The Fire of the Word E-Book

Chris Webb

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 305

Beschreibung

The Bible has the astounding power to transform lives. The stories of people like Francis of Assisi, Antony of Egypt, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. vividly demonstrate this. Why aren't more of us transformed by Scripture today?Too often we study biblical texts without believing that God truly inhabits this book. Scripture seeks to capture our minds, not merely educate them. In these pages Chris Webb explains that we can transform our Christian life by reading as lovers rather than as theorists. This is possible by coming to the text prayerfully, expectantly, in humility and empty-handed. When we open the Bible, it does not say to us, "Listen: God is there!" Instead, the voice of the Spirit whispers through each line, "Look: I am here."Reading the Bible this way can reconfigure the habits of your heart, refresh your imagination and memory, reshape and redeem your emotions, realign your reality individually and communally for kingdom life, and take us beyond the Bible into a renewed way of life.Here is the work of today—which is also the work of the whole of life—to open your heart afresh to the living Word of God.

Leseprobe

The Fire of the Word

Meeting God on Holy Ground

Chris Webb

Foreword by Richard J. Roster

www.IVPress.com/books

Formatio books from InterVarsity Press follow the rich tradition of the church in the journey of spiritual formation. These books are not merely about being informed, but about being transformed by Christ and conformed to his image. Formatio stands in InterVarsity Press’s evangelical publishing tradition by integrating God’s Word with spiritual practice and by prompting readers to move from inward change to outward witness. InterVarsity Press uses the chambered nautilus for Formatio, a symbol of spiritual formation because of its continual spiral journey outward as it moves from its center. We believe that each of us is made with a deep desire to be in God’s presence. Formatio books help us to fulfill our deepest desires and to become our true selves in light of God’s grace.

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2011 by Chris Webb

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Chap. 2: Incredulity of St. Thomas, 1602-03 (oil on canvas) by Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da (1571-1610). Schloss Sanssouci Potsdam, Bradenburg, Germany/Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library. Used by permission.

Chap. 8: Photograph courtesy of the author.

Chap. 14: Rublev’s famous icon showing the three Angels being hosted by Abraham at Mambre: Alex Bakharev/Wikimedia Commons

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Design: Cindy Kiple Cover images: Morey Milbradt/Getty Images

ISBN 978-0-8308-6958-9

 

For Sally

“Fy chwaer a’m priodferch,

yr wyt wedi ennill fy nghalon,

wedi ennill fy nghalon ag un edrychiad.” Caniad 4:9 (bcn)

Contents

 Foreword

1: Hear His Voice

2: Learning to Read Again

3: Do Not Be Afraid

4: The Yearning of God

5: My Beloved Speaks

6: Reading Like Lovers

7: Anatomy of the Soul

8: Listen!

9: Living in the Gospel

10: The Book of Christ

11: Sacred Reading

12: The Disordered Soul

13: A Life Desired

14: Beyond the Bible

15: Friendship with Jesus

 Epilogue

 Acknowledgments

What is Renovaré?

About the Author

Other Books in This Series

Endorsements

 Foreword

The Fire of the Word is a marvel and a joy. How thrilling to welcome this fresh, new voice to the field of Christian spirituality. Chris Webb has accomplished what few have succeeded in doing; he has given us courageous openings onto what a life hid with Christ in God can be like. As I read this book, I felt the words on the page calling out to me, inviting me into a deeper, fuller way of living . . . a way of living that is joyfully creative and soul- expanding. The more I read, the more I felt my heart burning within me, a little like those disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:32). How do I name the feeling? What should I call it? Perhaps I could describe it as an open invitation into “The Order of the Burning Heart.”

Let me share with you three compelling reasons for reading The Fire of the Word.

First, this book is saturated with grace and mercy. The stories, the teachings, the allusions, the very feeling tones of the words themselves are soaked in grace and mercy. Grace and mercy given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Chris writes, “From the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, the Bible jubilantly proclaims grace to this world; an exuberant, life-embracing grace that exceeds anything we could possibly hope or imagine.”

