Preaching at Saint Mark's Church
The First Sunday in Lent
10 March 2019
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
St. Luke 4:1-13
“Living With”
INI
I.
I bought it several weeks, even months ago. I had seen it advertised, playing at the Embarcadero Cinema, but never got around to attending or seeing it. So, when it became available for purchase, I added it to my collect. Friday night, after a long day, and home alone, I decided to finally watch it and discovered that it was the perfect entry into Lent. The film is called Andrei Rublev, after the famous 15thCentury icon writer. The film, made in 1969, was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and was co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky. The version I watched was a beautiful restoration of the film. The photography is quite lovely, reminiscent of Pasolini – indeed, one of the chapters is called “The Passion According to Rublev” and bears some similarities to Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. There is a fascination with the faces of common people, and the plight of those living in mediaeval Russia. Not every one of the chapters, there are eight of them, deals with the details of Rublev’s life. Some do. The remainder, however, paint the rich context of his life.
Why Rublev and Lent? What fascinated me about the film, and what fascinates me about Lent is the journey which introduces us to Rublev, and the journey that beckons to us as we begin this Lenten season. A journey is more than a destination – something to be endured until we reach the place that we have set out to achieve. A journey is not only destination, but the context of all the places we visit as we move onto the journey’s end. The film gives us a clue at it’s very beginning with a man attempting flight in a bag of skins filled with hot air. His courageous escape becomes an image for Rublev, the monk who needs to find his way.
II.
Meanwhile, back at the Lectionary, we meet Israel making its way from slavery and suffering in Egypt to a destination of hope and prosperity. Israel’s fate and journey are encapsulated in the verse from the First Reading that is said at each Seder, a reminder of the journey that is celebrated in that meal. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.” The point of the reading is not just that, for it celebrates the arrival at a fertile land, a land of milk and honey, that will make Israel a prosperous nation. The writer or editor who is putting together the ancient story so that the Israelites who have either entered into exile or who have returned from exile might know how to live. This section deals with the first fruits that are due back to God, who gave them initially to the people. What has this to do with Lent? It is the rule of thanksgiving. On Ash Wednesday, the priest is asked to announce this to the people,
“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self‑examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self‑denial; and by reading and
meditating on God’s holy Word.”
It is our privilege during this season to be the giver of alms – to provide for those who have little. In the film we are reminded of this responsibility in the scenes at the monasteries – who receive the travelers, who provide provisions, and who provide a place for rest and sleep. Now what shall I do in my Lenten discipline as I look at the need that surrounds me in the city?
III.
There are segments in the film that are contrastive, that seek define each other through their differences. One involves a commission to paint the Last Judgment. The other is a raid by Tartar war party – there’s politics involved, and Andrei is involved in the complexities of both. The contrast is between Andrei’s sense of God’s mercy, so profound that he does not want to paint a last judgment. That gentleness of spirit is then challenged by the Tartar raid, instigated by the brother of the Grand Prince, a Russian, that sees the death of fellow artists and common people living in the city of Vladimir.
If in our practice of Lent, we truly look at what motivates us as individuals, and what seems to be the impetus in our society, we can like Andrei be confused by what moves and tempts us in our life, and what differs in our so-called Christian society. Paul speaks to this in the reading from Romans where he sees that all of us are called by God to a grace that ought to free us from the temptation of discrimination. “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call upon him.” Andrei greets this contrasting graciousness of God which he longs to see, and the cruelty of human beings exercised on one another with a vow of silence. He will not speak. He will not paint.
I wonder what draws Jesus out into the wilderness following his baptism. Luke tells us that Jesus is “full of the Holy Spirit.” And what we see if forty days and forty nights of silence until he is challenged by Satan. The silence of Jesus, the silence of Andrei, perhaps we too ought to be drawn into a lengthy silence which draws our mind into a contemplation of how we as individuals need to live in the realities of our time. When I think about all that is going on in our world I am drawn to speak, to friends, sometimes to people with whom I disagree, to the anonymous on FaceBook. Perhaps Lent calls us to hold our tongue in check and to engage our souls in reflection on the words that God would have us hear.
IV.
I cannot leave these readings and this day behind without speaking on temptation. There is a wonderful scene in the film when Andrei happens upon a large group of pagans celebrating a holiday. This is, I think, his moment with temptation, as he, a monk, encounters a woman, and later men, who wanted him to experience the sexual joy of their holiday. He resists – with silence. But he watches. It is almost as if he wants to know the tempter, his enemy.
Jesus engages Satan, giving back as he is tempted – using God’s word to thwart what Satan offers him. Just as in our lives, there are many moments of temptation in Rublev’s life. Given a great gift, the biggest temptation is to leave it behind, not to use it, not to see God’s glory in it. Perhaps this is the encounter we might make in our own great Lenten silence and reflection – seeing what we have been given and the proper way to use it and to offer it.
At the end of the film, which is in black and white, the production turns to color, and trains its cameras on the details of Andrei Rublev’s icons. The most notable are his Holy Trinity with the three angels dining at Abraham’s table, and his Pantocrator in which he sees Jesus the Creator of All as a simple man staring out at the one in devotion at the icon. The camera zooms into the riot of color present in the simplicity of the icon writer’s work. Lent, this film, these readings, all have called me to see the simplicity of God’s glory, and the simple things that he has called me to do – reflection, silence, meditation, and the giving of alms – to become a gracious monk, a nun at prayer in the wilderness of my soul.
SDG
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