There is something holy in learning how to pay attention. Have you noticed that? It’s as though the more I pay attention, the more I come to see. I hope that’s something we learn this fall together as we slow down and look around us and notice these windows that have been casting light on this sanctuary for 70 years.
A year ago my family had a wonderful trip in the United Kingdom. One afternoon, we spent time in the National Gallery in London. I had researched what the “must sees” were in the museum. One of those was a fairly small 15th-century painting by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. It’s called “The Arnolfini Portrait.” There were dozens of people crowded around this painting, and from a distance I wondered why.
It’s a portrait of a wealthy Italian merchant family. To my eye, they look strange. The husband needs some sun, for sure. And his hat? That’s a statement. But as I got closer, I started noticing more. One of the most notable parts of this piece is the mirror directly between the couple. As you look into the mirror, you notice there are four people reflected in it. You see the backs of the Italian couple, but there are also two other men in between them, one of whom is presumed to be the artist himself.
All around the mirror (and in real life, folks, this mirror in the painting might be two inches tall) are scenes from the life of Christ. What is reflected in the mirror shows more of the room and the backsides of those who paid for the painting. Also, van Eyck signed this picture right above the mirror, almost like someone would tag a bathroom stall with graffiti, writing “Jan van Eyck was here, 1434.”
When I first showed this picture, did you notice the dog at his owners’ feet? The detail of this pooch is exceptional, his fur so lifelike. I didn’t see this at the time, but apparently the artists’ thumbprint is visible in the shadows underneath this dog.
There is so much going on in this painting, but if you didn’t take the time to pay attention to it, you’d likely pass on by to something else, having no idea what you were missing.
Life is like that too. The more intently we take an interest in it, the more we are able to grasp the depth and beauty and pain of it all. Faith is like that too. The more we open ourselves to pay attention to what God is saying to us through the Word read and preached, the more we come to see how high and broad and deep is God’s love for us and for the whole world. It’s a never-ending quest that goes deeper and deeper and becomes fuller and fuller the more we open ourselves to it.
That’s why I think the stained glass in this sanctuary offers us to the chance to practice wonder and paying attention. If we open ourselves to what God is saying through this art that is shaped so clearly by theology, then we have the opportunity to come to a deeper place of faith that is seeking understanding.
This past week, I stared at the Alpha and Omega window for ten minutes before the session meeting, taking in all the details I could. On Wednesday, I joined around 20 folks in here to pay attention to this window and what the Spirit was doing in us. In the voices and noticings of others, I found my imagination and faith stirred once again. It’s as though the more I pay attention, the more I come to see.
There is a flow to these windows. They run the gamut of the Christian story — from creation to Christ’s return and everything in between. Today we’re beginning with the window just to my left, which focuses on God as “Alpha and Omega.” (Those are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, so it’s like saying I’ve got everything covered from A-Z.)
All of these side windows (they’re called clerestory windows if you want to be technical about it) focus on “I am” statements, many of which Jesus said directly. This one comes from one of the final verses in all of scripture, Revelation 22:13, where God — Father, Son, and Spirit — is reigning over a renewed creation and declares, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” That is, there is no time that is not God’s time. There is no place that is not God’s place. Every breath we take, every step we make happens in this God-saturated and designed world — if only we’d pay attention.
Our Alpha and Omega window spans the biblical story from beginning to end. As I spent time with it, I noticed that there’s a flow to the window. It begins in the center, where the Triune God creates the universe and humanity. I have to be honest here. Envisioning the Trinity is one of the great challenges of the Christian faith, and yet I think this window does it so well. There is Jesus at the center, the person who is easiest to glimpse because Jesus is God-made-flesh, human like us.
But over Jesus’ shoulders are the other two persons. There is the Lord, looking almost like a wizard because the artist has placed the stars and planets like a hat over an abstract blue face. There is the Spirit, pictured like a bird, with one wing also outspread and whose body bears watery waves, feathers, and stars. One of the foundations of Christianity is that we believe in a Triune God and that all three persons of the Trinity were present and active in spinning the whole cosmos into existence. This window centers on a stunning rendering of Genesis 1-2.
If you look closely, you’ll see a line going from the Lord’s mouth to the mouth of the human below. God is giving the breath of life to humanity, raising us from the dust of the earth into creatures who bear God’s image and who breathe the very breath of God.
Yet, we know that story continues into Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve encounter the serpent, slithering through the branches of the one tree the Lord told them they could not touch. We see this above Jesus’ right hand, where the first humans give in to temptation. They disobey God. What is disobedience but a lack of trust? God created everything good and gave humanity the purpose of overseeing it all, but that was not enough for us. The serpent sowed doubt into their minds. Was God really trustworthy, the serpent hissed? Isn’t God just keeping you from really knowing and experiencing everything?
