No Refunds on Discipleship
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.”
The 19th C British photographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander was known for his pioneering work in developing photography as artform. His 1856 piece, The Two Ways of Life, was formed from the merger of 36 separate images. The work is intended as a moral allegory, depicting, on the left-hand, the way of vice (gambling, debauchery, licentiousness) and on the right, the way of virtue (fidelity, studiousness, hard work). The old man in the middle represents the soul which, transcending the choice between the two ways, surveys the end of the each of the paths.
Rejlander was a pioneer in a new medium, but his subject and its composition is ancient. The style is reminiscent of Renaissance neo-classicalism — think Raphael’s School of Athens — and the “Two Ways” trope goes back to antiquity — indeed, to the Scriptures, as it resonates through today’s readings. In Americana, we might think of Robert Frost’s famous line, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …”
Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly nor stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law will he meditate day and night.
—Psalm 1:1-2
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O Lord God, grant your people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Blest are the Pure in Heart
The author of this week’s hymn, John Keble, was the first father of the Oxford Movement; a scholar and pastor and poet of deep faith and zeal for that faith he had received, both ancient and English. His passion for a simplicity and depth of faith rings through in this hymn, here performed beautifully at an Evensong at Guildford Cathedral in 1965.
It is a sweet and a soothing hymn, if perhaps a bit cloying. Blessed indeed are the pure in heart! But I know my heart to be anything but pure: where then is my hope, if the pure in heart are the lowly ones with and in whom the the Lord chooses to dwell? Nevertheless, we are invited to enjoy the purity of this prayer, and to cry out alongside of it: “Lord, we thy presence seek; may ours this blessing be; give us a pure and lowly heart, a temple meet for thee.”