Chris, however, is doing far more than simply using words of grace and mercy. He, for example, does substantial theological work to cut through the Gordian knot of the common juxtaposition of the Old Testament God of wrath and the New Testament God of love. His work here is impressive indeed.

Second, this book gives us a deep sense of reverence and awe before the majesty of Scripture. Chris gently leads us before the wonder of Scripture where “the boundary between heaven and earth has been worn through.” In another place he describes the Bible as “a thin place through which the presence of God breaks into this world and bursts with unpredictable consequences into our lives. Even though it is not consumed, this book burns with unquenchable fire.” With exuberant flair he writes, “the inspiration of Scripture is something greater, something wholly other: a life and presence has been breathed into Scripture. . . . The Bible contains . . . the divine Author himself. Here the voice of God is heard; but God not only speaks, he makes himself fully present—gentle as the still small whisper on the mountain, terrible as an army with banners—breaking through the pages into our hearts, our lives, our world.”

For all his exuberance over Scripture, however, Chris is careful not to fall into worshiping the Book—bibliolatry as we say. He knows that the purpose of the Bible is to lead us into an adoring love of the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Worship belongs to Yahweh alone.

Third, this book gives us insights into faith-filled living that often surprise us, pleasantly so. Chris’s stories surprise us: the tortured art work of Caravaggio, the soaring poetry of Ann Griffiths, the incredible devotion of three monks in a tiny Order called the Little Brothers of Nazareth, the determined search of Mary Jones for a copy of the Bible. And more. Chris’s phrases and metaphors surprise us: he describes pride as “the all-consuming black hole of the soul”; he says of the Bible that “fire is trapped under the ink”; he reminds us that “sinners may have the wildest parties, but saints have the most fun.” Drawing on an ancient Christian tradition, Chris’s reinterpretation and use of the Song of Solomon surprise us.

Personally, the high point of the book, and a pleasant surprise, came with Chris’s theological work on the medieval thinker John Duns Scotus. That is a name with which you may not be familiar, but by the time you finish this book, you will not only know his name but have a clear understanding of how important he is to our whole understanding of Christian spirituality. Chris’s analysis of Duns Scotus’s concept of “the absolute primacy of Christ” with its multi-layered implications for the work of spiritual formation is simply masterful!

I commend to you The Fire of the Word. It is a book which will both teach and delight. Tolle, lege—take, and read.

Richard J. Foster

1 Hear His Voice

It’s just a little before six in the morning and the alarm on my cell phone is ringing. It’s winter, and the air in the room is cold and sharp; I grab a warm sweater as I stumble out of the bedroom and head down the stairs. The house is quiet, the family asleep; I’m reminded of some words of the sixteenth-century Spanish poet and mystic John of the Cross: “One dark night, fired with love’s urgent longings—ah the sheer grace!—I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.” On this dark morning, my home silent around me, I’m heading into the gloomy basement, flashlight in hand, fired by those same urgent longings. It’s time to pray.

Some while back I converted a corner of our basement into a makeshift chapel. It’s a simple and rather inelegant affair: lengths of blue cloth, bought at a thrift store and pinned to the exposed rafters, form the walls, and three old rugs cover the concrete floor. A couple of yard-sale armchairs and an old bookcase provide the meager furnishings, and under the single window is a prayer desk I picked up years ago from a redundant chapel in England. On the windowsill sits a battered electric lamp, a candleholder and a wood-mounted print of the San Damiano cross before which Francis of Assisi used to pray. This is my Jerusalem, my temple: the holy ground where I encounter the presence of God.

It seemed cold upstairs, but the air down here is frigid. Shivering a little, I kneel at the prayer desk, light the candle and open my prayer book and Bible. Making the sign of the cross on my lips, I recite the traditional opening words of the liturgy: “O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouth shall shew forth thy praise.” Then, as Christians throughout the centuries have done (especially in monastic and liturgical communities), I begin the day’s prayer by softly chanting Psalm 95, the great invitation to worship: “O come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation” (v. 1). And as the psalm unfolds, I absorb the poet’s encouragement to sing, to rejoice, to celebrate God and his creation, to recognize his care for us.