In this story, I see the ongoing dilemma that happens between parents and children, don’t you? Basically, parents set limits by having rules and expectations. For a while, most children are fine living according to those, but there comes a time when the child begins to wonder if mom or dad are simply just trying to keep them from having fun. So, the child pushes. Rebels. Takes risks. And what often happens? The child runs into the very thing the parents were trying to protect them from.
Rebellion has its consequences. Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise. An angel with a flaming sword stands between the couple and Eden, as we see at the top of the window. Yet, here’s what I notice. Yes, they have lost paradise, but they are still in the creation. Notice how the planet spun from the Trinity’s creative work sits right above their heads. Notice how the ground beneath their feet has the same markings as the plants underneath the feet of Jesus. They’ve lost something vital, but they have not lost everything — and that is grace and good news.
We heard today from verses in 1 Corinthians 15. These are verses I skipped last month, but they are so appropriate to what is happening in this window. The consequences of Adam and Eve’s rebellion included being cast from Eden, but it also brought death and decay into the creation. As Paul puts it, “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:21-22). As Paul writes elsewhere, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).
Notice the sweep from the top of the window back through the Trinity down to the lower left, where three women weep over the tomb of Jesus. We’ve jumped over thousands of years of human history, but we’re right in the climax of it. From the moment of our rebellion, God was already making a way to fix the mess we made. In the fullness of time, God sent his only Son, Jesus, who was fully God and fully human. He showed us how to live. He spoke to us truthfully about how we could live eternally, now and forever. He initiated healing and hope into our brokenness.
And what did we humans do? We killed him. It’s the ultimate form of rebellion. Get God out of the equation, and then we’ll have total freedom, right? Wrong! God loves us too much to let us go our own way for too long. So, God in Jesus gave space for this to happen. Humanity killed the Author of Life.
Notice now the three women weeping over the casket. Grief and pain are part of our experience. We experience loss. We mourn. We can feel hopeless, but the gospel truth and even this window tells us that those dark nights of the soul are not the final word. I’m struck by the light in this part of the window. The women’s faces are shadowed. They are hurting and lost.
One of the things I’m enjoying about paying attention to these windows is that there are places where these biblical truths dovetail so well with our lived experience. Have you mourned anything this last week? Loss of a hope or dream? The fear of violence? The weariness that comes from getting through the burdens of the day? If you’re in that place, take time to sit with the pain, just like these women. It’s okay to be there.
Yet, do you see the bright light coming from God’s angelic messenger to the women? They may not quite see it yet, but the dawn of a new day is coming.
We zoom back just a bit to see Easter morning. The solider has fallen down in fear. The angelic light is pointing towards Jesus emerging from the grave in all the glory of his resurrected body. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” writes Paul (1 Cor. 15:26), and here we are witnessing the creation on the path to healing.
The window makes one final movement back towards the center. There we see, settled below the human both a lion and a lamb. The same grassy marks of Eden are there as well. This draws our attention to a passage we often read in Advent from Isaiah 11:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
It’s a picture of the peaceable reign of God. Predator and prey coexist in peace. All the violence that makes this world so harsh and terrible is gone. It’s where history is headed in the fullness of time. Also, the lion and lamb are both symbols of Jesus. The lion can be an image of the kingly nature of Christ — think about Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia — and the lamb is a reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice. All of this is nestled under the watchful presence of the Trinity. God is the Alpha and the Omega.
As I close, I want to go to the part of the window that most moved me this week. It’s the breath flowing from God into the human. In the vastness of everything going on in this window, I’m struck that there is a never-ending connection between God and us. I admit that the dailyness of life can feel mundane. We’re not often considering the wonders of the universe. We’re busy paying bills, going grocery shopping, and trying to stay on top of all of our appointments.
We do have a higher purpose beyond those things, you know? Of course we should be faithful even in those small things, yet I wonder if it’s possible to live this week imagining God filling my lungs with breath, empowering me to be fully who God made me to be. I wonder the same for you. Given the glories of all of this, can we really walk out of here and mutter over our soggy eggs at brunch or grouse about how the Bears are going to lose to the Lions again?
We’re made for brunch and even for watching football, but God has made us for more. There’s a through line to all of God’s actions from creation to the eternity. It’s in this window. It runs through our lives. It breathes this life into us even now.
So, I invite us to make this hymn our prayer:
Breathe on me, Breath of God;
fill me with life anew,
that I may love what you love,
and do what you would do.