In 1946 the British artist Graham Sutherland painted a large Crucifixion for St Matthew’s in Northampton. He acknowledged the influence of photographs taken by Lee Miller and other members of the American military in the Nazi concentration camps at Belsen, Auschwitz and Buchenwald on his Crucifixions remarking “many of the tortured bodies looked like figures deposed from crosses”.
Lee Miller lived at Farley’s Farm in East Sussex. Sutherland’s pencil studies for his famous Northampton Crucifixion depict Jesus’ body hanging lifeless on the cross. There is agony in the body’s posture, the weight clearly visible in the angular shoulders, chest and distorted stomach. This is God who understands and shares in human suffering.
Graham Sutherland, a Roman Catholic, was sustained by his Christian faith all his life. He lived at Rustington in West Sussex.
Sutherland’s crucifixions reflected people’s experience of evil in the world and yet spoke loudly of the triumph of hope in response to the tragedy of violence and war.
Today 24/7 news, social media and fake-news breaks into our lives with a catalogue of tragedy, war, fear, climate change and suffering. In the face of this our sense of hope, our agency, can feel diminished and evil is emboldened persuading us that we are powerless to effect change.
For Christians hope is at the heart of the Easter story and the life of Jesus. Hope is an important corner stone of a good human life.
I think it was my mother who once said to me “You can’t change the world but you can change your corner of it.” This profoundly hopeful statement has much to commend it.
Each of us, if we still ourselves and turn our attention from the media for a moment, will bear witness to extraordinary acts of human kindness and generosity all around us, especially in response to suffering and need.
Whether our hearts are inspired by the sacred or the secular the more of us who try to work for the common good in the service of others the more hope will be restored and evil pushed back.
After all change always comes from the ground up. I will be celebrating 8 o’clock Easter Holy Communion at St Mary’s Storrington and all are welcome. I wish you all a blessed and joyful Easter.
Rupert Toovey is a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington - www.tooveys.com- and a priest in the Church of England Diocese of Chichester.
