Category: Articles

Rev. Bror Erickson

Ok, so it wasn’t a bushel that Pastor Steve Olson was looking through, but a Janitor’s closet in 2007 when he stumbled upon the painting “Christus Consolator” that is now on permanent display at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A curious find indeed, could this really happen in small town Dassel, MN? Pastor Olson was just looking at different ways the church could expand its Sunday School program as he cleaned up the closet and noticed this a stack of posters in the corner, underneath them was an old deteriorated painting of Jesus, a light of compassion and a face of mercy upon life’s downtrodden in the darkness, and a curious signature, “Ary Scheffer.”

Pr. Olson had a feeling he was looking at an original after googling the name Ary Scheffer. But how could such a famous artist for the 19th century French royal court find its way to a janitor’s closet, when its sister once graced the Lutheran Chapel of Princess Mecklenburg-Schwerin in the palace of Versailles? Van Gogh himself was known to have kept a second rate copy of this painting among his most treasured possessions! This was the skepticism, Pastor Olson met with wherever he turned in the art world trying to find someone who might know what to do with it, where to go to get it authenticated, maybe restored.

Ary Scheffer was inspired to paint “Christus Consolator” by the words of Christ in Luke 4:18. A paraphrase of this verse is inscribed on the frame of the primary version now found in Amsterdam’s Historical Museum. It reads: “I have come to heal those who are brokenhearted and to announce to the prisoners their deliverance; to liberate those who are crushed by their chains.” It was the subject matter of the compassion of Christ on a slave that caught the attention of the prominent Bostonian abolitionist and champion of the poor, William Story Bullard who would have visited Ary’s studio in 1851. It changed hands a couple of times after that before Pastor Nordling acquired it as a pastor in Connecticut, before taking a call to serve in Dassel, MN in 1929. When he died in 1931 the painting was left as a gift to Gethsemane Lutheran Church, but after years of deterioration due to less than ideal climate conditions the painting was taken down and left in the janitor’s closet only to be discovered by Pastor Olson decades later.

When Pastor Olson finally prevailed over the skepticism of the art world to look at the painting appraiser, Patrick Noon’s jaw dropped. The skepticism and wariness of a two hour drive from the cultured city of Minneapolis to the boonies of Dassel disappeared as he recognized that here he was beholding an icon of Western and Christian culture that had inspired the sympathies of Christians around the world to put an end to the slave trade, and have compassion on their fellow man as Christ showed mercy to the world with his death and resurrection. Here, hiding in a janitor’s closet, had been a sublime sermon in paint, a gospel light that needed to shine.

Today, those who are interested can visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art and see this wonderful painting once hiding in a janitor’s closet but now shining for all to see. Patrick Noon who authenticated the painting has written many articles on the painting one of the best can be found here. It was during Holy Week of 2009 Pastor Olson was invited for the unveiling and overwhelmed at the opportunity to share the gospel with worldwide media explaining, “sometimes we have treasures hidden in a closet and have forgotten they were there, this could not be more true for us than the gospel as depicted in this painting that we too often take for granted.”

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM. 


Rev. Bror Erickson

“Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” = Matthew 16:24 (ESV)

Another Stanley Spencer painting “Christ Carrying the Cross” echoes El Greco’s famous illustration by the same title, but with more narration as it shows Christ willfully, almost cheerfully carrying the cross through Spencer’s hometown of Cookham in place of Jerusalem as the people absent mindedly follow Christ by going about their own business of carrying their crosses of vocation. The carpenters carry their ladders go to work as Christ goes about his work.

When the Tate Museum applied the title “Christ Bearing His Cross” Stanley explained his displeasure with the title saying it conveys “A sense of suffering which was not my intention. I particularly wished to convey the relationship between the carpenters behind him carrying the ladders and Christ in front carrying the cross. Each doing their job of work and doing it just like workmen… Christ was not doing a job or his job, but the job.” (Source: gresham.ac.uk)

Perhaps this isn’t always what we think of when we think of picking up our crosses and following him. And yet there is in this a profound understanding of the meaning of Christ’s cross for the Christian life. It’s not about you and what you do for him, but about him and what he has done for you. Christians are often dissatisfied with this sort of thing. It belongs to the core of our sinful nature, the Old Adam within us that we want to make Christianity about us. For instance as Rachel Evans talks about what the Millennials want from the church, “We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers (Source: religion.blogs.cnn.com)

This, however, is not how the Christian becomes holy or lives a holy life. Rather it is Christ who sanctifies us, that is makes us holy, in the washing of the water with the word. (Eph. 5) Our holiness is not about a challenge, but the fruits of forgiveness, it is the new life that comes when we are resurrected with Christ to walk in the newness of life that comes in baptism. (Rom. 6:4) Then our crosses are not found in self chosen works of monasticism, self-denial, social activism or eco-tourism. No, our crosses are found in the midst of our vocations, doing the work God has called us to do in the midst of the communities in which he has placed us. Our work as fathers and mothers, as children, students, professors, carpenters and auto mechanics is the holy work God has given us to do, the crosses we bear in which there is no glory to be seen or beheld, the pain of the cross often nothing more than the mere tediousness of the ho hum work, and yet by virtue of Christ doing the job this work is blessed by God who works through our hands to take care of his creation often as hidden in these crosses as Christ himself is hidden behind the cross in this painting.