Buried in the heart of this psalm comes a challenge: “Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Here is the work of today—which is also the work of the whole of life. I’m called daily to open my heart afresh to the living Word of God. I know I need this reminder but, to tell the truth, I’m daunted by the possibility that God might actually speak. I feel like an Israelite at the foot of Mount Sinai, overwhelmed by the swirling clouds at the mountain’s summit, the bursts of thunder and the flashes of fiery lightning. How can I bear to hear God’s voice, let alone listen to it, interpret it, comprehend it? “You speak to us,” Moses was told, “and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die” (Ex 20:19). Wouldn’t hearing the voice of God be something like seeing his face: an experience so great, so consuming, that our mortal frame would be unable to contain it?

So it’s with caution that, in my prayers, I approach the reading of Scripture itself. The contemporary Coptic saint Matta el- Meskeen understood this well when he wrote: “There are those who always fast to read the Gospel. There are those who, when they read the Gospel alone, always kneel. There are those who always read it with weeping and tears.” The candlelight flickers as I turn the pages, and my heart trembles a little too. What will I hear? How will I be called, how changed? Will I be comforted or inspired? Or is it today that my life will be turned inside out? It has happened before—to others and to me.

Life-Changing Words

On another cold winter morning—in February of 1208—a young man named Francesco Bernardone came into a small Umbrian church to hear the mass being celebrated for the feast of Saint Matthias. For three years Francesco had been living as a hermit in the Spoleto Valley under the direction of a community of Benedictine monks. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, he had become estranged from his family and many friends because of the eccentric fervor with which he seemed to be seeking God’s will for his life—emptying his father’s warehouse to provide for the poor, caring for outcast lepers by washing and redressing their wounds, and begging from house to house as he raised money to rebuild local churches.

As the mass ended and the little church began to empty, Francesco approached the priest. He quietly explained that hadn’t understood the Gospel reading (which would have been in Latin); would the priest kindly read through it again? The cleric obliged, taking Francesco through the passage from the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel line by line. He translated Jesus’ words about the apostles traveling from place to place curing the sick, raising the dead and ministering to lepers (that last part must have caught Francesco’s attention). Jesus told them to journey without money or baggage, and to trust in faith that God would provide through those among whom they went. Above all, they were to proclaim the heart of the Gospel message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near!”

As he listened to the priest’s explanation, Francesco’s heart began to race; he could sense the calling of the Spirit on his own life. “This is what I want!” he cried. “This is what I seek! This is what I desire with all my heart!” From that moment on his course was set: Francesco would become a wandering preacher, an itinerant proclaimer of the kingdom. He would travel in poverty and faith to the furthest reaches of his world, throughout Italy and on to France, Germany, Spain, the Balkans, even to northern Egypt to share the good news of Christ with a Muslim sultan who was facing a great European crusading army. Francesco’s shining example of obedience to the gospel would become legendary, inspiring generations of Christians until the present day. Francesco is known to us as that startling lover of Christ, St. Francis of Assisi.

Scripture not only sparked Francis’s tremendous spirituality, it continued to fuel the burning flame of his passion for Jesus. By 1210 the rapidly growing Franciscan movement had caught the attention of the wider church, and Francis was encouraged to present a community rule to the pope. The text of that rule no longer survives, but it seems almost certain that it was little more than a collection of sayings of Christ from the Gospels. That spirit was reflected in the opening words of a revised rule he composed a decade later, in which he committed himself and his Friars Minor (“Little Brothers”) simply to “follow the teaching and footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Francis had experienced the Bible (especially the Gospels) as a life-changing book and was determined to stay open to its transforming influence.

