THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - 5th December 2007

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

This week Liverpool hosted the two polar opposites of the arts and entertainment world – The Royal Variety Performance, to be screened on Sunday, and the Turner Prize. The Queen came to the packed Empire Theatre to be entertained by Joan Rivers and a suitably deferential Russell Brand sandwiched by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Bon Jovi! But, the star of the show was Paul Potts the mobile phone salesman catapulted to fame by winning a TV Talent Show. It was sheer entertainment!

Further down the road past St George’s Hall and by the River in the Tate Gallery the Turner Prize was being announced. It was won by the conceptual artist Mark Wallinger, who himself had shot to fame for his sculpture of Jesus Christ, called Ecce Homo, which had stood for a year on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

The prize went to Wallinger for his monumental political work ‘State Britain’. In it he recreated in minute detail the one-man-protest against the Iraq war mounted by Brian Haw in Parliament Square. It took 15 people six months to make it. The jury commended Wallinger’s work for combining “a bold political statement with art’s ability to articulate fundamental human truths”.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to rebuild the 40 metre installation and instead Mark Wallinger exhibited The Sleeper – a two and a half hour video showing the artist dancing around an empty art gallery in Berlin dressed as a Bear!

As you might imagine, such art is not without controversy!

But even in the pages of the Bible you find the prophets, the revealers of truth doing strange things. When Isaiah wanted to warn warring nations of their hubris he stripped off his sandals and sackcloth and walked through the streets stark naked. And he claimed that he had been told to do all this by God!

At this point we might find ourselves reaching for such fashionable words as ‘nutter’ but it’s worth pausing to remember that this was the man who also gave us such poetry as:

“they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation
Neither shall they learn war anymore”

In this season of Advent Christians will be quoting this poetic prophet many times not least his promise that one day a child would be born whose name shall be called ‘The Prince of Peace’.

Pointing the way to peace is the work of prophets, poets, artists and even comedians. It cannot be just left to politicians and to priests. Why? Because although we too are committed to finding peace we’re in and of the institution. And sometimes, God knows, we need somebody outside to tell us what we look like.