A Painter Painting a Painter Painting
Delivered on Sunday 27 December 2009 in St George's Chapel
Feast of St John
Simon Marmion is hardly a household name. He was a fifteenth century French painter. At some point in 2003 the Royal Academy of Arts hosted an extraordinary exhibition entitled 'Illuminating the Renaissance', and in that exhibition was a tiny painting by Marmion. It was in fact small enough to miss. Called 'St Luke Painting the Virgin and Child' it is a pretty if somewhat unremarkable piece. Unremarkable that is, until he stand in front it and read it more carefully. The setting is a beautiful, airy room A tiled floor and decorated ceiling vault, a back wall with open window, sunlight streaming in to illuminate the scene. The bearded artist sits upright on a stool, facing a tall easel that holds a nearly complete portrait. The subject of the portrait is Mary with her baby.
It all sounds straightforward enough. But one needs to look at it again. The contrast between the Mary and child we see, and the Mary and child the painter is painting are quite striking. The Mary we see has long flowing red hair, her head tilts to the left, and her baby is somewhat impish looking and clearly jumping about, playing with his mother's necklace. The Mary the painter has painted has red hair but it is now discreetly covered. She is more beautiful and her head tilts to the right. The baby is neatly wrapped in swaddling bands and is peaceful. No pulling of beads here.
What is going on here. There are three immediate reactions. The first might suggest that the painter is simply having a bit of fun. The second he is slapdash or incompetent. The third that he has in mind a deliberate distortion or deception. All of these reactions are unlikely. Marmion is telling with much more theological depth. He sees before him a mother and child that look not much different to all those other mothers with their babies. Yet he knows that his mother and child - the subject of his painting are so very different to anything that has gone before or arrived since. How can he paint a picture that will pass on that difference; that will allow the reader to understand just how different, just how extraordinary, is his subject.
What Marmion offers us is a means of understanding the task of the gospel writer. He has Luke in mind when he paints, but he might just as well have had Matthew or Mark or John. Every gospel writer paints for us a picture. In particular they paint our Lord and Saviour. Each painter has a different way of telling the story and so to some extent we end up with rather different readings of the one same Lord. And St John, whose feast day this is, has painted for us perhaps the most extraordinary of all the pictures.
In so many respects the pictures painted by Matthew, Mark and Luke are similar - you can certainly see the family resemblances. John's gospel by contrast is strikingly different. His geography is different, his diary is different, he areas of interest are different. The other gospels are fully of stories about exorcisms - John has none. The other gospels are littered with parables - John has none. In fact most of what is in the other gospels is not in John and most of what is in John is not in the other gospels. It's a bit like having three landscape paintings alongside a piece of modern art.
John, however, like the other writers has the same subject. His gospel is the good news about Jesus Christ. And although he has no birth story for us at this Christmastide, he does have a story of God becoming man. You know it well, it is the beginning of his gospel, the famous 'In the beginning was the Word'. Even from the point of creation, Jesus was. What we celebrate at Christmas is the fact that into history came God as man.
His way of telling things, is a symbolic one. His Jesus is not so much a man of action as a man of symbol. He paints a picture, in words, of one who points. His Jesus is always pointing. Pointing, pointing, pointing to his Father in heaven. John says, if you want to know what God is like - you need look no further than Jesus.
So in a sense this symbolic gospel is a stylised poetic account. But don't be seduced into thinking it is soft. Of all the gospels this is the one that constantly places decision before the hearer. As you listen to it how do you respond? That is the central question for this supreme artist. Commitment to Jesus is a choice for life, light and truth; in short, for God. Hostility towards Jesus is a choice against life for darkness, against truth for falsehood, against life for death; in short, against God.
We began with Simon painting a picture of Luke painting a picture of the baby Jesus in his mother's arms. We end with a picture of John painting a picture of Jesus painting a picture of God, through his words and his actions. And with the question - as you look at the picture, what do you see?
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