The
latest installation in the Minster will not have escaped your notice. ‘Yahweh and the Seraphim’ is by far the
largest and most ambitious work we have hosted to date, and an unprecedented opportunity
not only to participate in Sunderland’s bid to be City of Culture in 2021 but
also – and, for me, even more importantly – to engage the public in
conversation about the nature of God and of faith, and to point people to
Jesus.
We
are confronted with a representation of Yahweh, the god of Israel, a deity
notorious for writing a ‘no images’ clause into his contract with his people.
That in itself resonates with many passages of Scripture: from the golden calf
fashioned by Aaron, and the Baals and Asherah poles erected by the kings of
Israel; to the vision of the throne of heaven Isaiah saw in the temple, and
Zechariah’s shock at encountering the angel Gabriel in the Holy of Holies; to
the deeply offensive man Jesus causing a stir in the temple courtyards.
In
our reading from the Gospel According to
John, Jesus actually claims for himself the name by which God revealed
himself to Moses, I AM. Indeed, Jesus claims to have been I AM before Abraham
was. And in our reading from the epistle to the Hebrews we hear that this Jesus is ‘greater and more perfect’ than
what had come before, and, for this reason, the mediator of a new covenant.
It
is impossible not to imagine God, for the need to be reunited is fixed within
us. Even if we don’t make visible images, we carry an image in our hearts and
minds – whether we search until we find it in the stories of the world, or
resolutely reject the god our image reflects. So what is your image of God? And
what is mine?
Even
if I was to say to you that I believe God to be most fully revealed in the
person of Jesus Christ, how do I conceive Jesus? Or, what Jesus do we present
to the world? After all, he sits above our sculpture – the mediator of a new
and better covenant – but is he really European (or, as the window in the West
end of the building depicts, one of the Nordic gods)? And does he still offend
our flesh, our old nature, even while giving life to the spirit, to our new
nature; or is he too familiar for that?
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