SERMON for the SECOND SUNDAY of the YEAR (A) 2008
'The Presence'
'It's a bit like the elephant in the room', Karen Rann said to me referring to her work Presence which is with us this morning in the Cathedral. Well, I'm not in the habit of having any elephants in the same room personally, but I suppose I see what she means! You can't ignore it - and if you do, then at some point you will get yourself entangled.
We'll all have our particular interpretations of what Karen has given us - and of what Fin Macrae has also given us in the shape of his challenging photography visible on the inside and the outside of the Cathedral door. And I don't want to suggest for a moment that what I am going to say this morning is any possible sense definitive. One of the joys of having a work of art around is that it invites you to contemplate and enter its mystery - and nothing should stop you doing that, least of all the ramblings of the Provost. But I would like to share a few thoughts with you as I have experienced living with Presence during the past week, as well as seeing the impact which it makes upon those who have come to see it. In doing that, I realise from an artist's viewpoint, I'm doing something a bit dangerous, or even just plain odd.
Now I'm quite happy to be a bit odd, so if I tell you that what Presence suggests to me first of all is a cloud then your worst fears might be about to be fulfilled! But that's what my imagination sees. The word presence already begins that process in my mind and so what I see when I look at the work is a cloud. It reminds me of the cloud of God's presence that accompanied the Israelites on their 40 years' journey through the wilderness, a journey begun in Egypt the night that the Passover Lamb was slaughtered.
As members of the Church, we have to live with that same cloud of God's presence today. And it is not always very convenient for us, anymore than it was for the Israelites of old. The cloud of God's presence led them to some pretty unpleasant and uncompromising situations and they would have far rather been back in their slavery in Egypt. Living with the cloud of God's presence for us means that we, too, find ourselves wandering around, sometimes feeling quite lost (if your head is in a cloud its difficult to see the road ahead), sometimes resenting the inconveniences, the demands placed upon us of worship, of service, of mutual love, of taking a moral stance on issues, of adopting a certain kind of lifestyle.
Living with the imaginary cloud of the Presence in the Cathedral is a sharp physical reminder of this. For a start, it means we probably can't sit where we normally sit. We can sit at the front - and feel exposed. Or we can sit at the very back, but there's not so much room there as there usually is because we're all trying to get in to a smaller space! The imaginary cloud of the Presence forces us together and stops us escaping into isolation. Just as the cloud of the presence of God enveloped the people of Israel, and made them into a single nation, chosen for God's purposes. We are reminded that we are made to find our fulfilment in relationship (to God and to other people) and not in isolation. Even though that frequently means thrashing around in the damp mist of a cloud and not seeing clearly where we are or where we are supposed to be.
Karen's work is not - happily - a damp soggy mist (though the evening we processed here to its unveiling was a pretty wet one!). But Presence is about relationships. In thinking about spirituality, Karen has involved a huge number of people throughout Inverness (over 1300 messages are on the individual pieces of the artwork), and these people have each articulated something about a relationship which has meant a lot to them - the inner bits of the art have many messages about people who are or who have been very special to us.
And all of this is mysteriously caught up in the being of God, the cloud of presence with whom we live and in whom we have our being. Here is a message of profound Christian hope, appropriate as we celebrate the Eucharist together on the Sunday when we reflect on Jesus as the Lamb of God. What exactly was it about that phrase, that description of Jesus given him by John Baptist, that attracted our Patron Saint, Andrew, amongst others to Jesus? Like good art, the phrase probably made sense at a whole number of different levels - there was, in Aramaic, a colloquial expression which used the word for Lamb to describe a child, rather like in English we might describe a child as a kid. Later on, the prophetic symbolism of using the word with its sacrificial connotations would become much more clear and definitive for the early Christian community. Jesus becomes the Lamb of God - the final and ultimate Paschal Lamb whose dying and rising to new life reconciles humanity with God for ever.