His experience was far from unique; similar stories could be repeated from every age of the church’s life over the last twenty centuries. Almost a thousand years before Francis, Antony of Egypt was a young farmer and landowner in the Upper Nile region. One Sunday morning as he walked into the traditional Coptic service in his local church, he heard the priest reading from Matthew’s Gospel: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt 19:21). The impact was striking and immediate. Antony sold everything and retreated into the Egyptian desert, charting a course which would be followed later by thousands of others who were seeking a deeper and more committed life with God. The Life of Antony, a short biography by the Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, touched the lives of Christians and churches across the Middle East and Europe, and helped lay the foundations of the monastic movement; Antony himself is often known as the “father of monasticism.” And all this grew from that unexpected encounter with the words of Scripture.

A little over fifteen centuries later, in the remote Welsh village of Pontrobert, the young daughter of a local farmer became captivated as she listened to the Calvinistic Methodist preachers whose fiery sermons were lighting up the pulpits of Wales. She soaked herself in the vivid scriptural imagery which permeated their teaching, and began to sew together a patchwork of metaphors, symbols and allegories into one of the most striking collections of hymns and poetry that Welsh culture has ever known. In every line the impact of the Bible on her life and faith is glaringly evident. One of her hymns, Bererin llesg gan rym y stormydd, opens with this verse (in English translation):

Pilgrim, swept by storms and weary,

raise your head, look up and see:

Jesus, Lamb of God, our Savior,

clothed in robes of majesty;

girdled with the gold of loyalty,

round his hem the bells ring clear,

singing grace to every sinner:

Christ, the eternal Yes, is here!

Remarkably, this single verse ranges across almost the whole sweep of Scripture as it references Paul’s experience of being shipwrecked in the Mediterranean (Acts 27:13-44), John the Baptist’s exhortation to “Behold the Lamb of God!” (Jn 1:29 kjv), John the Evangelist’s vision of Jesus on the island of Patmos (Rev 1:13), the clothing of the Levitical priests (Ex 28:33-35) and the story of the woman reaching for the hem of Jesus’ garment (Mt 9:20-22). Into this are woven theological allusions to the incarnation (Christ’s vestments symbolically reach to the earth) and the atonement. It’s a remarkable synthesis for a young woman who lived and worked on a rural sheep farm and had only a rudimentary education to her credit.

These poems and hymns, now considered treasures of the Welsh language, might have been lost to us altogether after Ann Griffiths’s tragic death at the age of twenty-nine, had they not been collected by her maid and published in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Charles of Bala, a clergyman living over the mountains in northwest Wales. Around the time of their publication, Charles was also playing a key role in an initiative which would enable countless others to experience the life-changing power of Scripture for themselves. At the turn of the century a young teenager named Mary Jones turned up at Charles’s home, having walked twenty-six miles, barefoot, across the Welsh mountains. She had been saving money for six years and had made her difficult journey with one purpose: to buy a Bible.

Charles was impressed and shaken by her single-minded determination and her passionate hunger for Scripture. A couple of years later he related the story to friends meeting together in London, and lamented the scarcity of affordable Welsh-language Bibles which could be distributed to those, like Mary, who longed to read Scripture for themselves. The friends decided to create an organization to translate, publish and distribute the Bible as widely as possible—and so the British and Foreign Bible Society was born, the first of the many Bible societies throughout the world, which have made Scripture available and accessible to millions.

In our own time we might consider the life of Martin Luther King Jr., a moral and political leader whose speeches and example changed the face of Western society. The catalysts of the civil rights movement are well known: the arrest of Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus for refusing to give up her seat for a white man, the longing of so many to see integration in the public school system, the desperate circumstances of many black Americans in the southern states—to name just a few. Less often acknowledged, though, is the direct role of the Bible in shaping King’s life and actions. The inspiration for his nonviolent resistance came directly from the message of Jesus (and, of course, from the example of Gandhi, but Gandhi in turn frequently acknowledged his indebtedness to the teachings of Christ). King looked particularly to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek and loving our enemies. His teaching about “creative suffering” was rooted in his reading of the Passion narratives. And his astonishingly inclusive social vision, expressed so movingly in the legendary “I have a dream” speech, was grounded in the Gospels, where Jesus is continually presented as the friend of all those on the edges of first-century Jewish culture—sinners, tax collectors, women, lepers, outcasts. In every way, King was a man changed and shaped by hearing the voice of God.

