Friday, December 23, 2011

The Gospel of John in Pictures: John 1: Nathanael

I started writing about images depicting episodes from John's Gospel much earlier in the year.  Here is another.  Mark Cazalet's Nathaniel (asleep under the fig tree)* does and doesn't portray a visionary moment from John.  Philip, already a disciple of Jesus, persuades Nathanael to come with him to meet Jesus:
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.
How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.
Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.
Jesus said, You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You shall see greater things than that.
He then added, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  John 1:47-51
Unlike Cazalet's painting the narrative doesn't suggest that Nathanael was asleep but perhaps what Cazalet's image is doing is intensifying and compressing into a single 'moment' some of the allusions already playing out in the narrative.  Jesus' statement about 'the angels of God ascending and descending' sends his readers back to Genesis 28:10-22 and Jacob's dream at Bethel of a stairway to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it; in John's gospel Jesus himself is the stairway to heaven.  And perhaps by depicting Nathanael as asleep under the fig-tree, Cazalet gives us a visual reminder of sleeping Jacob, where the text of the gospel gives us a written one.

* The conditions of use of the The Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art mean that I can't use the image directly within this blog but I hope that you'll follow the link and appreciate both this painting, and the many other beautiful things in the collection.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

At the End of the Year

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.
from John O'Donohue, 'At the End of the Year', with thanks to TBH.