He descended to the dead

Through Death Into New Life

Peter Koenig, Christ as Second Moses

 

A perennial theme in the New Testament and in Christian reflection concerns how we are called to live through death into new life. When we die to our worldly attachments, and their hold upon us, we open ourselves to a greater life beyond. As the Christ our Passover canticle from The Book of Common Prayer puts it,

Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; *
death no longer has dominion over him.
The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; *
but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So also consider yourselves dead to sin, *
and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Peter Koenig’s painting, centered on themes within this Easter season, expresses this motif in a particularly evocative way. Just as Moses led the people of Israel through the waters of death into a new covenant life with God, so Christ leads us through and to the same. This happens for us liturgically in the rite of Baptism. As Koenig explores this idea, he not only depicts Christ parting the waters but also shows the water emerging from the Lord’s side. This reflects John’s account of how blood and water came forth from Jesus’ side on the cross, but also suggests how water from the rock in the wilderness brought life to God’s people during Israel’s wandering toward the Promised Land. The “Thanksgiving over the Water,” in The Prayer Book Baptismal Rite articulates these ideas in a compact way:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.

Notice how, in the painting at the top, Peter Koenig portrays the crucified and risen Christ before what appears to be a darkened tomb filled with people. As we hear Isaiah quoted in Advent, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” Christ leads the way, and makes possible our journey from the darkness of death into our new covenant life with God.

The two side paintings that accompany Koenig’s Christ as Second Moses artfully yet powerfully suggest the drama within the Exodus account of Israel’s Red Sea Crossing. The chariots of Pharaoh succumb to the waters of death while Israel is safely delivered on dry ground to their Covenant encounter with God at Sinai. Another canticle from The Prayer Book puts it well:

I will sing to the Lord, for he is lofty and uplifted; *
the horse and its rider has he hurled into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my refuge; *
the Lord has become my Savior.
This is my God and I will praise him, *
the God of my people and I will exalt him.
The Lord is a mighty warrior; *
Yahweh is his Name.
The chariots of Pharaoh and his army has he hurled into the sea; *
the finest of those who bear armor have been drowned in the Red Sea.
The fathomless deep has overwhelmed them; *
they sank into the depths like a stone.
Your right hand, O Lord, is glorious in might; *
your right hand, O Lord, has overthrown the enemy.

Most of us have the blessing of not facing the equivalent of Pharaoh’s army. But we do have an enemy. And our enemy is the darkness and death of loving self and this world, even to the contempt of God, when God bids us to love him, even to the contempt of self and this world. When we live as we pray, to the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit, we experience new life.

 

The above painting is Peter Koenig’s, Christ as the Second Moses, also known as The Rainbow Resurrection (used by permission of the artist). The final paragraph contains a paraphrase of St. Augustine concerning how we love God, from The City of God (Book 14, chapter 28).

The Body We Have Embraced

 

As soon as I heard the news on Monday, like everyone else I went to the internet. The live video of the flames rising up from the roof of Notre Dame in Paris was deeply disturbing. Like so many others, I felt an immediate grief. How touching that we would feel wounded when hearing about and seeing the wounding of a great and beautiful cathedral. And it is no accident that we should have felt this way.

For like so many other medieval cathedrals, Notre Dame de Paris is so much more than a building. It is first an offering of great love for our Lord and his physical, earthly mother. It is also an embodiment of faith, a tangible expression of the Body of Christ. This is particularly evident in the way that its floor plan is shaped in homage to his crucified Body. The cathedral therefore represents an ‘incarnation’ of what the book of Revelation calls the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. For he is the One through whom all things were made, and the One through whom all things will come to their End… whether their End be their termination, or their fulfillment and completion.

Believers through the centuries who worship the Incarnate Lord have something in common. It is both true of his followers at the time of his crucifixion, two thousand years ago, and true of us today. As believers, we are never ambivalent about harm brought to the Lord’s Body, and to living symbols of his Body — both harm to the structures in which we worship, and harm to the ‘living temples’ formed by us, his embodied members.

For the Lord, for his followers, and for all members of his Body, death is always a gateway to new life. And, for the cathedral of Notre Dame, death to one phase in the life of this magnificent building will surely become a gateway to a new life ~ both for it, and for her people.

It is precisely with this awareness, I believe, that Peter Koenig has painted, and offered for our spiritual edification, his glorious image of Christ as the Second Moses. Peter Koenig’s vision is similar to that of the original builders of Notre Dame, the same mystical vision permeating John’ Gospel and John’s understanding of Jesus’ Incarnation, life, death and resurrection.

We should notice this: The body that the Son of God embraced, and with which he became one, has become the Body we have embraced, and with which we have become one. The Body of his transformation has become the Body of our own transformation. His death was a critical ‘hinge point’ ~ a hinge point in his and our process of transformation. And so, though our worship on Good Friday liturgy is ostensibly focused on the death of Jesus, it is also profoundly about the renewed lives of others, like us.

At the beginning of Lent, we reminded ourselves of a practical truth. Our journey toward knowing the fire of the Holy Spirit more truly, begins with physical ashes. A sign of death and destruction like ashes, or the Holy Cross, can help us see new life beyond it. May we, like our brothers and sisters in Paris, always remember this.

 

The above painting is Peter Koenig’s, Christ as the Second Moses, also known as The Rainbow Resurrection (used by permission of the artist). This post is based on my homily for Good Friday, April 19, 2019, which can be accessed by clicking here.  Other homilies of mine may be accessed by clicking here. The Revised Common Lectionary, which specifies the readings for Sundays and other Holy Days, can be accessed by clicking here.