Today’s Lenten reflection was written by Revd Christine Smith, an Associate Tutor within the Licensed Ministry Training programme.
In 1939, as the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe, Stanley Spencer began a series of paintings of Christ in the wilderness. He was living in a wilderness of his own. His marriage had failed, his paintings weren’t selling and, banished from the home he loved, he was making do in a cramped flat in London, surrounded by a sea of anguish – the neighbourhood was full of people who had fled Nazi Germany. Drawn to the stark simplicity of Jesus’ time alone in the desert, he hoped to find some comfort for himself.
He meant to make forty paintings – one for each day of Lent – but perhaps because war came and millions of lives were being lost, he completed just eight.
In the first painting, Jesus is fresh faced and ready for this adventure. In most of the pictures he has company: playful foxes, a hen and her chicks, a patch of flowers which he gazes at with the same loving intensity as when he gazes upwards in prayer. They anticipate some later sayings of Jesus, ‘Consider the lilies,’ and ‘How often I would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not.’ This is a wilderness where God’s providence is evident.
But in the painting where Christ is cupping a scorpion in his hands, we see a weary, ravaged face streaked with dirt – or are those marks bruises? His beard and hair are matted. Perhaps Stanley Spencer saw people with such expressions among his refugee neighbours.
That scorpion is menacing. Its pincers are open, ready to strike and in its tail is a venomous sting. However deadly it might be, Christ holds it and gazes at it with sorrow and compassion. Is he foreseeing how this contest in the desert with the devil will play out on the cross? Does it stand for the evil that is always stalking the world? But it is so tiny – barely the size of Christ’s little finger. It cannot hope to win against the purposes of the God of life for his world.
I find here inspiration for our Lenten work of renewing and deepening our practices of hope, love, compassion, generosity, faithfulness, trust. This can be hard when the world is so fearful, but the final picture in this series, entitled Driven by the Spirit, can help us.
In it, Jesus kneels in what looks like a bomb crater and stretches his arms upwards like a child wanting to be picked up. It’s rooted in the hell holes of our world and in our messy, complex, fragile humanity, but it’s also rooted in God. The Son who knows he is beloved reaches upwards in love and trust. Gone is the ravaged look and Jesus’s face is once again fresh and energised. So this is also a picture of where our Lenten journey leads, to resurrection.
May we and all creation be renewed and strengthened by God’s grace.
