Fifth Sunday of Lent (BCP)

Hebrews 9:11-15 and John 8:46-59

The latest installation in the Minster will not have escaped your notice. ‘Yahweh and the Seraphim’ is by far the largest and most ambitious work we have hosted to date, and an unprecedented opportunity not only to participate in Sunderland’s bid to be City of Culture in 2021 but also – and, for me, even more importantly – to engage the public in conversation about the nature of God and of faith, and to point people to Jesus.

We are confronted with a representation of Yahweh, the god of Israel, a deity notorious for writing a ‘no images’ clause into his contract with his people. That in itself resonates with many passages of Scripture: from the golden calf fashioned by Aaron, and the Baals and Asherah poles erected by the kings of Israel; to the vision of the throne of heaven Isaiah saw in the temple, and Zechariah’s shock at encountering the angel Gabriel in the Holy of Holies; to the deeply offensive man Jesus causing a stir in the temple courtyards.

In our reading from the Gospel According to John, Jesus actually claims for himself the name by which God revealed himself to Moses, I AM. Indeed, Jesus claims to have been I AM before Abraham was. And in our reading from the epistle to the Hebrews we hear that this Jesus is ‘greater and more perfect’ than what had come before, and, for this reason, the mediator of a new covenant.

It is impossible not to imagine God, for the need to be reunited is fixed within us. Even if we don’t make visible images, we carry an image in our hearts and minds – whether we search until we find it in the stories of the world, or resolutely reject the god our image reflects. So what is your image of God? And what is mine?

Even if I was to say to you that I believe God to be most fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, how do I conceive Jesus? Or, what Jesus do we present to the world? After all, he sits above our sculpture – the mediator of a new and better covenant – but is he really European (or, as the window in the West end of the building depicts, one of the Nordic gods)? And does he still offend our flesh, our old nature, even while giving life to the spirit, to our new nature; or is he too familiar for that?