All these remarkable figures from the history of the church relived, in one way or another, the formative experience of Moses standing before the burning bush. Most of us are familiar with the story. Moses, having fled Egypt after murdering one of the Egyptian slave drivers, found himself herding sheep in the stark, rocky desert of the Sinai peninsula. Day after day he wandered the trackless wasteland, moving the flock from one watering hole to another; a former prince of Egypt, he had become a forgotten solitary in the wilderness, invisible to the rest of the world—as though already dead.

From time to time small brush fires would spark in the dry, brittle undergrowth, but one day Moses was surprised by crackling flames in the branches of one of the desert bushes. The fire appeared to be burning vigorously, but the bush was not consumed by the flames. Intrigued, curious, perhaps a little afraid, he clambered over the rocks to get a closer look. As he drew near he was astounded to hear a voice from the fire calling to him. “Come no closer!” he was told. “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex 3:5). By this point Moses was trembling with fear, aware now that he had somehow stumbled right into the presence of God.

During the conversation which follows, Moses received the word of God, a sort of condensed Scripture. The range of material covered in these few paragraphs of text is remarkable and encompasses most of the key themes and genres of the biblical text in abbreviated form. There are promises: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt . . . and I have come down to deliver them” (Ex 3:7-8), and there are commandments: “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Ex 3:10). These affirmations and instructions are set in the context of God’s dealing with his people in history (“The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me” [Ex 3:16]) and theological reflection on God’s character and nature (“ ‘I am who I am.’ . . . ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you’ ” [Ex 3:14]). God performs miracles, challenges Moses’ reticence, gives him prophetic words, rebukes him and reveals something of a future yet to come. There are even a couple of poetic lines in verse 15 as God shares his name with Moses: “This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations.” God’s words to Moses are almost a Bible in miniature.

The experience of meeting God at the burning bush changed Moses. Despite his uncertainties and doubts, his weaknesses of character and his fears, his life was turned around from this point forward. Emerging from his desert hiding place, he confronted one of the mightiest leaders of the ancient world, led an entire people out of slavery and through forty years of nomadic desert wandering, stood atop Mount Sinai in the midst of fire and thunder to receive the Torah from God, with whom he spoke face to face, and became one of the most significant figures in world history. His experience in the wilderness changed him, changed those around him and ultimately transformed the world.

But the most significant aspect of this entire experience was not the words that Moses heard. It was neither the history nor the theology, not the wisdom or the poetry. Moses was not changed by a text. He was utterly transformed by a direct encounter with God, an experience which was mediated through the words. When Moses heard the voice of God, he shook with terror and hid his face in the folds of his robe. Why? Because he was about to receive a couple of chapters of the book of Exodus? No! He was awestruck because the voice he heard made real and immediate the presence of the Holy One of Israel. In the words, Moses met God. And so can we.

As I kneel in my cold chapel this morning, I read these words in the dim lamplight: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord’ ” (Is 40:3). I’m learning to listen for that voice in Scripture, the cry that summons me to be ready for God’s presence. It’s the voice of the prophets and the seers, the patriarchs and the priests. It’s the call of the wisdom chasers, the evangelists, the poets, the apostles. It is the cry of the Bible from beginning to end: Maranatha, “Our Lord, come!” (1 Cor 16:22).

So then, the invitation to us is this: not to explain God but to experience God. Kneel alongside me, and we’ll listen for his voice together. We are on holy ground.

Readings

At the end of each chapter of this book are readings that will help you explore the theme of the chapter more fully: seven readings for each chapter, enough for a week of meditation and reflection. If you follow this course of prayerful experience of the Bible alongside your reading of the book, you will spend almost four months learning to read and pray with Scripture in a fresh and enlivening way. That’s enough time for the practices described here to become habitual and second nature. Your reading of the Bible will have been transformed.