So back to Presence and the invisible net of relationships that it makes tangible and visible here in this sacred space. Our human relationships are never fully what we would wish them to be - that's part of being human. Sometimes they are disrupted by death before we can say and do all that we would have wished to do. And that's an inevitable part of being human, too. But if we let ourselves and our relationships get caught up in the life of the Lamb of God (as we do every time we celebrate the Eucharist together) then there is hope for us, as we live with the cloud of the presence of God. Hope for the present - when we shall find grace in and through and for our human relationships. And for the future, too. In the risen future of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who died and who rose from death. And in sharing his risen future, we shall discover the mystery that even death has no power to ultimately disrupt our relationships. With one another, or with God.
Canon Alex Gordon
These are the transcriptions of two articles that appeared on The Methodist Church website
As others see us
What we do for a living can have an important impact on how we think about our faith. Two artists, both involved in Inverness’s church and community art project, The Other Side of Air, reflect on how art helps them express what they believe.
“For me, art and spirituality have always been intrinsically linked - I am not sure if it is simply due to my own personal Christian faith, my life-long love for creativity, or my struggle from an early age to communicate in ways other than visually.”
Alister Macinnes is a graphic designer with a background in book design. He finds himself inspired by religious thought but tries to avoid traditional religious imagery. For The Other Side of Air, he developed a publicity image around the idea of smoke. “Smoke can be extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world, while also symbolising and giving reference to much deeper aspects of faith and worship.”
In a similar way, photographer Fin Macrae looks for ways of expressing faith that are characterised by their simplicity. “Too often I think we make spirituality out to be this incredibly complicated and convoluted process. Friends who express their own faiths through other belief systems also testify to this – faith is simple!”
But even if faith is “simple”, it doesn’t mean that there is nothing to explore, no ideas to express in new ways. “One way that we can explore the link between what makes us human and also spiritual beings can be through the medium of art,” says Fin. And where do the ideas come from? “From conversations, observations and the odd bit of inspiration (divine?!)”
For Alister, that need to explore is what we – and God – are all about. “God is creative – from the opening verses of Genesis, to the final chapters of Revelation, God is working, creating and developing a plan for life with the most intricate detail and purpose”. He recalls “an obscure verse in the middle of a long historical bit in the Bible that talks about two guys that God filled with his spirit so that they could create art works of extraordinary beauty – so our abilities as artists are God-given”.
Fin agrees: “If my raison d'être is to glorify God” – a phrase rooted in his Highland Presbyterian past – “then I must ultimately make my art to his glory too.”
“The longer I am involved in creativity,” adds Alister, “the more I am aware of the spiritual dimensions to life – and the more I learn about God, the more I want to explore my creative potential.”
Art changes lives in Inverness
At the invitation of the Riverside Churches Association, three artists have recently been getting spiritual with the people of Inverness.
In an initiative called The Other Side of Air, the artists were invited to explore what it means to be spiritual in modern life. They worked with different groups of people in a project that was supported by the Scottish Arts Council and part-funded by the Methodist Trust.
Though some of the resulting work was displayed in church buildings, a number of different Inverness city projects were also involved. Artist Del Whitticase worked with a multi-cultural sewing group – even though he himself couldn’t sew. Negotiating language and cultural obstacles (the project took place during Ramadan), the group created umbrellas that illustrated private thoughts (on the insides) and public ideas (on the outsides).
Geoff Broadway used photography and sound to explore the spirituality theme in an installation called ‘Small Wonder’. This included audio recordings of local people, “asking them to speak with me around the theme of spirituality - whatever it means to them. This has been truly wonderful and… what never ceases to amaze me is how much people open themselves and share their own truth when they are recorded with a microphone.”
Meanwhile, local school children worked with Karen Rann to create photo montages that were folded into origami-style ‘snap dragons’. “We created colourful, wacky, fun designs for the outside,” says Karen, “and using warmer colours, created gentle, precious interiors. The second part of the process was to write ‘inner messages’ to people special to us.”
Over 1,300 messages were created in the snap dragons. Sometimes people wrote to a relative who had died. One group of teenage boys wrote messages to celebrate the skills and qualities of friends who they admired.
All the snap dragons were hung in an Inverness church. “As I was hanging this display,” recalls Karen, “I found one folded in a post-it note tucked in one of the storage boxes. It was written by one child for another. It said: “You changed my life.”