The television programme, Antiques Roadshow has been running for many years, and remains endlessly fascinating. People queue for hours to discover something unknown about a familiar object, possibly also hoping that the item will may also be valuable; and we watch their reactions with vicarious pleasure. My brother once queued with a pair of Victorian bronze vases, owned by my mother, to be told that he held… a pair of Victorian bronze vases; apparently they are very common items.
One of the things I have learned through watching the programme is that old pictures in shoddy cheap frames are seldom valuable; and that a high quality old frame is seldom wasted on a bad picture. So a frame provides clues to the picture and vice versa.
Today’s readings from the gospel of Mark form part of a set of stories that demonstrate who Jesus is, and people’s dawning understanding of his love, compassion and power. The extracts for today frame two demonstrations of Jesus’ power; feeding the needy - five thousand of them, and bringing calm - walking on the water and stilling the wind. Both of these show Jesus bringing nature and natural laws under his command. But today, we are not looking at the picture in the centre; we are looking at the frame – the parts of the story that are easy to miss when we focus on the well-known and the familiar.
In the first extract we learn something of Jesus’ character and motivation. He has compassion on the people. That phrase, ‘having compassion’ was brought home to me when I visited St Paul’s Cathedral and saw an amazing painting. Not ‘The Light of the World’ by Holman Hunt – that left me cold.
No, the picture I saw was called Golgotha, and it was painted by SERGEI CHEPIK, a Russian artist. It was on loan to the Cathedral, and proved so popular that when it was removed Sergei Chepik was commissioned to paint a series of bible stories, which now hang in the main transept. But you do need to look up or you might miss them.
Golgotha's originality lies in the fact that Christ is represented only in the
shadow of the cross. The viewer therefore finds himself in the position of the
crucified, confronted by a crowd of onlookers, whose expressions run from horror
and pity to contempt and disbelief. The stifling midday sun and oppressive walls
of the ancient city create an almost unbearable claustrophobia. Its impact is
breathtaking. (Guardian 1999)
I would second that. When I saw the picture, I stood in front of it, transfixed. The artist enabled me to see humanity as Jesus saw it; and it brought tears to my eyes. It is hard to look on needy people and not be moved – we all know that from the Live Aid concerts.
Jesus looked on a crowd of needy people, people without the guidance, direction and care that they needed, and we are told that he had compassion. Interestingly, he didn’t initially offer to heal them; the first thing that came out of that compassion was that he taught them. He started to give them the tools to care for themselves in the future.
That’s a good model for us to follow - xxxxx xxxx does that when she travels to places like Bangladesh and Angola. She doesn’t just make physical aids for the disabled; she shows and teaches then how to do it for themselves so that after she has left they can carry on with the work for themselves. She helps them, and she teaches them to help themselves.
And in among all these needy people in our story were the disciples; also needing to learn, and watching Jesus, learning from his actions; the way that he offered himself and his presence to those in need. I remember some training that I did – about adult learning and how to train people in the workplace. One of the methods used is called, “Sitting next to Nellie”. If you have someone who knows how to do the job properly, sit the trainees next to them. That’s more or less what the disciples were doing at this point, and what must they have been learning as they watched the master? Sitting next to Jesus?
We then have the main picture, and Jesus shows that his gifts are also for the present – Jesus feeding people with physical food. And in another sign of the greater power, Jesus then walks on water and stills the wind. Several different images of power, each time used to teach others that the kingdom of God is more powerful than the forces created by it; more powerful than ignorance, hunger, fear, natural laws, and man-made laws.
And at the bottom of the picture, back to the frame, just beyond the point at which we would normally stop reading… we see that word has spread, and people are running to meet Jesus. They just can’t get to him quickly enough, and everywhere he goes people bring their sick to be healed. They placed the sick in the marketplaces; they didn’t keep them away, as ritually unclean, suddenly the sick were in the middle of crowds of people, and crowds were struggling to get to Jesus, to touch the hem of his cloak – to make him ritually unclean too. But even the hem of his cloak, the edge of his being, was enough to heal. Not just broken and damaged people, but also to begin healig a fractured and divided society.
All this ‘uncleanness’, and all this healing were mixed in together in a crazy chaotic muddle. God’s kingdom was breaking through and order was turned upside down. Can you imagine the noise and the crowds, and the excitement? No wonder the authorities were worried. And this, of course, is only a part of it, only the frame to the picture, and even with the rest of the stories included, it’s still only a glimpse of the full glory to come, the resurrection and our salvation.
Sometimes you just know when something is valuable. You don’t need an expert and a television camera to tell you. We place huge store on ‘things’, in our lives. And yet, when you ask people what would be the one thing they would save from their homes in the event of a fire, they will almost always want to caveat the choice with, “Once I knew my family were safe” before they run back for the photo albums, or something that reminds them of precious relationships. It certainly won’t be the silver fish knives, or a pair of Victorian bronze vases.
Those people on the shores of Lake Galilee, desperate for the love of God in their lives were the same people that Jesus looked down on from the cross. The same people from whom he chose his disciples, ordinary, confused, sometimes lost, looking for the right way and for guidance, sometimes getting life right, sometimes wondering why things have gone so horribly wrong. They represent you and me.
But we don’t have to run to catch Jesus before he moves on, We are the other side of that story, we are outside the frame looking in at a story that has the most joyful of endings; the resurrection, our salvation, our membership of a life with Christ. We are no longer unclean; we no longer have to reach to touch the edge of his cloak because we are one with Christ.
I’d be interested to see what value Antiques Roadshow would place on that.
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