseph Berrigan, SJ, (1921–2016) was an American Jesuit priest, peace activist, award-winning poet, and professor of theology and biblical studies. Through his writings and public witness, he endorsed a consistent life ethic, opposing war, nuclear armament, abortion, capital punishment, and the causes of poverty in the name of Jesus Christ and his holy gospel. Fr. Berrigan, along with his brother Philip, was one of the Catonsville Nine, imprisoned in 1968 for destroying draft files in a protest against the Vietnam War. Later, he spent much of the eighties ministering to AIDS patients in New York City. He is the author of some fifty books.

Tanja Butler (born 1955) is a painter and liturgical artist based in the Albany, New York, area. Her subjects are devotional in character, and her sources of inspiration include Byzantine icons, medieval art, and folk art. Her work is included in the collections of the Vatican Museums, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, and the Boston Public Library. “My aim is to develop imagery that has the simplicity and clarity of a child-like vision,” she says, “required, we’re told, if we are to see the kingdom of God.”

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

December 8, 2023October 3, 2024 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:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @alternative_advent

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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: Christmas music, old poems with Grace, and more

December 19, 2022November 12, 2024 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

ADVENT MEDITATION: “Love is . . .” by the Rev. Jonathan Evens: Evens shared this brief written meditation last week at Advent Night Prayer at St Catherine’s Wickford in England, pondering the love Mary demonstrated at various points along the way from the announcement of Jesus’s conception to her and her family’s resettlement in Egypt.

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SONGS:

>> “I Pray on Christmas” (cover) by the Good Shepherd Collective: This song was written by Harry Connick Jr. and is performed here by Benjamin Kilgore with Terence Clark, Liz Vice, and Charles Jones of the Good Shepherd Collective, an interdenominational group of musicians collaborating across the US. The video is directed by Jeremy Stanley.

>> “Mary Was the First One to Carry the Gospel” by the Gaither Vocal Band: I grew up in a Baptist church in North Carolina, so southern gospel music is a very familiar genre for me! But I hadn’t heard this song before, until my mom sent me a link last week. It was written by Mark Lowry and Bill Gaither (they took the title from a 1978 song by Dottie Rambo), who sing it here with David Phelps and Guy Penrod at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham in 2000 as part of the Gaithers’ Christmas in the Country concert. It’s about how Mary was the first person to carry the good news enfleshed—first in her womb, and then in her arms.

>> “Late Upon a Starry Night” by David Benjamin Blower: David Benjamin Blower is an “apocalyptic folk musician, poet, writer, theologian, podcaster, and sound artist” from the UK whose work emphasizes the liberative strains of the gospel. He just released this original Christmas song yesterday, and it will be available only through January 5, 2023, on Bandcamp, with 50 percent of proceeds going to Safe Passage UK, an organization working toward safe routes for refugees. Blower said he wrote the song after hearing a friend talk about her experience of Moria refugee camp in Greece.

The stanzas tell the story of the Annunciation to Mary, Mary and Joseph’s Journey to Bethlehem, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Journey of the Magi, and the Flight to Egypt. The refrain draws a line from the first book of the Bible to the last, referencing God’s prophecy in Eden about the serpent’s head being crushed by a descendant of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:15) (the serpent being representative of sin and death) as well as, implicitly, the image in Revelation 12 of the woman in labor and the dragon. Read the lyrics on the song’s Bandcamp page.

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PODCAST SERIES: Advent 2022, Old Books with Grace: I’ve been loving Dr. Grace Hamman’s four-part Advent podcast series, consisting of roughly twenty-minute episodes that discuss seasonal poems. Hamman is a specialist in medieval literature and theology and has the rare gift of being able to translate her extensive knowledge to nonspecialists in engaging and personal ways. She can speak with facility on lit and theology from other eras too. In this series she talks about our status as pilgrims in this world, how Christ carries our prayers in his body, nature-inspired images of the Incarnation, and more. I frequently come away from her podcast with new insight, and always having been spiritually nourished. If you’re traveling for Christmas, queue these up for the car, plane, train, or bus ride! Or work them into your week some other way, perhaps over breakfast, or while you’re doing dishes. Old Books with Grace is available wherever you listen to podcasts. (I use Google Podcasts, but Apple Podcasts or PodBean are the most popular providers.)

Episode 1: Were we led all this way for birth or death? (“Journey of the Magi” by T. S. Eliot)
Episode 2: Harke! Despair Away (“The Bag” by George Herbert)
Episode 3: Heaven Cannot Hold Him (“A Christmas Carol” by Christina Rossetti and excerpt from Piers Plowman by William Langland)
Episode 4: Dayspring (releases December 21; will cover an Old English version and Middle English version of one of the O Antiphons)

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DANCING ANGEL: This video from a church Christmas pageant in Porter, Indiana, went viral in 2019, but I’m just now seeing it (thanks to @upworthy!). It shows then-four-year-old Isabella Grace Webb dancing it up freestyle in her angel costume to “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” So adorable!