Jesus: The Light of the World, Waiting

Jesus: Light and Waiting

“I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” — John 8:12.

Holman Hunt The Light of the World

Nestled away in the side chapel of Keble College, Oxford, is this haunting painting, “The Light of the World,” by Holman Hunt. I stumbled upon it on an adventure walk at Oxford one summer, when we spent two weeks at nearby Wadham College. The painting mesmerized me, so I sat and visited it almost every afternoon. Hunt painted it in 1854 and sold it to Thomas Combe, who, on his death, willed it to Keble College. When Hunt heard Keble charged admission to see it almost fifty years later, he painted another picture four times larger, understanding that it would be considered a “sermon in a frame.” The larger work went on an international evangelism tour, where hundreds became believers.

When I discovered he donated this larger version to St. Paul’s Cathedral, I knew we needed to return to London to see it behind the altar in the North Transept, Middlesex Chapel. This version is just as haunting, but it is much harder to meditate on the painting with the crowds in that more extensive setting. I was almost always alone at the chapel at Keble.

I sometimes go to Pierce Chapel at Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock, where this painting is in a stained glass window.

This is just a reminder of how art, even one painting, can make a difference in the world.

The figure of Christ and his searching eyes stands with a lantern on the other side of a door overgrown with dead weeds and rotten fruit on the ground. This speaks volumes about our relationship with Christ more than most theological writings. Christ has been there for some time. No matter where we stand or sit in connection to the painting, Christ’s eyes look directly at us. The door opens from the inside. Christ is not banging on the door but persistently and gently knocking.

I give copies of this image to spiritual friends, especially when they feel God’s absence.
God is there waiting.
Advent reminds us that we are not only waiting for God, but God also waits for us.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

12-step Eucharist at Saint Mark’s tonight at 5:30.

Preparing for Advent: Watch for the Light

Preparing for Advent: Watch for the Light

 “The spiritual Experience, whether it be of faith, hope or love, is something we cannot manufacture, but which we can only receive.”

 —Philip Britts, “Yielding to God,” Watch for the Light (Plough 2001),  p. 111-112.

Watch for the Light is a daily reading for Advent and Christmas by some of the best-known spiritual writers: Bonhoeffer, Dillard, Donne, Eliot, Hopkins, Kierkegaard, L’Engle, Lewis, Luther, Merton, Norris, Nouwen, Underhill, Yancy, and many others. The short essays are three to five pages long, making this an Advent and Christmas reading that will take fifteen to thirty minutes to read and digest. These daily readings allow us to spend time in our Advent meditations with some of the most beloved spiritual writers. I am a significant underliner, so I returned to the book to look for the most underlined essay. It was difficult since numerous underlined passages were in every piece of writing.

 One favorite was the essay “Yielding to God” by the British poet Philip Britts. Britts writes that Mary’s example of “let it be with me according to your word” is the essence of the Christmas story. Jesus is conceived out of surrender and not out of “the head of Zeus” like Athena. He was born in a lowly stable environment with all the animals, the cold, and the dirt. Christ was born into poverty to heal the poverty of our hearts.

Christ did not just come as a moral tune-up, self-improvement guru, or spiritual teacher. The person of Jesus was fully human but also infused with perfect God-consciousness, intimately connected to the love of God. Our yearly celebration of his birth reminds us that the same God consciousness, the presence of God within us, can break through and be born in our hearts today, just as “the word became flesh” and changed the world over 2000 years ago.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Remembering December 1

Remembering December 1st, Rosa Parks Remembrance Day

“For those of you who have fallen into a level of cynicism, thinking that we “cannot” and “nothing will work,” let me tell you something about when you get up..in the morning of December first. That means nothing to you, but let me break it down because you should shout every December first. December 1 was the day … Rosa Parks sat down so you could stand up.

Rosa Parks. Peacock

When you get up this morning, you say, “God, I thank you for Rosa. That she could sit down so I could stand up.” And only God can teach you to do two things that sound contradictory at the same time, that she sat down and stood up at the same time. We must make our history sacred.”—Otis Moss III, Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World: Finding Hope in an Age of Despair (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 96–97, 102.

Richard Rohr introduced us to Otis Moss and his writings about how African Americans have a unique way of holding the tension between hope and despair. In the fall of 2014, shortly after the shooting of Michael Brown and weeks of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, Rev. Dr. Moss preached about the tensions of being a Black American of faith and racism in our country.

“ Being Black means you are born with a Blues song tattooed on your heart, and at the same time, you still have a Gospel shout that is welling up in your soul about to come out.

Another way to say it is that we live with repression and revelation, simultaneously swimming in the same tributary of our spirit. There is nothing more confusing to the postmodern personality, to the millennial sojourner, than to have to exist between the strange life of dealing with your Blues and Gospel all the time: madness and ministry, chaos and Christ. My father heard an elder in Georgia say it this way. When he asked her, ‘How are you doing, Mother?’ she said, ‘I’m living between Oh Lord and Thank you, Jesus.”’

“The Gospel and the Blues,” Richard Rohr Daily Meditation, January 18, 2024.

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/