Many people in churches this week will hear the stories read of those who first saw Jesus and knew that He was the saviour sent to earth. But what about those who knew Him on earth, walked with Him, saw Him die and rise again, then went on to live waiting for Him to return?
In the church calendar, the third day of Christmas happens to also be the feast of St John. Among other things, John is remembered as the only one of the apostles not to be martyred. Instead he died an old man, imprisoned on the island of Patmos. It was there that he received his visions of the end that are recorded in the book of Revelation. But I love the way that Botticelli’s painting of him shows only the external isolation and suffering of John while he writes. I discovered this painting through a poem by Claude Wilkinson in his latest book, Soon Done with the Crosses. Subverting Auden’s famous declaration of “the old masters” that “about suffering they were never wrong”, Wilkinson decries how so many of the artworks of John on Patmos make him look serene in his idyllic isolation. Only Botticelli, Wilkinson declares, gets it right. He’s right. The image is stark and desolate. John is old, bent over, recording his vision yet in a place as far from the vision as he could be. My children, seeing this painting, asked, “Where are the bars? How can he be in prison without bars?” The question was more poignant than they knew; though one boy quickly found the answer – “He’s on an island with no boat” – the question remains. Many of us are in prison with no bars. On one hand, we might be more imprisoned than we realise; on the other, more free than we know. And many among us might be bound in chains that we cannot see yet could be fastening without knowing.
An African American who draws much inspiration from the spirituals of the slavery era, Wilkinson’s poetry is often concerned with the waiting periods God’s people have known. The title of his new book comes from a spiritual longing for the day when we will “soon [be] done with the crosses” of this life. John seems a fitting Christmas season figure to help us with this, whatever our crosses. His gospel and his first epistle declare the wonder of God made flesh, and he saw the glorified Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration and in his Patmos visions. Yet he still died imprisoned and waiting. Like John, we have celebrated the glorious truth of Immanuel; like John, we know He will come back to be with us forever. Like Wilkinson, we know that we will soon be done with the crosses and chains of this life. Yet like all the saints, we wait. May the God of grace who sustained John on Patmos sustain us as we wait too.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Claude Wilkinson’s Soon Done with the Crosses is published in the Poiema Poetry Series edited by D.S. Martin, Cascade Books, 2023.
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