July 2019 - LPNI

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July 2019

Reaching out

Some years ago, my wife and I visited the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where we marvelled at the frescoes painted on the ceiling by Italian artist, Michelangelo in the early 16^th century. I was reminded of this in an article I read recently in Marist Messenger, a church magazine published in New Zealand. Since we were in Italy, more than 500 years of incense and candle smoke has been removed, and the colours of the frescoes are much more vivid than they were when we saw them.

The best-known of these frescoes is the Creation of Adam. Most viewers remember this, with the fingers of God and Adam almost, but not quite touching. God is reaching out to Adam, but Adam is falling away. It depicts the dilemma faced by every human being who is naturally separated from God by the sin we’re born with and into which we fall every day of our lives.

If that is all there is, we would simply be condemned to eternal separation from our Creator God.

But there’s more – both in God’s eternal plan for a wayward humanity, and in the detail in Michelangelo’s painting.

If you look closely at the background detail in this fresco, you will see that the artist has painted a young woman beneath God’s left arm and hand, enfolded in the crook of his elbow. According to tradition, this represents Eve, waiting to be created from a rib from Adam’s side. However, a closer look at this woman reveals that she has the same face as that of Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, The Pieta, which is located in St Peter’s basilica, also in the Vatican. This woman is Mary.

If you allow your eye to follow further along God’s left arm, you see that his hand rests on a Baby. Both the woman and the Baby are painted in subdued colours, suggesting that they have not yet been born. The Child, of course, is Jesus Christ.

It’s a powerful statement that right from Creation God had a plan in mind to bring back a fallen and disobedient humanity into his family. That plan took effect some thousands of years later when, as the holy writer says, when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship (Galatians 4:4, 5).

This is the essence of the gospel that both embraces and motivates those who serve as Pastors and Parish Nurses, and in other pastoral care roles in the church. Because God has reached out to us and claimed us through his Son, Jesus Christ, we are moved to reach out to those around us who are in spiritual, emotional, physical, or psychological need, and to help make a connection between them and the love of God.

(Rev) Robert J Wiebusch

Paradise, South Australia

robert.wiebusch@lca.org.au