March 14: Servanthood: Our Christian Calling
♫ Music:
Day 30 - Thursday, March 14
Title: SERVANTHOOD: OUR CHRISTIAN CALLING
Scripture #1: Galatians 1:10 (NKJV)
For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.
Scripture #2: 1 Corinthians 4:1-2 (NKJV)
Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.
Scripture #3: 2 Corinthians 4:5, 7-12 (NKJV)
For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake…But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.
Poetry & Poet:
“The Servant Girl at Emmaus”
by Denise Levertov
She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face—?
The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?
Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don't recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
the winejug she's to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
SERVANTHOOD: OUR CHRISTIAN CALLING
Considering this week's Lenten devotional theme, "The world turned upside down," the painting by Rufino Tamayo (Mexican, 1899-1991), Man and the Cross, attempts to reconcile the polar opposites of the ancient and the modern, the concrete and the abstract, the flesh and the spirit. Tamayo portrays a Man, who is perhaps The Man, the One who reconciles all things to himself, as an embodiment of divinity in the simple mode of pre-Columbian statuary. The arms that reach up, if this is indeed Christ, show a Man gazing heavenward toward the Father of Love. Rather than depicting Jesus on the cross, the painting shows Jesus as the Cross, which he has fully conquered and absorbed within himself. Whether we are viewing God on earth, or a representative person on earth, looking skyward, the color scheme suggests the dramatic turn of events when this world, represented by the earth tones on the right side and lower portion of the painting, becomes merged with sky. The blue and cloud-white color scheme on the left side of the artwork, and the star-like dashes near the figure's head, may very well represent the transition from the mortal plain to a heavenly kingdom. These brush strokes might be angels observing the triumph of Christ on the cross, or the souls of people ascending to glory.
Denise Levertov's poem, "The Servant Girl of Emmaus," similarly embodies an artistic vision of Christ's influence on the world, evoking quiet sacrifice––Levertov's ekphrastic free verse poem masterfully describes a painting of the same name by Diego Valázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660). (I recommend devotional readers take a look at Valázquez's painting online.) Levertov relates the thoughts of the "young Black servant" depicted in the painting as she recalls the ecstatic joy of overhearing the voice of the One who has set all people free. In three crucial lines in the poem, Levertov provides a succinct expression of the gospel:
The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning alive?
(11-13)
The Light of the World has allowed this humble woman to provide bread and wine, has allowed her to listen (a word which appears three times) and not only that, but to see and believe He is Lord. This servant's encounter with Jesus made her feel seen like she had never been seen before, appreciated in a way that left no doubt in her mind that she has been blessed by an encounter with the Savior. May our lives be characterized by such inspirational certainty.
John Michael Talbot's musical contribution, "I Surrender," echoes the prayers of St. Theresa, and proclaims that we should surrender our lives for Jesus: that we should "surrender [our] life, [our] all." The song speaks the truth that Christ "has no hands on earth but [ours]," that in this mortal life through our hands Christ can now bless the world. "Christ has no body now on earth but yours."
St. Theresa's Prayer
May today there be peace within you.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born in faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love
that has been given to you.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love
that has been given to you.
Amen.
Dr. Marc Malandra
Professor of English
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Art:
L’uomo e la Croce (The Man and the Cross)
Rufino Tamayo
1975
Oil on canvas
130 x 97 in.
Vatican Museum
Vatican City, Italy
Artist Rufino Tamayo’s work entitled The Man and the Cross is one of his mature works, a painting that reveals a connection with the pre-Columbian notions of transforming a narrative into a symbol. The posture and gaze of Christ, taken from pre-Columbian statuettes, are revisited by the artist with a dreamlike sensibility governing the presence of Christ in the moment of his supreme sacrifice, which becomes emblematic of suffering humanity.
About the Artist:
Rufino Tamayo (1899–1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage. Tamayo was active in the mid-twentieth century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences. Early in his career, he was influenced by cubism, impressionism, and fauvism, among other popular art movements of the time, but always with a distinctly Mexican feel. Tamayo studied drawing at the Academy of Art at San Carlos as a young adult. He became dissatisfied and eventually decided to study on his own. That was when he began working for José Vasconcelos at the Department of Ethnographic Drawings (1921); Tamayo was later appointed head of the department. After the Mexican Revolution, Tamayo devoted himself to creating a distinct identity in his work. He expressed what he envisioned as traditional Mexico and avoided the overt political art of such contemporaries as artists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Tamayo came to feel that he could not freely express his art, so he left Mexico and moved to New York City. In 1948, Tamayo's first major retrospective was held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Uncomfortable with continuing political controversy, Tamayo moved to Paris in 1949, where he and his wife remained for the next decade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufino_Tamayo
About the Music:
“I Surrender It All/St. Theresa’s Prayer” from the album Signatures
Lyrics:
Take all my freedom,
My liberty, my will.
All that I have,
You've given to me
So I offer it up to You.
I surrender it all to Jesus.
I surrender it all to God's will.
I surrender it all for the kingdom of God.
I surrender my life, my all.
Your grace and Your love,
Are wealth enough for me.
Grant me these Lord Jesus
And I'll ask for nothing more.
I surrender it all to Jesus.
I surrender it all to God's will.
I surrender it all for the kingdom of God.
I surrender my life, my all.
I surrender it all to Jesus.
I surrender it all to God's will.
I surrender it all for the kingdom of God.
I surrender my life, my all. (2x)
Christ has no Body now but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which He looks,
Compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which He walks,
To do good.
Yours are the hands,
With which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands,
Yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes,
You are His Body.
Christ has no Body now but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which He looks,
Compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
About the Composer/Performer:
John Michael Talbot (b. 1954) is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, author, and founder of a monastic community known as the Brothers and Sisters of Charity. His songs were the first by a Catholic artist to cross well-defined boundaries and gain acceptance by Protestant listeners. Talbot won the Dove Award for Worship Album of the Year for his album Light Eternal with producer and longtime friend, Phil Perkins. He is one of only nine artists to receive the President's Merit Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 1988 he was named the No. 1 Christian Artist by Billboard. Today, Talbot is one of the most active monk/ministers alive, traveling over nine months per year throughout the world inspiring and renewing the faith of Christians of all denominations through sacred music, teaching, and motivational speaking.
https://johnmichaeltalbot.com/
About the Poetry and Poet:
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) was educated entirely at home and claimed to have decided to become a writer at the age of five. When she was twelve, she sent some of her poetry to T. S. Eliot, who responded by encouraging her to continue writing. At age seventeen, she had her first poem published in Poetry Quarterly. Her poems of the 1950s won her widespread recognition and her book With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1959) established her as one of the great American poets. Levertov went on to publish more than twenty volumes of poetry and was also the author of four books of prose. Levertov’s conversion to Christianity in 1984 was the impetus for her religious poetry. In 1997, she brought together thirty-eight poems from seven of her earlier volumes in The Stream & the Sapphire, a collection intended, as Levertov explains in the foreword to the collection, to "trace my slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith, a movement incorporating much doubt and questioning as well as affirmation."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/denise-levertov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Levertov
About the Devotion Writer:
Dr. Marc Malandra
Professor of English
Biola University
Marc Malandra is a professor of English at Biola University. Malandra teaches courses in American literature, composition, and creative writing. His poetry and scholarship have appeared in over three dozen publications. He attends EV Free Fullerton Church and lives in Brea, California, with his wife, Junko, college-aged children, Noah and Sasha, and their cat, Tora.