CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Growth and new life come through crisis, through the shaking of the old
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
On our Easter visit to the East Neuk of Fife, I missed the opportunity to see the tapestry by my theologian friend Jim Gordon now on display at the Transept 2023 Exhibition.
The exhibition is held at the Episcopal Church in St Andrews in connection with the University’s Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA).
During our time in Fife, Lorna and I found ourselves walking in the footsteps of religious reformer John Knox. We visited Crail Church, where Knox preached in June 1559. He spoke against the Catholic Church, and what he saw as its corrupt practices and its ‘idolatry’ – a focus on the Virgin Mary, the saints, and objects of religious significance rather than on Jesus Christ.
Knox reminded the congregation that Jesus ‘cleansed the Temple’ in Jerusalem, driving out those who were doing business in sacred space, and likened the Catholic Church to these profiteers.
Following this sermon, the church at Crail – with its silver crosses, candlesticks and gilded chalices, and rich altar coverings was ‘ransacked and spoiled’.
RELATED: 'I wanted to be free of parental expectations I felt I could never match'
A few days later, similar scenes of destruction followed a sermon Knox preached at St Andrews when altars were smashed, and a profusion of images, medieval art and books burned.
This practice of removing artefacts associated with Catholic worship was widespread across Scotland as towns became Protestant, though normally this was done without violence.
I appreciate the Reformers’ practice of calling out corruption, their focus on Jesus as the source of life and wholeness and their emphasis on God actively enlightening each individual through the Bible. And I recognise that we sometimes focus on religious objects, or theological practices or ideas alone rather than viewing them as portals through which God connects with us.
But I’m sad that so many lovely things were destroyed during the Reformation, sad that the Reformers did not know, or acknowledge what ITIA describes as ‘the power of the arts to communicate the divine’.
If only the Old Church could have been reformed from within, without the schism and destruction!
Yet perhaps it is God’s way – perhaps growth and new life come through crisis, through the shaking of the old.
Jim’s tapestry is entitled Benedicite Domine: And all manner of thing shall be well. It’s a reflection on Julian of Norwich’s vision of God holding the universe as Julian holds a hazelnut in her palm. God made it; God loves it; God keeps it.
Despite the frequent brokenness in church history, the times when all is shaken, there remains hope. Hope that ‘all manner of thing shall be well’ through the Jesus Christ who engages with us in a myriad of ways – including through Jim’s patient, perceptive stitchwork. Benedicite Domine! Bless the Lord!
