Whenever you give a lunch or a dinner....

"Then Jesus said to the host, 'Whenever you give a lunch or a dinner, don't invite your friends or colleagues or relatives or wealthy neighbors. They might invite you in return and thus repay you. No, when you have a reception, invite those who are poor or who have physical infirmities or are blind.'"

- Luke 14:12-13

Faces of Jesus by Rembrandt Coming to Philly

"Now, the face of Jesus is coming to Philadelphia this summer, via no less than seven portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn.

“Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus,” Aug. 3-Oct. 30, 2011, brings seven of Rembrandt’s eight known portraits of Jesus — two of which he kept in his own bedroom — to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The seven paintings are fairly small, and all painted on wood.

The same young man posed for the pictures, art historians say, a young Sephardic Jew from Rembrandt’s neighborhood in Amsterdam, which housed many refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. The man’s indentity (sic) is unknown "This was very likely the first time in the history of Christian art that Jesus appeared to be Jewish," said Philadelphia Museum curator Lloyd De Witt."



the face of Jesus is coming to Philadelphia this summer, via no less than seven portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn.

“Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus,” Aug. 3-Oct. 30, 2011, brings seven of Rembrandt’s eight known portraits of Jesus -- two of which he kept in his own bedroom -- to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The seven paintings are fairly small, and all painted on wood.

The same young man posed for the pictures, art historians say, a young Sephardic Jew from Rembrandt's neighborhood in Amsterdam, which housed many refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. The man’s indentity is unknown "This was very likely the first time in the history of Christian art that Jesus appeared to be Jewish," said Philadelphia Museum curator Lloyd De Witt.

"Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus" is the first big Rembrandt show to come to Philadelphia, says museum director Timothy Rub. The exhibition includes the Louvre's Supper at Emmaus (1648), which hasn't been seen in the U.S. since 1936. The National Gallery, London, is sending another major work, Christ and the Woman Taken into Adultery (1644).

In all, the show boasts 50 additional paintings, prints and drawings by Rembrandt. It is co-organized with the Musée du Louvre, where it premieres this month, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, where it opens in November 2011.

Yale University Press is publishing the catalogue, available May 16, 2011, with essays by the three curators (Blaise Ducos from the Louvre and George S. Keyes from Detroit) as well as Seymour Slive and five other scholars.



http://shroudofturin.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/faces-of-jesus-by-rembrandt-coming-to-philly/

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/artnetnews/face-of-jesus-in-philadelphia-4-5-11.asp

Christ and Staff, oil on canvas.

Carl Heinrich Bloch (Danish painter, 1834-90), Christ and Staff, oil on canvas.

Old Traditions in Germany

The German word Palmesel (palm donkey) refers to the statue of Christ on a donkey, mounted on a wheeled platform, which was part of Palm Sunday processions in many German-speaking regions until the Reformation. In the Middle Ages these processions, which reenacted Christ's entry into Jerusalem mounted on an ass, were lively pageants in which hymns were sung, palms strewn, and clothes spread on the ground before the Palmesel. The figure of Christ retains, in contrast, an air of quiet majesty.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, almost every village had its own palm donkey for the Palm procession, a ritual symbolising Christ's arrival in Jerusalem. Often it was a life-sized model donkey, upon which a carving of Christ was often seated. The procession with the palm donkey was once widespread not only in the southern parts of the German-speaking world, but also in some Dutch and Belgian regions.

For more on Palmesl figures see my other Blog:

http://thepeddlersdonky.blogspot.com/

A Very Interesting Blog on Christian Mystics

http://christianmystics.com/

At The Very Heart of Jesus

Jan 28th, 2009 by Brian Robertson

I think we can all agree that Jesus now comes in a rather impressive variety of flavors.

I have said it before and will say it again — we have lost site of the fact that the spirituality OF Jesus has become the religion ABOUT Jesus. It has disintegrated to the point where the original teachings and intentions from Jesus have been lost in countless interpolations, in imaginative adaptations to fit specific political needs (both governmental and within the Church) and certainly in countless other influences, many of which have taken a 180 degree turn from what the original tenor and tone and teachings of Jesus must have been.

So, while Christianity waxes and wanes, have we buried Jesus? in some cases, yes, such is the case. I maintain that at the heart of it all, however, we can build from one very solid fact reflecting Jesus’ experiences and attitudes, his teachings and his challenge. If I had to put all of that into one particular starting point, it would be this — God consciousness.

It’s that simple, that revolutionary, and that challenging. It so much so that we fight about the construction and architecture of the house and fail to live in it. At the root of Jesus is the unmistakable notion of God Consciousness, of the awareness of God’s Presence. It is not as if God had a kingdom in which we might one day aspire to after our deaths, but, rather, that the kingdom of Heaven is here, now, within and without. We do not see it and in fact, many do all they can to fight against that central Presence rather than live it. That’s no surprise. Jesus lived it and was killed for it. There are countless other examples of people who attempted to have that God Consciousness and paid the price because, well, people like that can make people like us uneasy — not by what they do but by what they show that we do, just by being who they are.

Jesus called upon us to develop and to live from within that God Consciousness that is the living heart of Christianity in its truest form. The Bible is fine, as is any road map to help you start to get your directions, but, just as one lives in a real town and not the city map, simply living with the smug pride of knowing the Bible as a closed book and the last Word is just as delusional. Jesus’ challenge was not to believe this point or to live in such a way as to gain some sort of heaven but, rather, to be the very book, the book of Love. To be so aware of God — God Consciousness — that the very Source of Divine Love animates our entire being and radiates, not like a lamp hid under a basket but, rather, like the sun which shines on all, the wicked and the good.

We fall short, yes. In my own case, I know, shamefully short. Yet the promise given to me is simple — if I realize and celebrate the Presence of God in each moment, each face, each silence, each word I speak, I have no enemies, no hatred, no fear, no demand for control, no book, no church that can equal the treasure found amidst the great field of life.

A Christian mystic, then, in the sense to which I am speaking, is a person who believes that from the center, which is Jesus, spins a Voice and a Love that is so very close to us that we cannot see it or hear it with the same eyes and ears that behold the world. A Christian mystic knows that words on a page, no matter how lofty, are nothing compared to the wordless sideways glance from the Beloved in the chambers of our heart. A Christian mystic is not lofty and gratified to hold a high position of power in a church organization — because each one of us is Church and Book. There is, as Alan Watts once said, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” Ego will not get us to God Consciousness. Certainty is not what will lead us to be, as another writer called his book, “Surprised by Joy.”

These are dangerous, frightening times we live in yet, thanks be to God, it is a time in which a tattered vestige of Hope appears beneath the headlines and is made to shine forth from the most unexpected, lowly places. Where that manger is for you is for you to decide and discover, not this writer or not that book or not some Church, as well meaning and community-driven as they might be.

We are Christian mystics because we find Jesus to be the clearest example of what it is to live in the Presence of God and, therefore, to shine forth with Love. We are not content with reading books about taking a journey to a foreign land, we believe we are led to travel to that far away land which, paradoxically, has been with us all the time, nurturing our every step.

Peace,

Rev. Brian Robertson

“When people say that the authority of Scripture or the centrality of Jesus is in question, actually it’s their social, economic and political system that has been built in the name of Jesus that’s being threatened.” Rob Bell