Schof asked someone recently : If Monet was your art teacher, what would Monet have wanted you to do? They replied that Monet would have wanted them to produce their own piece of impressionist artwork.
I thought that was a great illustration. Surely he wouldn't have wanted groups of Monet admirers 100 years later, arguing about which were the really authentic examples of Monet's work and try to reproduce them time and time again. Surely, he wouldn't want them to reproduce copies of a garden in Giverney or a street in Paris. Surely, its about taking what was a hugely radical way of doing art and asking what it might mean for a Rochdale Council Estate or a Sheffield Steel works.
How bizarre, then, that 2000 years after Jesus people are all busy trying to reproduce authentic replicas of the church 2000 years ago and arguing over what was really authentic, instead of being genuinely creative and asking what it means to be a Jesus-follower in 21st Century Sheffield.
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Thanks Mark
Yeah that was a great chat and I was amazed how absent and how welcome the idea of Jesus as 'Master - craftsman' was to the teens I was walking with. The idea that I am learning a holistic creative way of life that contributes something unique and uniquely valuable to our world, that is its own mustard seed of the kingdom now here, now coming.
(I love this and any metaphor of us being apprenticed by God because God is not a slave driver of guilt, a trivial deity pandered to and made present only in emo devotion or even a behavioural puppeteer. Here we find Jesus as master of the craft of life and life giving. A tangible God of real life at who's feet we can sit and who's path we can walk. It shows us the way we can fulfil that amazing statement that 'you will do even greater things than I')
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