These first seven readings are intended simply to provide a gentle starting point. Each reading describes a biblical encounter between an individual and God’s word. Some are a little strange (for example, John eating a scroll), some involve hearing God speak directly (as with Moses), and others with God’s Word being read (such as Jesus in the synagogue).

Spend a little time with each of these, reading them through slowly and prayerfully. Ask God to use these readings to help you understand both how Scripture has affected the lives of others and how it affects your life. Ask the Spirit for insight into your relationship with God through the Bible. You may want to journal or make notes you can return to as you work through the remaining chapters of this book. After finishing the book and undertaking all the suggested reading exercises, you could review your notes from this first week to see how your experience of God in Scripture is being transformed.

Day 1

Exodus 3:1-7

(Moses hears the voice of God)

Day 2

1 Samuel 3:1-10

(Samuel hears God in the temple)

Day 3

2 Kings 22:3-20

(Josiah rediscovers the book of the law)

Day 4

Nehemiah 8:1-12

(Ezra reads the law in Jerusalem)

Day 5

Psalm 119:33-48

(the psalmist rejoices in the law)

Day 6

Luke 4:16-22

(Jesus reads in the synagogue)

Day 7

Revelation 10:1-11

(John consumes God’s word)

2 Learning to Read Again

The filthy Roman backstreet was wrapped in darkness. Foul-smelling water trickled between the stones underfoot, and a single guttering candle burned in a window high above. A drunken young man, his clothes tattered, stumbled into a doorway and threw up violently. Across the street two prostitutes, their faces garishly painted, cackled with delight as they watched him slide down the doorframe and fall into the pool of his own vomit. He looked up sharply, and they noticed the angry purple bruise forming around his left eye. Yelling a colorful curse at them he tried to clamber to his feet but slipped and fell again. Howling with laughter they turned the corner and disappeared.

He sat in the gloom for a couple of minutes, staring up at the flickering candle, lost in his hazy thoughts. Then he pulled himself to his feet again and weaved his way toward another doorway at the end of the street. He hit the door hard with his shoulder and it crashed back on its hinges, toppling him into the inky blackness of the hallway beyond. Cursing and groaning, he clattered noisily up the wooden staircase; a voice from a neighboring house yelled at him to keep quiet. Pushing open another door, he tumbled his way into a large attic studio and collapsed into a chair in the middle of the open floor. The candle, now burning low, sat in the open window behind him. As the light shone over his shoulder, he contemplated the canvas mounted on the easel before him. There were four figures gathered in a tight huddle in the center of the painting, surrounded by a thick and impenetrable gloom. Their faces were illuminated by some bright light, but everything else lay in darkness. For perhaps half an hour the young man pondered before the canvas, unmoving, his eyes half shut; a casual observer might have thought him asleep.

Then, with a start, he leaped up and frantically began mixing paints onto a cracked wooden palette—thick, oily purples and browns, grays and greens. Stabbing a brush into the mixture, he began edging color into the shadows around the leftmost figure. He painted for hours, energetically, even frenetically. As dawn began to color the city in a soft crimson light, the painter, now somewhat more sober but utterly exhausted, fell back into the chair and examined his work thoughtfully. He closed his bloodshot eyes and nodded. It was finished.

On the canvas, three disciples stood in a tight group around the newly resurrected Jesus. Matthew and John looked on in wonder as an incredulous Thomas pushed his finger into Christ’s wounded side. Jesus, his eyes etched with compassion, held Thomas’s wrist, keeping the hand steady. The scene was shocking and extraordinarily tender all at once. Without doubt a masterpiece.

In his chair, Caravaggio slept.

The Language of Art

A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear a seminar given by Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum who had formerly worked for fifteen years as director of the National Gallery in London. He had been asked to speak about the relationship between faith and art. Despite MacGregor’s impressive reputation, though, I didn’t come into the seminar with high expectations. Visual art had never been a language I’d felt able to understand. When I took a stroll around a gallery (a rare enough event in itself) I never found myself able to get beyond an instinctive “that looks good/terrible” response; as for what the artist was trying to say, and what the significance of the work might be more widely—how should I know? In the end, was there really any more to it all than the creation of attractive pictures and sculptures to fill up empty spaces?

