David D. Scott

Worship Resources for September: 11. Minister as Artist 3—Exploring the Mysteries

There is no instrument which we can design to contain, measure, reveal the will of God. And so we find ourselves trying to penetrate the interstices in our knowledge, listening to echoes, grasping reflections. In this way, we explore the mysteries. God has given us some guidance. There is the revelation of his Word. In the tradition of the Church of Scotland, the Word of God is contained within the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It isn’t equated with these words but contained within them. We need to exercise some judgement to discern what God is saying to us. It is mysterious.2 There is the celebration of the Sacrament. ‘This is my body which is broken for you!’ has been interpreted differently in different denominations. The Kirk takes a middle line. It does not believe the body becomes the flesh of Christ nor does it believe the bread and wine are mere symbols. They are what Christ says they are—his body and his blood and that’s all we can say. The rest is enfolded in mystery. How can we penetrate this mystery further? Break the bread and share the wine and be drawn into that mysterious communion—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.3 There is the living Christ—crucified, risen, ascended, and glorified and yet incarnate in our time and space, hidden within our world, revealed when people welcome children, feed the hungry or gather together in small numbers in his name! The transcendence and the immanence of God is the biggest mystery for he is not only without but also within. We can only make contact through silence and stillness for these are

Worship Resources for February: 4. Beauty

All of Vermeer’s paintings are beautiful to look at. His primary models are young women. Their beauty attracts the viewer into the painting. Once our gaze has been directed inside, he uses his imagination to keep us there. The rooms are elegantly furnished—white Delft tiles, heavy carpets and curtains, stained glass in open windows, large wooden tables and chairs with attractive studs and finials, the costly musical instruments, the marble floors, the women’s costume. The yellow jacket edged with fur and ermine appears in six paintings. This beauty attracts but also disturbs. The rooms are private places, and what is going on in them is often of a personal nature. Attracted by the beauty, we find ourselves discomfited by the intimacy of our environment. What are we doing here? What is my relationship to this beautiful woman? What is behind her intense gaze? We may not have what Yeats calls ‘the heaven’s embroidered cloths, enwrought with golden and silver light’1 to validate our entry into these spaces but, one thing is sure, we need to tread softly because dreams have been spread under our feet. In this beauty, not everything is immediately obvious. Along with the sunlight and the music-making, there are the secrets in letter and look and also the men who accompany some of the women touching a breast, offering another glass of wine, overseeing a music lesson. Their ambiguity raises questions and challenges our responses to this beauty. It is seen in three things.

Worship Resources for January: 3. Interiority

Most of Vermeer’s paintings are interiors. Even some of the exceptions have an interior aspect to them, like The Little Street with its open doors and quiet domesticity and View of Delft, which not only draws us into the townscape but opens us up to a spiritual experience—light, calm, refreshment, peace. Within these interiors, women receive, write, or read letters. They are involved in playing musical instruments like the virginal, lute, and guitar. A maid pours milk from a pottery jug, another falls asleep at the table. A young woman studiously makes lace and another puts on a pearl necklace. Some women are accompanied by men, mostly drinking glasses of wine. The paintings are constructed in such a way that we are invited to look in, enter this private space, and linger. What we see doesn’t change. The woman in blue continues to read her letter by the window. The sleeping maid doesn’t wake up and the milk continues to pour into the bowl. The one never seems to empty, the other is never filled like the widow’s cruse of oil and sack of meal. But as we cast our gaze around the scene, we begin to wonder about the women in the room. We notice that the woman in blue is pregnant and reads her letter with obvious intensity. Who has written it? What does it say? We look at the sleeping maid and see the glass with its residue of wine. Is she drunk and lazy or is she asleep because she is overworked. Her left hand holds on to the table exercising some control over her world. She hasn’t let go despite signs to the contrary. As we look a bit longer and extend our gaze, we begin to realise that the women in these interiors have what Margaret Wieseman calls ‘a certain interiority’.1 They may not be doing extraordinary things, and many others may be doing the same, but Vermeer invites us to see in his interiors people who clearly have an inner life. Our awareness grows out of three things.

Book Reviews : A Journey with Jonah

Testament context. Tuckett refutes this position. By drawing attention to the mechanics of reading and using scrolls, the low levels of literacy, and the high proportion of Gentiles in Pauline congregations, he argues that the degree of textual dexterity I that Hays requires for the average reader is simply implausible. Such issues form an ongoing debate in New Testament scholarship, and the reader of this volume must decide which are the more convincing positions. This is an excellent volume that achieves much in small compass. It not only raises questions about how ancient authors used the Old Testament, but moreover, it provokes readers to consider the role of the Jewish scriptures within the context of contem-