That Great and Terrible Day
“The Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
The popular English painter of the Victorian era, John Martin, painted this epic triptych in 1854, shortly before his death. The three massive images, from left to right, are The Plains of Heaven, The Last Judgement, and The Great Day of His Wrath. The sweep of images vividly captures is the apocalyptic sublimity of Christ's Second Coming, which we hear echoed across this week's Scripture readings. But Martin's depiction is unusual within the scope of Christian art: the emphasis has shifted from the human drama of redemption to sublime cosmic landscapes. Human personality is present in these images, if you look closely: indeed, there are great throngs hidden in these images. But they are subsumed into grand vistas: from a distance, almost invisible.
The first panel looks, at first glance, like just another landscape: a broad and beautiful -- if somewhat unremarkable -- scene of mountain, lake, and open plains. But looking closer, the features are surreal and paradoxical. In the center, tiny but recognizable angelic hosts burst through billowing clouds to wake the righteous dead with trumpet calls, beckoning the faithful into these familiar but strange celestial spaces. Human figures are most prominent in the central panel: we see the Lord, the Lord enthroned amidst the heavens, surrounded by his hosts of angels and saints and judging the masses below. Even here, though, he is tiny: dwarfed by the convulsions that surround him -- the light descending from on high, and the chasm opening at his feet. The third image, finally, depicts the infernal conflagration of wrath and hell: the earth split open in fire and smoke and doom. Look closely, and you can see tiny figures of the condemned: people chained and dragged into a stormy abyss, as lightning cracks the sky and chaos engulfs the damned.
Martin's panoramic canvases immerse viewers in the awe-full scale of creation's final consummation. The tiny human figures juxtaposed with the infinite expanse of clouds, light, and darkness evoke the same trembling wonder Isaiah felt when granted a glimpse of the Lord's cosmic temple. These scenes impress upon us the urgent need to number our days, as the Psalmist enjoins: regarding our mortality aright before the eternal God who was, and is, and is to come. Christ's Parables of Judgement also come to mind, as we consider the righteous welcomed into beatific light, while the unprepared are cast into the outer darkness. Most vividly, The Great Day of His Wrath warns of the fiery judgment foretold by prophets -- much like what we read this week in Zephaniah -- the judgement that awaits the complacent and idolatrous. Awash in apocalyptic hues, Martin captures nature's cataclysmic fury erupting in sympathy with humanity's moral reckoning before the Creator.
Standing before these massive cycloramas, one cannot help but feel small, shaken by the infinitude of God's justice and mercy soon to be unveiled. We are prompted to search our hearts, realign our priorities, and cling fast to Christ's grace as we actively await His coming in majesty.
Who regards the power of your wrath, and who considers the fierceness of your anger?
— Psalm 90:11
Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that bringing forth in abundance the fruit of good works, they may be abundantly rewarded when our Savior Jesus Christ comes to restore all things; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
In God’s Time
We’re in a Bach kick through Kingdomtide: the rich depth and seriousness of his Cantatas are a perfect compliment to the beauty and complexities of the season. This week, it’s the Actus Tragicus — BWV 106, the funeral cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit — “God’s time is the very best time.” Once again, it’s worth spending half an hour to soak in this extraordinarily moving work of aesthetic and theological genius! The full libretto is available here.
The Cantata is austere in its instrumentation: with just two recorders, two violas da gamba, and continuo, it has a more “ancient” feel. The opening prelude establishes a key metaphor - death as peaceful sleep welcomed by the faithful. When the chorus chimes in to affirm God’s time is best, wavering chromaticism poignantly captures the restless yet yielding human response to mortality's mystery.
Soloists join in as the second movement unfolds: taking up the theme of repentance and preparation made urgent by death’s certainty. A stern choral fugue declares the ancient law: we must perish. But suddenly a childlike soprano cries over this sentence, “Yes, come Lord Jesus!” Ultimately left alone, her longing paradoxically contrasts human frailty and Christ’s compassion. The alto’s Psalm 31 recitative ushers in contemplative resignation, while the bass Jesus’s promise, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
The closing chorale elicits both grandeur and intimacy. As inversion turns wavering death motifs into upward exaltation, Bach evokes the resurrection hope undergirding Paul’s exhortations to watchfulness. The chorus’ majestic yet hushed praise swells with subdued jubilation, as though glimpsing eternity’s joy through mortality’s veil. Their “Amen” dies away softly like the setting sun, its light now mirrored in the new dawn of Christ’s return.
Standing with Bach before life’s brevity, we too pray for wisdom to number our days. But swirling through this cantata’s melancholy strains rings the Gospel’s defiant joy - no shadow can overcome the light and life of God’s new day dawning in Jesus Christ.
