Faithful in all God’s House

One of the most important questions facing the earliest Christians was how to explain the relationship between Jesus and central figures in the Jewish Scriptures, like Moses. The author of Hebrews avoids the denigration of Moses’s significance found in some other Christian sources, acknowledging that Moses was no less faithful than Jesus, and that both operated within the same arena: God’s ‘house’ (Hebrews 3:2). The high regard accorded to Moses here is used, however, to magnify the even greater glory attaching to Christ as son of God (vv.5–6).

This two-light stained-glass window set in the west wall of the nave in a church on the island of Anglesey likewise depicts Moses as he stands in relation to Christ. It can be dated to the mid-nineteenth century, but very little is known about its design or production. Martin Crampin, a leading expert in Welsh stained glass, has tentatively ascribed it to the relatively short-lived Liverpool studio of Forrest and Bromley.

On the surface, the imagery is quite conventional, showing Moses holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments, representing the Jewish Law, while the risen Christ imparts a blessing. This portrayal hints at the difference in their role and status. Nevertheless, it is striking that the ‘inferiority’ of Moses is not unduly stressed: both figures are richly garbed, for instance, and surrounded by the same deep blue background and patterned framing.

The Ten Commandments given through Moses appear in this image, then, as a necessary part of the gospel message brought by Christ, which is symbolized by the open book in the window’s upper trefoil inscribed with the words ‘Preach the Gospel’.

References

Crampin, Martin (ed.). 2011. ‘The Risen Christ with Moses’, Stained Glass in Wales Catalogue, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, available at https://stainedglass.delweddau.cymru/object/4151 [accessed 27 December 2024]

The wilderness is a recurrent theme in the Scriptures, where it is sometimes envisaged as a location of potential danger (e.g. Deuteronomy 8:15), but also more positively as a site of God’s revelation (e.g. Exodus 3:1–5; 19:1–25). In Psalm 95—the scriptural text underlying this section of Hebrews—the wilderness region separating Egypt from the promised land of Canaan is remembered as a place of rebellion, ‘where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years’ (Hebrews 3:9–10; Psalm 95:9). This is a reference to the failure of the ancient Israelites to trust fully in God’s ability to provide water and food for their journey (Numbers 20:1–13). It is an example of disobedience that the letter’s recipients are urged to avoid (Hebrews 3:12–13).

According to Christian tradition, Jesus also went through an experience of being tested in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13). This period of temptation by the devil is depicted in Briton Rivière’s oil painting, produced in 1898 and now in the collection of London’s Guildhall Art Gallery. The impressionistic style and skilful use of colour emphasize the gloomy foreground of this wilderness setting by contrast with its distant reaches, and highlight ‎the lonely isolation of the figure of Jesus in white‎ (O'Neill 2010). He appears drained and exhausted after his struggle with Satan, but the red glow on the horizon offers the viewer a hopeful glimpse of a new dawn.

Members of the community addressed in Hebrews are evidently undergoing trials and difficulties of their own (4:15–16), although their nature is not specified. To come through these will require great effort on their part (v.11), as it did for the sorely tempted Christ, with whom they ‘have become partners’ (3:14).

References

James Stuart O’Neill. 2010. ‘The Temptation in The Wilderness’, available at https://iconsandimagery.blogspot.com/2010/08/temptation-in-wilderness.h… [accessed 23 December 2024]

The Sabbath has served as a key focus of Jewish life and ritual throughout the centuries. On this day every week, Jews imitate God, who ‘rested on the seventh day from all his works’ (Hebrews 4:4; Genesis 2:2).

The theme of ‘Sabbath rest’ is central to the argument of Hebrews 4, and is beautifully illustrated in this painting by the early twentieth century Polish Jewish artist Jankel Adler. Completed in the mid-1920s, when the artist was working in Germany, and now hanging in the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, it depicts a scene in a family home (Heibel 2016: 231–232, 505).

Many painters and writers focus on the joyful rites with which the beginning of the Sabbath is marked, such as the lighting of the candles and the blessing of the wine. Adler, however, homes in on the second half of the day, when the candles have burned low, the wine has been drunk, and the special challah bread is half eaten (Jüdisches Museum Berlin n.d.). He presents a couple who are quite literally ‘at rest’: the man reclining on a sofa and the woman sitting still in her chair, with no hint even of conversation between them. They seem utterly content and at peace, having ‘ceas(ed) from their labours as God did from his’ (Hebrews 4:10).

The opportunity to concretely enjoy God’s rest is precisely the hope that the author of Hebrews holds out to his audience: ‘a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God’ (Hebrews 4:9).

References

Heibel, Annemarie. 2016. Jankel Adler (1895–1949). Band I: Monografie (Münster Verlagshaus Monsenstein und Vannerdat OHG)

Jüdisches Museum Berlin. n.d. ‘From Our Holdings: Parlor Scene on the Day of Rest: The Painting Sabbath by Jankel Adlers’, available at https://www.jmberlin.de/en/parlor-scene-day-rest-painting-sabbath-janke… [accessed 23 December 2024]