Curate’s reflections. Stations of the resurrection 27.4.25

Stations of the Resurrection
Today’s service is a little unusual and will include five stations of the Resurrection. This service emerged as very much a response to the stations of the Cross, which is a widely practised tradition in the Christian Church during Lent. The stations of the Resurrection are a celebration of Christ’s appearances to his followers following Easter Sunday. For copyright reasons the artworks are not included on our website: use your browser to find them online.

First station:
Matthew (28.5-8); Mikhail Nesterov, ‘Women carrying spices’ ,1889
https://stjosephspringfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/mikhail-nesterov-the-empty-tomb-1889.jpg

The scene in our first reading is very much an opening into a new reality, in which the darkness of death and grief is overcome by the light and joy of the Resurrection, but no one knows it yet. The women are the first to see a glimpse of this new reality. It is a story we know well: the women are approaching the tomb, carrying spices to look after Christ’s dead body. They are about to find out that he is not here but is risen.
There are of course numerous works of art that show this scene, but I have chosen this one. The artist, Mikhail Nesterov, has introduced a small but profound change to the Biblical scene: perhaps conflating it with John’s narrative of Mary Magdalene’s visit to the tomb, which was at night, the artist paints this scene as taking place before the sunrise and not later in the morning. There is a contrast between the light of the angel holding a fiery staff, the stars in the sky, the lantern one of the women is holding, and the darkness around them. We can imagine that the women may have been stumbling over the rocks on the way – it has not been an easy walk with it being so dark. The addition of darkness makes the composition both mysterious and joyful and underlines the theological significance of this scene, as opposed to merely representing it. Moreover, we have already seen something of what this painting is trying to say in our liturgy last week.
On Easter Sunday, we gathered in the dark church to light one candle, which then gave light to many other candles and finally the altar candles and the whole building. The light of Christ, which was announced as the Paschal candle was brought in, lit up the whole church and, on leaving the church, we were reminded of our responsibility to spread this light to the whole world. The painting appears to echo the Easter liturgy. The light from the tomb, held by the angel, finds its reflection in the glimmer of the stars and the light the women are holding (very much like a candle each one of us had in our hands last Sunday). The women will take this light to share with the disciples, and soon after the sun will rise, and the dawn of Christ’s Resurrection will wipe away all darkness and all grief, and there will be no more stumbling in the dark on the way to Christ. The women don’t know yet that the light will come, but we do, so let us live in that light daily and carry it, through the darkness, to those places where it is most needed.

Second station:
John (20.3-8); Eugène Burnard ‘Peter and John running to the tomb’, 1898
https://www.meisterdrucke.uk/fine-art-prints/Eugene-Burnand/40391/The-Disciples-Peter-and-John-Running-to-the-Sepulchre-on-the-Morning-of-the-Resurrection.html

I have struggled to find virtually any information about this painting, but, even if we miss out on some fun facts about it, just looking at it tells the story so clearly that nothing else is needed. As with the previous painting, the genius of the artist is in choosing the moment to represent. It is not the moment when something happens; it is the moment before it does. We didn’t hear the conversation between the women and the angel and we don’t need to see John and Peter actually reaching the tomb. It is a moment of anticipation, where disbelief and even initial denial and scepticism are morphing into hope, excited anticipation and prayer of thanksgiving. The figures are shifted to the left of the canvas, as if to show that we nearly missed them: another second and they are out of the frame, and this makes it so much more precious to catch their expressions as they are running. The Gospel reading tells us that John only believed when he went into the tomb, but do you think this is an expression of complete disbelief?
I think this painting shows our journeys towards Christ as much as it shows Peter and John’s journey towards the tomb. It is not a straight line and can be an emotional rollercoaster. We may be running, hoping and praying and at the same time thinking ‘but what if..?’ What if the women are wrong? What if he is still in the tomb after all?
The apostles in this painting are certainly relatable but the scene altogether, both in the reading and in the painting, is attractively simple. William Temple wrote on John 20, ‘The date of the triumph of Jesus is Good Friday, not Easter Day. Yet if the story had ended there, the victory would have been barren. What remains is not to win it, but to gather in its fruits. Consequently St John does not present the Resurrection as a mighty act by which the hosts of evil are routed but rather as the quiet rising of the sun which has already vanquished night. The atmosphere of the story has all the sweet freshness of dawn on a spring day’. As we look at the morning sky in the painting, the rays of the early sun gently picking out the features of John and Peter’s faces, we are reminded that the Resurrection is not a distant, cosmic, incomprehensible event happening somewhere out there; it is right here, in front of us, in the morning mist.

Third station:
John (20.11-18); Albert Edelfelt, “Christ and Mary Magdalene, a Finnish legend’, 1890
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/christ-and-mary-magdalene-a-finnish-legend-albert-edelfelt/RAHlufzW8v1SYQ?hl=en-GB&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.578550456694483%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A3.250566657766319%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000007%7D%7D

