The Problem of Discipleship
“We hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.”
A detail from Peiter Bruegel the Elder’s Parable of the Blind, painted in 1568, a year before his death. His depiction of that classic warning of Jesus of the blind leading the blind (Matt 15:14) is an intense and troubling depiction of decrepitude, and decline into chaos. This detail is especially gruesome and disturbing.
Bruegel painted in the wake of the Council of Troubles, a time when the Spanish government of the Netherlands cracked down harshly on Protestant insurgency. Interestingly, both Catholic and Protestant (=anti-Protestant and anti-Catholic) readings of the canvas exist, but it is not clear whether Bruegel had any particular sectarian intention behind his art!
Rabbi, let me recover my sight.
— The Plea of Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:52)
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
The Prayer of the Heart
The contemporary British composer John Tavener (incidentally, a descendant of another John Tavener, composer of sacred music in the time of the Reformation) composed this adaptation of the Eastern Orthodox “Jesus Prayer” tradition specifically for the popular Icelandic singer Bjork. The prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” repeats slowly and rhythmically, first in Greek, then in Coptic, then finally, in English, cycling slowly through the circle of fifths as a musical instantiation of unceasing prayer.
Unlike other meditative reductions of the Jesus Prayer into chant, which are usually repetitive, often harmonized, and frequently looped, Tavener’s interpretation occupies a single, stylistically rough voice, proceeding in mildly discordant fashion that succeeds in being, at one and the same time, both restful and laborious.
The prayer itself, of course, echoes the cry of Blind Bartimaeus that we hear today: “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
