Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 11:1-13

[Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Three Years of Providence     

Last Sunday, I arrived here about an hour before the worship service, like I usually do, and I was shocked to find that the reproduction of the mosaic that I had made was hanging up in the Fireside Room. I was a pleasant shock, of course, I was excited to see it up there, and I had known that various people had been trying to figure out how to hang up something so large on the wall, but I didn’t know they had done it that week.

I figured, since it was up in the Fireside Room for everyone to see, and our Luke text today points us in the direction of God’s providence, I would share a little bit of the story of the three years that it took for me to complete this mosaic, that I did as part of my concentration in Christian Spirituality, while I was at San Francisco Theological Seminary

Going from left to right, this is the first section of the mosaic. It depicts the creation of the world in Genesis 1. The sun and moon are here, the birds of the sky and the fish of sea, with the turtles and the lamb representing the animals of the land.  Adam and Eve are here, though Eve is a little hard to see in this picture; she’s just to the right of the lamb, and she’s talking to the snake, who’s wrapped around a red apple.

This mosaic is about 32 feet long, and somewhere between three and four feet tall. I had never made a mosaic of this size before; every other mosaic project I had done before this had been much, much smaller, though I had previously done a mural that was almost this size. The thing about mosaic is that it requires a lot of materials, so much more than you think it will when you first start out, especially if you don’t have that much experience with it. I decided to take on this project, not really knowing where all of the materials were going to come from, I assumed a lot of trips to Good Will for plates, and I naively thought I would be able to complete said project in about a year, never mind the fact that I was a full-time seminary student.

This mural is in the student-run coffee shop, so word soon spread around the campus about what I was doing, and my family and friends eventually found out about it, so materials started to just kind of show up. The fish are made from leftover tiles from a bathroom remodel that one of the administrative assistants in the office did. The blue curls representing rivers were made from bits of blue tile that had been part of a gravel mix that my sister and nephew found while out hiking near my parents’ house in Southern California. They knew I was working on this mosaic, so when I came home for Thanksgiving that year, I was presented with this little bag of blue tile. This blue gravel eventually made its way into almost every section of the mosaic.

The next section depicts Moses parting the Red Sea, and it’s framed by the pillar of cloud, and the pillar of fire that led the Israelites through the desert after their escape from Egypt. One day, I discovered a bag full of shells that someone had left at my front door. I never found out who left them there, but I knew they were hoping I would use them in the mosaic, and I thought they would be perfect for the sea floor in this scene. You can see a mussel shell and an oyster shell, there. And, my sister’s contributions show up again here in this beautiful striped orange glass that I used for the pillar of fire. She works at the California State University of Channel Islands, and they had these 2 big art glass bowls that were being transported form one part of the campus to the other, and I don’t know what happened, but they broke, and my sister swooped in and claimed the orange pieces for me. She tried to get the purple pieces, too, but someone else claimed those, but I felt pretty lucky to get these.

As time went by, more and more opportunities presented themselves for people to get involved in the creation of this mosaic, and imbue it with meaning. It really started to feel like something that we were all doing together. During this time, the school went through a rebranding, and we changed our logo, so we had to figure out what to do with all of the old paraphernalia that had the old school logo on it. One time, as part of some kind of team-building exercise, the alumni council broke a bunch of the old SFTS mugs, to commemorate the school adopting the new logo, and they brought me the pieces, so I could incorporate them into the mosaic. They were a beautiful dark navy blue, and they had all of these weird shapes, because they used to be mugs, and I thought what better place for them than the roiling waters of the Red Sea being split apart for the Israelites to walk through. So, anywhere you see that dark navy blue, those are the old SFTS mugs.

Here’s the Nativity scene, which I’ve shared during a sermon before. Here’s Mary, and Joseph, baby Jesus, and the heavenly host. To Joseph’s right, in the beige area, is the Korean word Jiang, which was the basis of yet another sermon. It means togetherness, or closeness; there’s not really a good English translation for it. There’s more of the bathroom tile here, making up part of Joseph’s robe, and a lot of the black tile was salvaged out of the dumpster by my friends when the slate roofing tiles were replaced on some of the school buildings. Some of my favorite tiles in the entire mosaic show up here: the little white ones with a black floral pattern on them. While I was working on the mosaic, I became drawn to the idea that certain tiles would hold deeper meaning, so I was always looking for opportunities to use materials that were special in some way. For her senior sermon, my friend Talitha, who was a year ahead of me, spoke about the woman who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet from an alabaster jar. As part of her sermon, she took an actual jar, and smashed it on the floor. I asked her if I could have the pieces for the mosaic, and of course, she said yes, so there they are. And, if you know the story of where these tiles came from, then they’re no longer just a patch of Joseph’s robe, but a part of the academic history of the school, a symbol of my friendship with Talitha, and a foreshadowing of Jesus’ life, as Joseph looks into the baby Jesus’ face.

This next section is the section that started it all. When I first had the idea to make a mosaic, I wanted to do the baptism of Christ. Jesus is here, at the exact center of the entire mosaic, in the river, and the Holy Spirit is coming down like a dove. Up at the top, the hand of God is pointing down towards him. I wanted to do this scene because it’s one of the few times in the Bible when all three persons of the Trinity are present, and the theological concept of the Trinity is really important to me. I looked all over campus for where I would make this mosaic, and the only place that made sense was the back wall of the coffee shop. I needed permission, of course, before I just started gluing tile pieces to the wall, but no one could figure out who exactly it was that I was supposed to get permission from. So, the dean’s administrative assistant, and the Biblical Greek professor, who was also the registrar at the time, made the executive decision to allow me to make the mosaic. And, so it began.

This is the next section, the Sermon on the Mount and The Last Supper. We have more of Talitha’s jar pieces here, and more of the roofing slate.

This next picture is the Crucifixion and the Empty Tomb. There’s a peculiar image hidden in this section of the mosaic. If you look closely, there’s a little dark eye in the lower section of the yellow hill. Nearby, you can find a little nose, and a little mouth, and if you follow the line of pink glass, you can just make out the slope of a forehead, and two little round ears. The pink glass continues down to form the back. There’s a little paw holding a dish below a green circle, a glowing sphere of candlelight. It’s a bear, walking on its hind legs, with an old-fashioned candleholder. When I was working on this section, the woman in charge of housing found out that I was having trouble paying for all of the materials that I needed to make this mosaic. The next thing I knew, she had written me a check for $100. She wasn’t the warmest person, she was kind of gruff, and no-nonsense, but she was very protective of us, and generally well-liked by the students. She had earned the nickname “Walker Bear”, because her last name was Walker, and you didn’t want to see her angry. When I was trying to figure out how to honor her contribution to the mosaic, I Googled “Walker Bear” and this is the image that came up, the illustration on the cover of a children’s book titled, “Walker Bear.”

This is the last section, the Ascension of Christ, and in terms of God’s providence for this mosaic, there are a few more bits of those blue gravel tiles that my sister and nephew picked up for me while they were out on their hike. I was given so much while working on this mosaic, not just in terms of materials, and funding, but in time, and labor, and sometimes just companionship, when people would visit with me while I was working. I was given opportunity, and space, and permission for this creative endeavor. I was given meaning and hope. I was given purpose and a legacy. I was given stories, and you know how much I like stories. God is always giving to us, in big ways, and little ways. We don’t need to be in life-or-death situations to experience God’s providence. God is providing for us all the time. We just have to look for it. Divinity is closer than you think.

Amen.

~ Rev. Charles Wei