Sunday 18th August 2024 May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. Last Thursday afternoon I was in London. It was hot and noisy, and I stepped out of the crowds in Trafalgar square and walked into a little side gallery in the National gallery, where a C15th painting of the Baptism of Christ by Piero Della Francesco had been hung between two C20th paintings by David Hockney, both of which themselves contained images of postcard reproductions of Piero Della Francesco’s painting. The wonderful thing about this tiny exhibition was the way that the characters in the paintings glowed with light and colour. You really felt you were in the presence of something powerfully spiritual. And as I thought about how those two painters, hundreds of years apart, had combined very earthy materials in the form of paint pigments made of egg yolk, charcoal and lapis lazuli to create paintings which were radiant with a sense of mystery and beauty I was struck by the resonances with today’s readings. From Moses whose skin glows with his contact with God in the Old Testament, through to the blind man in Mark’s Gospel whose eyes are opened to the glory of God, today’s readings invite us to see God not as an other worldly presence, remote and distant on an unattainable mountain top, but as intensely present in the physical reality of the earthly stuff we’re present in all the time, such as skin and spittle, transforming the everyday into something radiant with His presence, just as Hockney and Della Francesca transform the different natural elements which make up their paints into something that speaks of the mystery of our relationship with the Divine.
I love the image of Moses whose skin glows with such radiance after encountering God that he has to be veiled. It makes me think of people I’ve known whose faith is so much a part of who they are that they radiate love and faith in such a way that you feel closer to God just by being with them. These aren’t necessarily Bishops or priests, though some of them are. They’ve mostly been people who would be deeply embarrassed to be described in this way; you may know such a person yourself. Perhaps someone like the woman Anne Wroe describes in a poem she wrote about St. Andrew’s church in Bishopstone
‘crop-haired, a little lame,
She polishes the church
On Saturday, her turn;
Always the shuffling same
Hoovering of the nave,
The dusting of the pews
[though dust is rare, she says]
With flowers to change or save;
And if she should feel low
She leans a little while
Against the wall where glass
Throws on its opal glow-and is transfigured so.
I think this poem helps us link Moses, and his glowing skin, with the blind man in Mark’s gospel. What Moses, the blind man and the woman in the poem have in common is the way their openness to God transforms the stuff of everyday existence. The woman in the poem finds herself transfigured through the everyday tasks of cleaning and polishing the church. It’s through touching the church wall that she finds rest in God- sensing the presence of God through her skin. Skin is such a part of our everyday existence that we don’t give it a second thought, and yet it’s through his skin that Moses’s transformation is visible to all the Israelites. And then there’s the intensely physical reality of the contact between skin and skin and spittle which forms the means by which Jesus opens the eyes and ears of the blind man.
When Jesu says ‘Ephphatha’, ‘be opened’ to the blind man he’s inviting him to open not just his eyes but his whole being, and this invitation is for all of us. The man isn’t just deaf, he has a speech impediment. We know how tough it is for people to remain mentally well when they can’t interact with the world through listening and talking, and Jesus knows and understands that the man’s needs are spiritual as well as physical. The physical is very much present here; imagine the intimacy of someone else putting their fingers into your ears, and not just touching your tongue but covering it in their own spittle in the way that Jesus does!
To heighten the intimacy of this connection between God and the blind man Jesus takes him away from the crowd. This makes it a private and deeply personal encounter; Jesus doesn’t want adulation or the crowd’s worship; he simply wants the man’s eyes to be opened physically to the wonders of the world and spiritually to an understanding of God’s presence in the world.
The command ‘Be opened’ isn’t just for the blind man; it’s for us as well. Jesus, I think, wants us too to understand that like the blind man we have the potential to open our eyes to the beauty and wonder of God’s presence in the everyday realities of our messy world.
In the Old Testament God is distanced from the Israelites by being far away on top of Mount Sinai. Moses must be veiled, but here in Mark God touches the man in the most intimate ways, ways which as I’ve just demonstrated are almost too intimate for us to think about, but which in their intimacy show God as entering into the closest possible physical and spiritual relationship with us as human beings.
Just as the painters I mentioned earlier make something of immense beauty out of the everyday substances such as egg and water that their paints are made of, and as Anne Wroe gifts us a spiritual experience of god’s grace at work in the life of an elderly woman through ink and paper, so God through Jesus uses the very ordinary stuff of messy everyday reality, to enter and transform the world we inhabit everyday. This is the world we experience through our eyes, our mouths, our fingers, and our skin.
Today’s readings invite us to open all our senses to God through Jesus, so that we too can hear, see and speak plainly, filled with the spirit which Paul talks of in his letter to the Corinthians. And this, as he explains, is the Spirit that gives life.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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