Heaven in a hell of war

"An epic series of large-scale murals, by the acclaimed war artist Sir Stanley Spencer” have recently left “their permanent home at the National Trust’s Sandham Memorial Chapel to be exhibited at Somerset House ...” in London. “The pictures are leaving their permanent home for a few months while a major conservation project takes place at the chapel.”

“Built to honour the 'forgotten dead' of the First World War, who were not remembered on any official memorials, the series was inspired by Spencer’s own experiences as a medical orderly and soldier on the Salonika front, and is peppered with personal and unexpected details. The paintings took six years to complete in all, and are considered by many to be the artist’s finest achievement, drawing such praise as 'Britain’s answer to the Sistine Chapel'.”

“Spencer painted scenes of his own wartime experiences, as a hospital orderly in Bristol and as a soldier, also on the Salonika front.  His recollections, painted entirely from memory, focus on the domestic rather than combative and evoke everyday experience – washing lockers, inspecting kit, sorting laundry, scrubbing floors and taking tea – in which he found spiritual resonance and sustenance ... 

the paintings ... describe the banal daily life that, to those from the battlefield, represented a ‘heaven in a hell of war.’ For Spencer, the menial became the miraculous; a form of reconciliation.” 

The scheme is dominated by a “Resurrection scene behind the altar, in which dozens of British soldiers lay the white wooden crosses that marked their graves at the feet of a distant Christ.” 

“Painted on canvas adhered to the wall of the high altar at Sandham,” the 'Resurrection' took Spencer nearly a year to complete. “It dominates the Chapel and all the other scenes are subordinate too it. The picture is a reminder of the relationship between war, death and Christianity, not merely a convenient and familiar religious image behind the altar. The composition is based on a complex pattern of wooden crosses which was suggested to Spencer by his habit of squaring up the canvas in order to work out the design. As a living soldier hands in his rifle at the end of service, so a dead soldier carries his cross to Christ, who is seen in the middle distance receiving these crosses. Spencer's idea was that the cross produces a different reaction in everybody;” so we see these crosses serving as an object of devotion; ... or marking a grave from which a soldier emerges; or framing a bewildered face. “This is Spencer’s vision of the end of war, in which heaven has emerged from hell.”

So, Spencer gives us two versions of heaven in a hell of war. The first, the mundane acts of service that people do for each other, while the second is the new life that we receive in Christ following our resurrection from the dead. The first is, in some ways, a taster for the second.  

Our readings today (Job 19. 23 - 27 and Luke 20. 27 - 38) focus on the second of these, the resurrection from the dead, but, before thinking about that briefly, I would like to think a little about the first.

Earlier this week I talked about Jesus’ words to his disciples, spoken shortly before his own death, in which he said they had been chosen and appointed to bear fruit – fruit that will last (John 15. 16). The fruit that he was talking about was his characteristics of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. Christlike behaviour and actions he said lasts or endures. Similarly, St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 that actions which are based on faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next.  

So there is a connection here between the two things which Stanley Spencer described as being heavenly; acts of loving service in the here and now and our future resurrected life in eternity. I was speaking at a meeting of our local Scriptural Reasoning group where groups of Christians, Jews and Muslims come to discuss their scriptures together. Enabling that kind of sharing to take place is also an act of loving service and is a significant part of what the fighting in World War II was to achieve by the ending of the Holocaust. It is seen also in the leading of today’s Civic Service of Remembrance being shared, as it is each year, by the Padres of the Royal British Legion and AJEX (the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women).

Poppies were one of the few flowers able to survive in areas severely damaged by fighting. The flowering of poppies from seeds which germinated in the mud of the World War I battlefields (and Flanders, in particular) became a symbol of hope on the battlefields, and after the war it became associated with Remembrance, a sign of life continuing after the horrors of conflict.

As Christians, we believe that we will grow into new life through death because of Jesus. Jesus was a seed sown into our world which died and was buried only to live again. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15, “the truth is that Christ has been raised from death, as the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised.” The tomb therefore becomes a womb, a place of new birth, not just for Jesus but, through Jesus, for each one of us as well.

St Paul writes that, “This image of planting a dead seed and raising a live plant is a mere sketch at best, but perhaps it will help in approaching the mystery of the resurrection body — but only if you keep in mind that when we’re raised, we’re raised for good, alive forever! The corpse that’s planted is no beauty, but when it’s raised, it’s glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural — same seed, same body, but what a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised up in spiritual immortality!”

This new resurrection life is different from this life Jesus says, in it we will not marry but will live like angels and never die. Yet, as Job said, we will still inhabit recognisable bodies but will see our Redeemer with our own eyes and will know that he is not a stranger to us.

Stanley Spencer painted a vision of that future life in his Resurrection of the Soldiers. The resurrection life is different from this life because the soldiers are leaving war behind – handing in their rifles to Christ as these are no longer required – and contemplating with devotion the cross on which he died for their salvation.

Their acts of loving service – washing lockers, inspecting kit, sorting laundry, scrubbing floors and taking tea – have not been left behind however; as they look out from their scene of resurrection it is these things that they see in the Chapel before them.

It will be the same for us - our acts of faith, hope and love will continue to be with us in our resurrected future – and this can be a source of inspiration and encouragement to us as we seek to bear fruit for Christ in the here and now by living Christlike lives; lives which are characterised by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.   

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The Priests - Abide with me.