Beloved, when I first came to St. Mark’s to serve during Holy Week last year, a part of the preparation was the displaying of James He Qi’s “The Risen Christ” in the Chancel. This hung over a fixed installation of a Christus Rex*, that was installed in the St. Mark’s Chancel sometime in the late 1960s to early 1970s. There has been a different work featured during this most recent Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany that has enriched our engagement and prayer.
For Lent this year, we will remove the current season’s artwork, but also remove the Christus Rex, so that we mark this time with the shrouded barrenness of a cross that isn’t just Jesus’, but all of ours…as the old hymn says, take up your cross if you would my disciple be.
The era in which the Christus Rex came to St. Mark’s was also a time when almost all such works portrayed an ethnically latin, western, and almost porcelain white Jesus, ours being no exception. In today’s church, we are better equipped to acknowledge Jesus as not only depicted by western cultures but both as he was born, a Palestinian Jew, and also as all cultures of the world have received him. As Nancy said last week in her sermon, sometimes it is our eyes, our veils that need to be lifted to see the transfigured Jesus.
In Easter, we will again feature a work of art for the chancel that will hang over the fixed cross. Moving forward, especially considering the good work begun in our Sacred Ground and Becoming Beloved Community conversations, we might consider how else our chancel reflects who Jesus is and who we are today. Are there other portrayals of the Christus Rex or other expressions of the cross that might better tie into Jesus’ own identity or like our artwork, invite us to dwell with Jesus informed by cultures different from our own (recognizing the diversity at St. Mark’s doesn’t share one common cultural inheritance). While I won’t be here for most of how you answer these questions together, I feel strongly enough that the work begun in you should include this important symbol of our faith as well. If you have questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me (nick@saint-marks.com).
Pax,
*The Christus Rex is just one of many portrayals of the cross in the history of the Christian Church. The term, which translates from the latin as roughly Christ the King, juxtaposes the reality of Christ crucified with the Timothean adaptation of the title, king of kings and lord of lords. This is in contrast to other displays of the cross, such as a crucifix where Christ is on the cross depicted near the time of his actual crucifixion or the displaying of the cross without Jesus focusing on his saving power not being contained by a cross, but rather through his resurrection from the dead. None of these is correct, per se, but instead demonstrates the power of this symbol throughout Christian History.
