Sunday Worship

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Sunday Worship: Heaven is a noisy place

Heaven is a noisy place

BBC Radio 4 - Sunday Worship, Heaven is a noisy place

Neil MacGregor and Rev Lucy Winkett explore the religious art of the National Gallery.

After months of Covid and confinement, Neil MacGregor and the Revd Lucy Winkett consider how community has traditionally been fostered by close contact with the saints.

The former director of the National Gallery and British Museum, Neil MacGregor, and the Rev Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James' Church, Piccadilly, find spiritual inspiration in the religious art of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery.

After months of Covid and confinement, today's service considers how community — within society and across time —  has traditionally been fostered by close contact with the saints.   

For centuries the saints gave shape to the calendar and cohesion to communities. They helped individuals in distress, constantly affirming that we are never alone. They made the universal local and individual — and they were flawed humans, just like us.   Virtually everybody had their own name saint, as did every trade, town and community. Looking at these paintings is like joining a really good party: You immediately recognise a lot of the guests, wearing not name tags, but symbols — and you know what bits of life they can help you with. They are shown with realism or fantasy, with admiration or humour, as people we have come to know well.
 
Crivelli’s Madonna of the Swallow  is an intact Renaissance altarpiece. In its small, lower scenes, it shows the love of God among fallen humanity. On top of the altar perches a swallow — who builds her nest in the temple (Psalm 84) and who, for centuries symbolised the Incarnation, as out of the dirt and mud of her nest, she soars to heaven.  The community of saints includes the natural world, as well as the living and the dead. 
 
Finally, the saints are shown by Fra Angelico making music in heaven with all sorts of instruments — even bagpipes. Heaven is being with other people — and heaven is a noisy place.

Producer: Andrew Earis.

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