Pentecost 11 Year B

None of us who’ve gathered for this morning’s service – either in the building or online – can have failed to notice the art installation at the High Altar. It’s bold and large and, to my eye at least, not something that immediately enhances the beauty of the building. And yet a lot of thought has gone into ensuring its integrity within this space. If you haven’t had a chance to explore what it’s about, I encourage you to read the artist’s narrative and to spend some time with it.

You’re about to hear my second-hand and limited narrative, which won’t fully do it justice. This is a piece of work inspired by the Frosterly marble at the High Altar. The marble contains fossils, some of which are from creatures that are now extinct. The hanging shapes, designed to resonate with those fossils, have been created from found plastic – a material that will never change. The colours speak to the light that comes through the Paolozzi window, and so the whole installation simultaneously speaks to, and clashes with, the space within which it is set. There is a stark contrast between the deep time narrative held within the marble and the real time need for us to respond to what we have done to the earth by becoming dependent on plastics.

The artist is reminding us that unless we find ways to make change in the very near future, our legacy won’t be beautiful marble that is filled with the remains of life but will be less than beautiful plastic that tells a tale of our short-sightedness, our ability to live only in the moment.

I have to confess that I am completely conflicted about this piece of art. On the one hand, I find it intrusive and not particularly attractive to look at. And yet, at the same time, I find it compelling and the more time I have spent around it, the more I am drawn into thinking about it. Perhaps the fact that I am conflicted in my response means that the work has done its job. It’s made me consider something that I would perhaps rather turn away from. I’m conflicted because I’m challenged.

I suspect that I would find the installation much easier to engage with if it was in a different setting. Suppose I had gone along to an art gallery and found this work – my guess is that it would be less disruptive, less immediate in some ways. I would have found it intellectually interesting, perhaps challenging, but I don’t think I would have had the same visceral response that I have seeing it here.
Being conflicted, not always wanting to do the right thing because it’s not the comfortable thing, that’s a familiar part of our lived humanity.

This morning’s reading from the book Exodus begins with some very human grumbling. The people had been saved by Moses and led away from Egypt towards the promised land. But this morning we don’t find them in any kind of promised land. We find them in the wilderness where they are hungry and thirsty and pretty fed up. Already they are looking back through rose tinted specs to remember those days not so long passed when they had more than enough to eat and drink. And this morning’s cry is: why didn’t you just leave us there to eat our fill and die with full bellies? It would be quite easy to dismiss them as ungrateful; short of memory; rewriting their own very recent history. But I’d like to reframe their response, I think at the heart of it all they were just conflicted. They had been told about a promised land – and this was not it. This place was uncomfortable and challenging and they wanted it to be different. They wanted to be obedient to God’s call to them, but they didn’t want it to be this much of a challenge.
I think that we would like the narrative about plastic to be different. We’d like the promised land it once offered to be uncomplicated. We’d like the changes we need to make to be less of a challenge. Plastic was once seen as a game changer. It’s light to carry; it’s easy to use. But we now know that its downside far outweighs its benefits. And the installation confronts us with the tension between what we know to be right and what we have come to experience as convenient.

Because this work is in the Cathedral, and we’re observing it as we go about our regular act of worship, we need to ask a fundamental question. Where is God in this place of discomfort? Exactly the question that the people were asking of Moses – where is the God who promised so much and, so far has delivered so little?

The nature of the art installation means that we have to look for God, in the form of the Crucified, through the lens of the installation. There is a physical impact on our connection with that most visual of symbols, the Cross, which sits at the centre of our normal visual narrative in this place.
So the work that obscures that central cross today is, in some way, a helpful, perhaps essential reminder, of what we should really be looking towards. Looking towards and, of course, beyond. Our faith is rooted not in the act of crucifixion, but in the presence of the resurrected Christ who lives and breathes with us and within us. And so the installation at the High Altar draws us into and beyond the immediate visuals, draws us into the sacramental, that which shows us something beyond itself, beyond our ordinary ability to comprehend. The Resurrection is our direct connection with the God of deep time, the God who was and is and is to come.

The manna that was provided, night after night in the wilderness wasn’t something permanent. It was offered and day by day it disappeared, like hoar frost. It’s an example of God connecting with a light touch; enough and no more. Nothing was wasted. Nothing was left behind to rot. And that is perhaps a measure of that which is of God. The light touch on the face of the earth; the provision of what was needed, not what was wanted.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus says: do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life. The food that endures for eternal life, that which comes from God and draws us back to God.

We can look at the marble and at the plastic and check out which one is of God and which one draws us away from the things of God. Which one leaves a light touch on the face of the earth and which one leaves an indelible footprint.

It's almost too late to bring about change – but not quite. We have a responsibility, and if we don’t do it, who will? It may well be a challenge. We may well feel conflicted about some of the choices that we need to make. But ultimately we are called to follow the one who endured the cross in order to gift us the joy of resurrection life. May we find the courage to choose that life.