Edelfelt’s unconventional ‘Christ and Mary Magdalene’, is set on the forested shoreline of a Finnish lake. It shows Jesus dressed in peasant shoes plaited from strips of birch-bark and Mary Magdalene wearing a typical Karelian ethnic dress from eastern Finland.
Edelfelt’s portrayal of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in a familiar local landscape and in native dress is a response to the late 19th-century artistic interest in the everyday, the ordinary, which swept across Europe. The theme of this painting is of course inspired by the Biblical passage we have just heard but also relates to a Finnish folk poem about Mary. This is a very Finnish scene and both Mary and Jesus are clearly Finnish, Jesus modelled by another artist and Mary by Edelfelt’s servant. All of this has nothing to do with the people we meet in the Bible.
In the field of Art History in the recent years there has been a protest against the so-called blue-eyed fair-haired Jesus, and for a good reason. There has been a feeling that depictions of Jesus have lost touch with the real historic figure of Christ, and we are now re-discovering a more ethnically correct Jesus.
I think, however, that from a spiritual and theological perspective, a representation of Jesus as a Finn must have been refreshing at the time. In this painting, Jesus is not a remote foreign figure: he is someone you and I can meet, and we don’t even have to go far – he is right here, by the lake where you and I go fishing every week. He can meet us just as he has already met Mary who also lives next door. Notably, the servant who was the model for Mary in this painting had just lost her fiancé and was grieving, and such cultural proximity of Christ’s figure suggests that he is here to comfort both Mary Magdalene, who is mourning her loss, and the servant, who is mourning hers. Jesus appears to both and looks at both of them with great tenderness, gesturing as if to lift them off their knees. Looking at this image, it is easy to imagine how he can walk straight into our own personal grief too. Being so close to us, he appears to you and me, just as he did to Mary Magdalene. He stretches his hand to us too and calls us by our names.

Fourth station:
Luke (24.28-35); Diego Velázquez, ‘Kitchen maid with the supper at Emmaus’, 1620-1622
https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/highlights-collection/kitchen-maid-supper-emmaus-diego-velazquez-1599-1660

My choice for this painting, as well as some thoughts on it, have been inspired by Neil MacGregor and his Lenten reflections in ‘Church Times’, where he picked this painting for Holy Week.
For obvious reasons, paintings about Jesus tend to have Jesus in the middle, but this painting by Velazquez happily ignores that rule. Jesus and his disciples are in the background, while our attention is on the kitchen maid. Through the open shutter of a hatch to the left we are witnessing the climactic moment of our reading from Luke. As Jesus blesses the bread, the disciples finally recognise him. A true miracle is taking place: the risen Christ is meeting his bereft followers. But on this side of the hatch, there is a very different world. There is an assortment of jugs and bowls, all things needed to prepare a meal – an atmosphere I think Martha would be comfortable in. The maid pauses, ready to pick up a pitcher, and thinks – or listens? The material, earthly realm of the foreground contrasts with what MacGregor calls ‘the heavenly nourishment next door’. It is easy to think that the two scenes are set in a deliberate contrast with each other and are not intended to have anything in common; and yet, it is a powerful reminder that the miraculous meal at Emmaus can be an everyday meal. God is walking among the pots and pans just as he is walking alongside the disciples. Whether the girl is present as the scene is taking place in a different room or the scene is something like a ‘thought bubble’ as she is going about her work, this scene has a real presence in her everyday tasks. The girl has no particular status and is likely an outsider but how many stories have we read about Jesus caring for the lowly and the excluded?
On the road to Emmaus, the disciples fail to recognise Jesus. In our previous reading, Mary Magdalene failed to recognise him. Despite him telling us all to see him in the poor and the needy, we are slow too, and as we look at this painting, we only see him tucked away in the corner when we are meant to see him in her, in the pots and pans, in the sweat and blood of hard work. The supper at Emmaus is not a happy reunion, it is a challenge to recognise Christ in the things that are in front of us, right in the centre. And it turns out Velazquez did not break any rules after all: just like in other paintings, Christ is right in the middle.

Fifth station:
John (20.19-31); Caravaggio, ‘The incredulity of Saint Thomas’, 1603
https://www.caravaggio.org/the-incredulity-of-saint-thomas.jsp

The best thing about this painting is the effect it produces at the very first glance. One of the professors at my old university at one point came up with a new theory called ‘Neuroarthistory’. He is called John Onians and you can buy his book on it if you are interested. The idea is that mirror-neurons that we all have in our brains guide our perception of everything we see, including art, by mirroring what is in front of us and evoking similar feelings. How many of you, seeing this painting, when it just appeared on the screen, felt as if it’s you sticking your fingers into someone else’s flesh or as if it is someone else poking a wound in your body? John Onians would say we have this response thanks to the mirror-neurons.
I think Jesus’s encounter with Thomas, who missed his initial appearance to the disciples, is a perfect subject to look at through the lens of neuroarthistory. The physicality of the subject is striking, not only in the realism of Thomas’s finger in the wound but the whole scene: the split seam on Thomas’s sleeve, the frowns of the two disciples in the background and the shock on Thomas’s face, all brought to life by Caravaggio’s signature dramatic lighting. The lighting makes the figures appear especially present and almost tangible. The scene is real and its physicality is the antidote to any doubt: the risen Christ is here, and here are also his wounds. And yet, to the rest of us, Jesus says, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ Caravaggio gives us a precious moment of being Thomas or even being Jesus as we look at this painting and quite literally feel the scene, but once the next painting appears on the screen and remains there as a backdrop to the rest of the service, we will return to the place where we do not see and yet are invited to believe. So may this be our charge for this Easter season: to follow the light of Christ out of darkness and take it to the places that are dark, to trust that Christ will meet us in our grief as well as in our joys, to see him in strangers and to believe in him even when we don’t see. May the risen Christ guide us in all these tasks. Amen.