On the Journey
“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Jesus Christ — and especially, Christ in the wilderness — was among the favorite subjects of the early 20th C English painter, Sir Stanley Spencer. In his series of eight images on the theme, the figure of Christ looms superhumanly large in each, occupying more space in the frame by far than all the attendant details gesturing towards the emptiness, loneliness, and austerity of the desert. Here, we see Jesus perched uncomfortably among the foxes in their burrows, gesturing towards the saying of Jesus set on his way to meet his end in Jerusalem.
The boundaries have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a goodly heritage.
— Psalm 16:7
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and on earth: Put away from us all hurtful things, and give us those things that are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
My Song is Love Unknown
The author of this hymn, the Puritan minister Samuel Crossman, left the Church of England over the 1662 Act of Uniformity. His lovely hymn thus fell into relative obscurity through the Victorian period, but was revived in the early 20th C when rearranged to John Ireland sweet but haunting melody, and has thence become a favorite English hymn. Being an intimate meditation on the full scope of salvation history, it is a song especially well-suited and frequently used during Holy Week. The theme of Christ’s loneliness for our sake, however, fits well with this week’s Gospel lesson:
In life, no house, no home
my Lord on earth might have;
in death, no friendly tomb,
but what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav’n was his home
but mine the tomb
wherein he lay.
Here it is performed for the 1997 Maundy Thursday service at Bradford Cathedral with much pomp and circumstance.
