Fixing my Gaze
It is funny how a simple change of scenery can sometimes make one to pause, reflect and appreciate something. Yesterday after church, I had to make a dash for a church in New Westminster just across the Fraser river for presbytery duties. Such a dash is easier and more fun when performed on a motorcycle with little traffic. I stopped at the church just as the congregants were leaving the church. I went in and inquired about the leadership with whom I was supposed to have a meeting with. To my disappointed I was informed that they know of no such meeting. I suggested that the leadership be gathered anyway so that we could discuss the important matters I was instructed to bring under discussion. They willfully obliged and soon I was encircled by a small group of leaders. It is then that I did something smart. I said: “This is First Presbyterian Church, right?” “No”, they replied, this is a Baptist church. I was tempted to fake a whole meeting through just to save the embarrassment but since they told me that the Presbyterian church I was looking for, was right up the road, I had to humbly apologize and depart from these faithful leaders.
I arrived at the right destination and sat through the congregational meeting. Ever since I got up that morning, it was the first time I had to breathe and reflect somewhat with all the preaching, organizing, greeting, and travelling. I noticed that the congregation had a beautiful sanctuary. Looming large right in front was a stained-glass depiction that mesmerized me. It depicted a Jesus figure with a lamp in his hand knocking on a door. This imagery comes from the book of Revelation in the Bible. Jesus is dressed in a royal mantel depicting Him as being risen and victorious. Next to Him is a tree with red fruit on it. I presume it depicts the Tree of Life, also from the book of Revelation. I noted that one of the fruits was lying on the soil below and wondered why. Was the artist going for a play on the expression “The apple does not fall far from the tree” or had he in mind a rotten fruit that fell away or even pruned loose by Jesus, the master gardener? At the back is a sea with a fishing boat pulled out on the shore. The fishing boat, often used to signify the church, has an anchor on it. The facial expression of Jesus looks serene and a bit angelic with the sunlight shining through it. His robe is white, and I loved how two sandaled feet stuck out underneath us as if to remind us of Jesus’s humanity and intimate walk with humankind on earth. The gate is gold.
Revelation 22:14 reads:
“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates to the city”
Revelation goes on to say that outside dogs, murderers, idolaters, liars and sexually immoral. They were not depicted outside this gate in the stained glass artwork. I interpreted this omission as a way to communicate that Jesus transforms this current reality we live in into something better already, but it could also be that it was meant as a view from inside the gates of heaven, not outside. Why then, I wondered, does Jesus knock on this door? Shouldn’t He just be opening it? Isn’t it those outside that would want to knock? Or is this door not the gate to paradise but our heart, precious in God’s sight?
Whilst being drawn in by this image that I could not even understand and explain fully, I had this wonderful feeling of transcendence, of being freed from my own obsessive and self-serving, anxious thoughts momentarily. It reminded me of the Christian Mystic Simone Weil who wrote that one of the ways in which our gaze could be drawn unto God, is to have respect and appreciation for religious ritual, not as a goal in itself but as a lens that can help us focus on God and Him being active in our reality. She explains how many people through being disappointed and hurt, through intellectual fixation and other experiences lose this ability to respect and appreciate the value of religious ritual as a means to connect with God.
I thank God that so poignantly in this moment today, I am not one of those people. I asked Jesus to not let that fresh fallen apple go to waste. Pick me and feed those outside with what you have put in me, oh Lord! May I be for others a foretaste of that wonderful Tree of Life.
Gabriel J Snyman
September 28th 2020 See lessEditLikeCommentShare
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