Samson’s Annunciation

Mobile phones were yet to become ‘smart’ in 2003 when the British artist Rose Finn-Kelcey was commissioned to make a work of art for the church of St Paul’s Bow Common, East London. But messaging had evolved enough to mean that there was a received abbreviation for many commonly used words in our lexicon, and the use of symbols and punctuation to create expressive icons (what were to become emojis) had established itself and spread quickly. One of these, which uses the image of a haloed angel’s face on its side 0:-) as if to say ‘You’re an angel’, became the central motif of the vast panel of shimmer discs with which Finn-Kelcey graced the exterior of this post-war church. It remained there for six months.

In the Bible, angels take many forms and inhabit many guises. When the angel appears for the first time before ‘the woman’, wife of Manoah and mother-to-be of Samson (Judges 13:3), with news that she will conceive, the woman has no doubt of the angel’s veracity, although she does remark afterwards that ‘he didn’t tell me his name’ (v.6). This compulsion to name and identify the angel is more strongly expressed by Manoah himself when the angel appears a second time (v.9), but the angel evades answering, giving the reassurance that it is a name that is ‘wonderful’ (v.18).

Finn-Kelcey’s Angel was a deliberate and contemporary manifestation of the ambiguity between sign (what is being shown) and identity (what—or who—is being communicated in the showing). As Manoah and his wife found themselves wondering about the full implications of their angel's message, so the audience to Finn-Kelcey's work were encouraged to speculate on the meaning of hers. 

In doing so, she turned the secluded experience of the biblical couple into something very public. Her sideways digital characterization was a departure from traditional visualizations of angels, but suggested an openness to those beyond the Church. Enlarging its central motif to the scale of an advertising hoarding, it was widely visible. Using the para-linguistic code of texting, it was legible to many for whom the Church may perhaps have seemed anachronistic. And harnessing human beings’ magpie-like attraction to shiny materials it appealed beyond the boundaries of any one culture or belief.

Rather than conveying her message from within the privacy of one-to-one messaging Finn-Kelcey declared it at full visual volume to anyone who would listen.

Upwards and downwards movement are typical aspects of the Bible’s descriptions of angels (e.g. Genesis 28; Matthew 28:2), and in Judges 13 the announcement of the miraculous conception of Samson ends with the angel ascending in flames.

In Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson’s short film The Carriers’ Prayer, a feat of theatrical staging plays with such movement to engender a seeming miracle.

Candles with flame-tips that point downwards could be said to both parody and pay homage to the vertical axis which we have long associated with prayer. These so-called ‘scally fireworks’ are made from tightly coiled carrier bags. They are suspended from the ‘ceiling’ of a space that has been built to resemble an austere, white-walled church—but this ‘church’ is upside down. Once lit, the fireworks are filmed. The resultant footage—in which the fireworks drip burning plastic producing an eerie sound track of pops and whistles—is then rotated 180 degrees, so that the church interior appears the correct way up and the fireworks look like malformed candles releasing their ascending pyrotechnics.

While not at pains to hide their trickery, Crowe and Rawlinson’s film brings a sense of irony and playfulness to the reverence that often surrounds prayer—as it also, perhaps, surrounds attitudes to the angels of biblical narrative.

Our attention to the movement between heaven and earth can be rooted in more than the traditional symbols of prayer: the rise of incense and the odour of burnt offerings, the bowing of heads and the upward pull of a candle’s flame. In Judges 13, Manoah’s wife is said to be ‘out in the field’ when the angel appears to her for a second time (vv.9–14). There is perhaps in this an indication of the ordinariness of that moment.

The Carriers’ Prayer reminds us that our own prayers, often mundane and material expressions of need or desire, can be nurtured and celebrated as our best efforts to reach heavenwards. And that—as with the scally fireworks—we should not belittle their everydayness.

Manoah and his wife are told by an angel that they are to have a child (Samson). In thanksgiving for the angel's message, the couple prepare a burnt offering (v.19) and watch as the angel himself disappears in the flames of the altar. Is Judges 13 showing us a link between sacrifice and the mystical presence of angels, and/or that being consumed by flames is a way to God?

American sculptor David Best’s Temple projects are contemporary evocations of this kind of mystical event (although they are purportedly ‘non-religious’). In constructing his huge and ornate wooden structures, using the skills and labour of as many local people as he can involve at once, he both harnesses and gives rise to an instinctive desire to make, mark, and adorn. Within the different communities in which he has worked, the participants’ motivations to contribute can vary from expressions of grief and loss, to a desire for forgiveness and community cohesion.

Best’s Temple in Derry-Londonderry was sited on a contested piece of land in one of the areas most divided and damaged by Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’; all too familiar with flames. It drew some 60,000 visitors, all of whom were invited to inscribe personal messages on the structure (or place them within it). Then on 21 March 2015, six individuals involved in the making of Temple set the structure alight and the work was razed to the ground.

In its evocation of a rite of purging, or perhaps offering, this symbolic ‘letting go’ of a damaged community’s anxieties, desires, and dreams could be said to have a sacrificial quality.

Manoah and his wife invest their intense and fearful hopes for a son in the sacrificial rites they perform. But these hopes and fears are also bound up with their faith in the strange heavenly messenger. So when the angel reveals himself as an angel by becoming one with the fire in front of them, it could be said that their sacrifice to God and God’s message to them become simultaneous. The altar flames are the outward expression of their most intimate prayer, and the first manifestation of its answer.

References

David Best Temples, http://davidbesttemples.org [accessed 11 December 2018]