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| Detail, Luke 2:19 private collection Copyright Peter Bougie 2017 |
The city itself is not intended to be
an accurate representation of Jerusalem, although I took pains to represent the
architecture as it would have been in that period. Jerusalem is not built on
and around a steep bluff side by a lake. But that representation fits the
vertical composition, and helps to convey a sense of the overbearing presence
of worldly things and affairs. The city, seemingly burrowed into the very
stones of the hillside, represents the efforts people put into vanity and
material and power, things that shift and pass from one hand to another.
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| Detail Luke 2:19 private collection Copyright Peter Bougie 2017 |
A fishing boat is pulled up under the
walls, and men are at work in it, tending to their business. Jesus called Peter
and Andrew, also James and John, from their fishing boats pulled up on the
shore: “And Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon who is
called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were
fishers). And he saith to them: Come ye after me, and I will make you to be
fishers of men. And they immediately leaving their nets, followed him. And
going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and
John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets: and
he called. And they forthwith left their nets and father, and followed him.”
(Matthew 4:18-22) Jesus could have chosen his followers anywhere but he
chooses the foolish to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the strong.
He does not go to the centers of power but to where the people live. He knows,
and teaches, that real change occurs first in each human heart. Imagine a call
so strong that it pulls you away from your livelihood, or from your father.
Imagine how compelling it must have been. When have we ever felt such a
compelling call in our own lives, and what did we do to answer it?
One fishing boat is setting out into
the middle of the lake, and two more are in the distance, where they approach
the far shore. There is a settlement there and abundant husbandry at work on
the broad hillside: fields, orchards and vineyards. The lake itself suggests
the gulf between justice and injustice. There is a village at the bottom of the
hill on the shore and clusters of buildings scattered across its breadth. This
represents the fruitful world we are called to build: “In labor and in toil we
worked night and day, lest we should be chargeable to any of you. Not as if we
had not power: but that we might give ourselves a pattern unto you, to imitate
us. For also when we were with you, this we declared to you: that, if any man
will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:8-10) This world, no
matter how fruitful, is penultimate. What we hope for is seen obscurely as if
through the mists of rain on the horizon. "Now faith is the substance of
things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.” (Hebrews 11:1)
The City of God, the heavenly kingdom, represented indistinctly as something
vast and fantastic because of the hints we have been given about it: “But as it
is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into
the heart of man, [what no human mind has conceived, another translation reads]
what things God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9) And
that “In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told
you: because I go to prepare a place for you.” [emphasis added]
(John 14:2) We know of it through these intimations given us by Jesus himself;
it is the gift of a glimpse, and so it is represented as distant and
indistinct. In reality it is only as distant as we separate ourselves from it.
Admittedly, for most of us, that is considerable.
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