Re-faced Books: A Holy Week Reflection

There were so many of them. Lined up neatly in the Archive Room, a thin layer of dust covering their tops. Once they had formed an anchor for this community: they held together our prayer life, our communal worship. But the times had changed. Now, PowerPoint took the place of Uniting in Worship, these sky-blue, squat little books, with the rainbow ribbons that allowed the faithful to mark the important bits. Now, the old trampled paths of familiar prayers, of special Psalms, were being departed from, as ministers and congregations sought out different words; searched out new ways of talking to and about their God, who felt more and more disconnected from the world in which they lived. So the blue books stayed in the archive room, collecting dust.

The Archive Room is full of many treasures, and much that needs to go. We chose a couple to keep, and then the rest of the Uniting in Worship collection we took in armfuls to the big recycling bins outside. But as we were carrying them, I remembered that Rachel Mackay, a local artist who has done so much with Murrumbeena Uniting over the years, was interested in the books. I sent her a message: “We have lots of prayers books and they are in the recycling bin!” “Please take them out!” was her speedy reply. Rachel had an idea.

I had no idea what Rachel had in mind until I walked through the doors of our Community Art Exhibition opening night last Friday. There, I saw our collection of Uniting in Worship books, in a way I had never seen it before. The volumes were now part of a piece called “Re-faced Books”, and they were stacked in a way that made them look completely different. I was used to seeing the books all on a row, on a bookshelf, standing vertically. But now, some were lying flat. Some were lying flat upside-down. Some were lying flat upside-down and backwards. Some were backwards and upside-down and turned around so just the short edge was showing. All of the books were re-orientated; they were, as the title told us, “Re-faced Books”. And they were now in the shape of a cross.

Change is hard. As humans, our souls are supported and nourished by what is predictable and familiar. We develop rituals that are deeply soothing: the 10 o’clock cup of tea, the 7 o’clock news, the coffee with the dear friend on the first Friday of the month, the annual family gathering on Christmas Eve, with Mum’s roast pork and the same trifle that Auntie Rose brings every year. This armchair, that TV show. This seat in the café, that pew in church. Our daily, weekly, annual rhythms are like big, cushioned arms that hold us in place, tell us who we are in a world that never stops moving. Change is hard.

But, as we know, the only thing that stays constant in life is change. Change happens because things die. The little child grows up, and so we have the end of that sweet, giggling child. The internet gives us information that is fast and vast, and with it dies the joy of opening an envelope with a hand-written address scrawled on the front. Shops and sporting clubs operate on Sundays, and the community gathers there, rather than the Sunday schools of old, with their hundreds of children. Mum isn’t with us anymore, and we will never taste her roast pork again.

Death leaves empty spaces: the place where the children used to run around, the place where Mum used to sit by the window. But even more often, it seems, death leaves cupboards and rooms full of stuff. Books that were once cherished but no one finds useful anymore. Furniture that served a purpose that no longer exists. Our lives can be crammed full of the objects of death.

Our Christian faith invites us to grieve change, to grieve death. We are to weep for that which we loved, and which is no longer with us. For children grown up, for old joys disappeared, for people we loved, gone. We weep just as Jesus’s followers wept, when they looked up at him, dying on the cross. They wept from the depths of their being, great soggy heaving sobs. As Christians, we must weep for all that has been lost, too.

But we also know, as Christians, that death is not the end of the story. Because miraculously, Jesus rose again. Nobody expected it (except for the ones who had been really listening), but a few days after they took his bloodied, lifeless body down from the cross, he came alive again.

He looked different. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener at first, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognise him either. He was different like the prayer books in Rachel Mackay’s artwork ‘Re-faced Books’ are different. The same content, perhaps, but they have each undergone a transformation. Like a caterpillar whose insides became the beautiful patterns on a butterfly wing. Like a dead seed that breaks open and is nourished to become a living breathing plant. Like a sweet, giggling child, who becomes a beautiful, mature adult. The same, but turned around, flipped upside-down, turned sideways. Unrecognisable, but the same. Re-faced.

So often we are so afraid of change, so afraid of death, that we clutch on to the objects of the past. We grasp on to them as though we think they will let us go back in time. Of course, the past will never be resuscitated. But the Christian story tells us – funnily enough – that the past can actually be resurrected! It will not look the same. The past will not be repeated. But when new breath is blown, it can become something new. Like a set of old prayer books, flipped around so that the Word contained within is speaking in new directions, to new people. Like Jesus, whose old body touched thousands, but his new body touches billions.

Surely this is the truth of the cross. Jesus, re-faced.

I wonder…how will the past be resurrected, in this place?

Words by Rev Andreana