MacGregor held me spellbound for an hour. Never once did he lecture to the experts (You know: “This, of course, is an ironic reversal of neoclassicist assumptions”). Instead he spoke to the philistines, like me, who knew little and appeared to care even less. We looked together at examples of early Christian marble carvings and compared them with a contemporary sculpture fused together from impounded rifles in Africa. We lingered over Pieter Brueghel’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, losing ourselves in the darkness and shadows. MacGregor gently showed how the use of color here or texture there contributed to some sense and meaning, some story or idea. And together we discovered how all this expressed and deepened the way people thought about life, faith and God. I came away feeling somehow expanded, enlarged.

And I was hungry. I bought and borrowed books of paintings. I started looking for opportunities to visit the galleries I’d formerly ignored. The paintings on the walls hadn’t changed; the same mixtures of pigments hung on the same old canvases. Still, something was different. Now, for me, this art had a voice. I saw Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross in Glasgow and was overwhelmed by its immensity and power. On a visit to London I made time to see an exhibition of Botticelli’s drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy and was enraptured for hours. I even had a framework with which I could appreciate some of the stranger expressions of modern art, which before had been incomprehensible; I spent an entire afternoon captivated by the collection in the Saatchi Gallery alongside the Thames.

Then I discovered Caravaggio. My introduction to this early Baroque genius was through his painting The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, a work he completed in the midst of a life of riotous drinking, womanizing and brawling in the first year or two of the seventeenth century. He was an unlikely biblical interpreter, but someone had, perhaps, neglected to tell him that only saints were allowed to encounter God in Scripture. The Incredulity is a passionate and moving painting. Jesus and three of his disciples stand with their heads almost pressed together; the apostles’ faces are etched with astonishment as Thomas’s finger slides into a sliced fold of flesh in Jesus’ side. Caravaggio was pioneering a vividly realistic and naturalistic style, and the sheer physicality of the work is palpable; he shows the resurrected Christ as a solidly flesh-and-blood man, brutally pierced by the nails and yet living and breathing still.

Caravaggio, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas

Of course, this is precisely the point of the biblical story which so captured Caravaggio’s imagination. The Gospel of John tells us that when Jesus first appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, one of their number was missing. The other disciples had faithfully gathered in the upper room, but Thomas was wandering somewhere in the darkness. And when he hears later of this appearance of the risen Christ, he cannot bring himself to believe it—in fact, he bluntly refuses to accept it. Did Caravaggio, the drunken, violent reprobate, see something of himself in Thomas? The outsider, the misplaced doubter, the one who was never in the right place when God showed up?

But John’s narrative continues:

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” (Jn 20:26-27)

This is the moment Caravaggio seeks to portray. Little wonder that his painting is so graphic; the biblical text itself is shocking. I have read a dozen expert commentaries on John’s Gospel since first discovering Caravaggio’s work, but none have come close to conveying the sheer emotional impact of this scene with anything like the immediacy of that oil-smeared canvas.

Whenever I look at this painting, really see it, allowing myself to be drawn into it as MacGregor has taught me, I find the experience intense and overwhelming. The darkness surrounding the figures holds my gaze on that tightly packed group, the horrific wound, the probing finger, the startled eyes. I feel short of breath. I have been opened to the power of art.

My world has changed. Someone has taught me to read.

The Master of Paradox

This book is also about learning to read. Most of us, if we’re going to experience the Bible as a life-changing text charged with the presence of God, are going to have to learn all over again how to read it. There are all sorts of assumptions and preconceived ideas we may need to lay aside, and some new expectations we’ll need to nurture. There are fresh skills to be learned, the skills of attentiveness, openness and obedience rather than (or, more correctly, alongside) the skills of the linguist, the exegete and the theologian. Learning to read again will be like learning anything else: it will take time and practice; there will be frustrations and setbacks; we will need to apply ourselves in a sustained and dedicated way.