FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (Proper 5C)
6 June 2010

Over the past few weeks of my sabbatical, I've had the opportunity to see some of the greatest works of Renaissance religious art. Of course, I've seen only a fraction of what there is to see, and missed some things I would have liked to have seen because of the pressures of time. But apart from coming to the conclusion that I don't care much for Botticelli (he of the Birth of Venus) it has been a rewarding experience.

As often, those rewards are often in the details. One theme common to much of the art I saw was the way in which the various artists depicted the background to the events they were painting. The subject might have been a scene from the bible, but when you looked you realised that what was meant to pass for Jerusalem or wherever was in fact the artist's home town, perhaps Arezzo or Florence or Prato, all of which I visited. And when you looked even closer you realised that the faces were just as likely to be local notables of the artist's own day, or his friends, or even sometimes the artist himself.

It's easy to put this down to ignorance: people in the Fourteenth Century didn't have the knowledge of history or geography we have today, and just assumed towns and people has always pretty much looked the same. And some of it was undoubtedly a way of flattering those they painted into their pictures.

But I think they were smarter than that. Enough people had been to the Holy Land on pilgrimage or crusade for artists to know that towns in Galilee and Judea really looked very different from towns in Northern Italy. I think they were making a point; and that that point was that the God who had acted in ancient Israel continued to act in the present; and that the power and glory of Jesus were no less accessible in the towns and streets and homes of Tuscany than they had been in the towns and streets and homes of Galilee and Judea.

That's part of what we celebrated on Thursday, Corpus Christi, and whenever we celebrate the Eucharist; in the memorable words of John Betjeman, that God was man in Palestine and lives today in Bread and Wine. Christ's power, Christ's presence, is still active among us. He is here, to be worshipped and adored no less by us than by his disciples two millennia ago.

Jesus power and glory are certainly evident in our Gospel today, the story of Jesus' raising the widow's son an Nain. It's exactly the sort of scene a Renaissance artist might have transferred to his own time and place; in fact I'm pretty sure I saw a depiction on my travels. And it too is a story with details that are easily overlooked.

First of all, it is unique to Luke's Gospel; and he has very carefully placed it at this point in the narrative to set his readers up for what follows. Now we don't hear what follows next week; but that's only because what follows is a story about John the Baptist which we hear in Advent. And it tells how John sent messengers to Jesus to ask him if he were the Messiah, and Jesus replies: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

This is an event that vindicates Jesus' identity, proves who he is. And the crowds recognise that when they immediately acclaim Jesus as a prophet. Why? Well today's Old Testament reading is the clue: because raising people's sons from the dead is something prophets did; and far more than Jesus' other miracles it places him in the line of Elijah and Elisha, Israel's heroes of old. And if Luke sees this story as a key piece of evidence for who Jesus was, we are probably right to think that Jesus himself was also fully aware of the precedent he was invoking when he brought a widow's only son back to life.

Above all, however, it is a story that shows Jesus' compassion in a special way. Uniquely in this miracle, Jesus is not approached by anyone and asked to do something, nor does he question the woman in any way. We are simply told that he had compassion for her, and that he gave instructions for the procession to stop so he could give her back her son. That's it. His power and glory are not only revealed, they are revealed entirely spontaneously, without human intervention.

Jesus' power and glory are revealed in our towns and streets and homes whenever we follow his example, showing compassion spontaneously and not simply grudgingly because we have been asked to do something. It might be no more that repeating Jesus' gentle words to someone in need: Do not weep … a sign of care and interest. Sometimes we are in a position to do more: to listen, to lend a hand, even (as happens often to clergy) to help out in some more tangible way. Sometimes it may be just words, because we are as much at a loss as the other person. Even if we cannot bring someone physically back from the dead, we can restore life and hope.

But our epistle too tells us something about Jesus' power and glory; indeed it ends with words remarkably similar to those with which our Gospel ends: And they glorified God because of me. Jesus' power and glory have been revealed in the change in Paul's life, from persecutor of the Church to believer and evangelist. And while undoubtedly that was first and foremost because of Jesus' direct intervention in his life, surely he was shaped by the compassionate words and actions of the Christian community after his encounter on the Damascus Road; words which restored Paul's life and hope from the spiritual funeral procession that was his life until then. And once again, in helping people change their lives, we can restore life and hope.

And it is when we do that, when we are seen as a community that reveals the compassion of Jesus, that the people of our time and place will acclaim Jesus and the word about him will spread just as it did though Judea and Galilee, and men and women will glorify God because of us no less than they did for Paul … and all those wonderful Renaissance painters will have shown just how precient they were.