It’s been a busy week preparing for the new students
arriving back at College. On Wednesday I
was down in London for the day as well for a
meeting of TSRE – the Training Strategy and Resource Executive for the Methodist Church. An interesting meeting – although I had a thought halfway through about how much of the decisions we make at these kind of meetings are really all that important – I mean, come two or three years
time and someone will come along and remake the decisions and unpin all the
work we’ve wrangled over simply because they have found a new bit of a jigsaw –
or at least think that they have. So a
big ‘hevel/Ecclesiastes’ moment for me. It was quite funny because then one of the members of the Committee
actually voiced the same sentiments…mmm…
On the way down to London, I was reading Anton Wessels book about Van Gogh’s time as an Evangelist and his
exploration of Van Gogh’s faith – Simon (see below) put me onto it, after I told him I had used Van Gogh's Good Samaritan to help explore the parable over the summer in France. It’s a good book. A couple of quotes from the book from Van
Gogh’s personal letters:
The people listened intently ‘when I tried to describe what
the Macedonian who needed and longed for the comfort of the gospel and for knowledge
of what the only true God was like. How
we think of him as a labourer with lines of sorrow and suffering and fatigue on
his face, without comeliness or splendour, but with an immortal soul – who needed
the food that does not perish, God’s word. How Jesus Christ is the Master who can comfort and strengthen a man like
the Macedonian – a labourer and working man whose life is hard – because he is
the great man of sorrows who knows our ills, who was called a carpenter’s son
although he was the Son of God, who worked for thirty years in a humble
carpenter’s shop to fulfil God’s will. And
God wills that in imitation of Christ man should live humbly and go through
life not reaching for the sky, but adapting himself to the earth below,
learning from the gospel to be meek and simple of heart.’ (p.54)
And later looking at his other source of inspiration:
‘for myself I learn much from father Michelet…The men and
women who may be considered to stand at the head of modern civilization – for instance,
Michelet and Beecher Stowe, Carlyle and George Eliot and so many others, they
call to us: “O man, whoever you are with a heart in your body, help us to found
something real, something abiding, something true. Limit yourself to one profession and love one
woman only. Let your profession be a
modern one and create in your wife a free modern soul; deliver her from the
terrible prejudices which chain her. Do not
doubt God’s help if you do what God wants you to do, and God wants us in this time
to reform the world by reforming morals, by renewing the light and the fire of
eternal love. By those means you will
succeed and at the same time have a good influence on those around you, fewer
or more, depending on your circumstances.”’
Now Van Gogh had a difficult time of it. His time as an evangelist was cut short by his
over-passionate embracing of the simple life – he gave away everything he had, slept
on the floor and starved himself. He
lasted about three months before the established church came in (/sent his
father in!) and took him away – he was found unsuitable – too passionate, to
literalist, too eager to live the life of Christ among the peasants of the Borinage. I’m inspired by his passion. I think Van Gogh knew something of the God I
know – something of the Jesus I know.
There has been a lot of talk about Van Gogh’s exploration of
light – the brilliant light of love and nature and passion – the rayon blanc, and the crippling light of
institution, of Pharisaism of all that negates light and love – the rayon noir. Eventually, he seems to have identified the
latter with the established church and the former with nature, modernity, passion.
Wessels’ book is about how much Jesus
fitted into the rayon blanc rather
than the rayon noir.
Now, of course, a Johannine scholar cannot keep away from
all that – the true light which lightens everyone coming into the world – too close
to what I think Van Gogh was saying. I understand him. The black light is the darkness of
pharisaism. Wonderful stuff. Of course, did Van Gogh reject Christianity per se? I don’t think so. I think he was
so crippled by what the institutional church did to him that he could do
nothing else than reject the church! But
I don’t think he rejected Christ – look at some of the letters he wrote in his
last few weeks – the works of art he was painting as he died…
I met someone, just before the meeting on Wednesday who came
to faith in a prison cell with no interference of evangelists, church groups,
alpha or whatever. It made me think of
what the point was in all our doing and dealings.
Simon Barrow’s blog pointed to the discussion about Beckham
as a messiah figure – people seeking the real among the unreal – the saviour
among the celebrities. They really are
looking in the wrong place. But what
does it mean to explore Beckham as a messiah – what do today’s world really
want? Are they simply looking for the rayon blanc in the wrong place?
I want something of Van Gogh’s passion. His exploration of it, of the rayon blanc probably drove him mad – his
attempt to capture the brilliance of true light. But I find his story, the story of the guy in
prison, seeming to point to a reality which is so much more real than the
Methodist Committees or the internal politics of the administrative aspects of
my job. I had a crap day the other day as I said - the physical hurdle I had to jump over to get from admin to teaching was too great - the biggest ever and I find it hard to deal with that kind of thing.
There’s something there of who I am as a scholar. I am fearful that scholarship is seen as
something remote from faith, from passion, from life. It’s almost as though we want to make Biblical
Studies into a scientific codified practice for a professional guild. But for me the text is so much more. It isn’t just a historical document out there
to be studied and dissected. It’s in
here – in my life. It is part of who I
am. Dissecting it for fun is like
dissecting yourself. How do we manage to
attain the critical distance which modern study of the text believes you can
get to? I don’t know. I’m not sure I can. If I was translating Fletcher’s handbook on
holiness, OK – I could do the translation – but is that enough? I want engagement not just study.
I wonder what the implications are for my contemplation of
emerging church and for biblical studies? And for my blog…see the next post.
I don’t know…it’s part of my journey at the moment and so I’ve
included it. Let’s see where it goes.
Pete
One thing...what is the little monk doing in the picture, Raf? I am sure that doesn't look too monk-ish! I mean, fancy holding a book on your head!
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