Of course, there are times in life when perhaps one is blessed to feel the pain of his cross more acutely than at other times. Jesus promises us that this world will give us tribulation as it gave him tribulation. “It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. (Matthew 10:25 (ESV) Yet, there is no promise here that the tribulation a Christian experiences will be any different from that which the world will give to all, either. But at these times the Christian is given opportunity to take heart in Christ who has overcome the world, who carries the burden of the cross willingly and bids “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)) We don’t have to make life harder than it already is, in order to be good Christians. We only need to let Christ do the job.

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM. 


Rev. Bror Erickson

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” – I Peter 2:21

Fernando Botero (1932-pesent) perhaps most famous for his paintings of half-naked and rotund women looking at themselves in the bathroom mirror, turns his attention, style and skill to more serious topics while wrestling with his own faith in “Via Crucis”, a series of 27 paintings and 34 drawings depicting the Stations of the Cross. In this particular station, “The Flogging of Christ”, Fernando depicts a Colombian police officer beating Jesus as he carries his cross.

“The most Colombian of Colombian artists,” Botero became the most beloved artist of the art world in the mid to late 20th century, and has been going strong throughout the 21st century as he has turned his attention to more serious subject matter. A Botero is instantly recognizable, and they are found everywhere. For instance, Botero’s fat squatty statues outside the Israel Museum invite pilgrims to crack a smile and enjoy life just blocks away from the Via Della Rosa, the actual site of Christ’s passion that inspired “Via Crucis”. Like encountering old friends, his fat and happy remakes of classical masterpieces greet you from the walls of the Fine Arts Museum in Houston. These are the paintings that cause the name of Botero to conjure up bold colors, and simple yet sophisticated caricatures of Latin American life. His love for life and Colombia, his hometowns of Medellin and Bogota bleed through his paint, allowing his style to transcend cultures and inspire a cosmopolitan patriotism.

This love for life, so often shown in the humor of earlier paintings, shows itself here in the humiliation of Christ being beaten by a police officer. Amidst the beautiful strangeness of proportion characteristic to Botero the details of a Latin Jesus comes to life in bright red blood, and a bold brown and thorny crown. The officer in green and a mustache reminiscent of Hitler, towers over Jesus ready to deliver another blow with his night stick. It’s a powerful presentation of the violence familiar to Fernando himself.

Botero’s hometown of Medellin gave birth to some of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century, men like Pablo Escobar who started the Medellin Cartel, women like Griseldo Blanco who terrorized the streets of Miami throughout the 80s. Columbia broke into civil war as the government tried to put an end to cocaine trafficking with the help of U. S. military leadership, and FARC Rebels tried to bring about the Cuban Revolution in South America. Though many of these threats have been put down to greater or lesser degrees the conflict continues in many areas. Thrown into the mix was the popularity of “Liberation Theology” among the poor farmhands in the rural areas. A theological system known now to be a KGB invention (Source: cruxnow.com), Latin American Liberation Theology sought to justify communist revolution. Police and government crackdown against the church and revolutionaries could often be overzealous, the people often caught up in the violence. Such alignment of the church with various political causes to the right and to the left often causes confusion among those who would believe. When Botero says he is “at times a believer, at times an agnostic” (Source: artitude.eu a person can sympathize with him the way he sympathizes here with victims of police brutality.

The police belong to the good order and authority that God has placed on earth to “punish those who do evil, and praise those who do good.” (1 Peter 2:14) These are the words of Peter, written at a time when persecution of the Bride of Christ was already known within the Roman Empire. At times the words of scripture concerning obedience to the civil government, and other authorities, indeed even to slave masters, strikes us today as naïve. Of course, Paul and Peter, the rest of the disciples who saw the flogging and crucifixion of Christ knew that government could overstep its bounds, that evil people could inhabit office and use it for evil ends, that the government sometimes also praised those who do evil, and punished those who did good. Paul himself once led the persecution with civil blessing until Christ chastised him for kicking against the goads. Goad being a term used for a stick used to prod cattle along in a stockyard. They were not naïve when it came to the corruption of power and authority, nor did they believe that government could not ever be resisted, as they themselves obeyed God rather than man. (Acts 5:28-29) And this is what Peter has in mind as he comforts his flock saying, “when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:20-25) For it is the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls who says to us, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12) For when they persecute you for his names sake, they kick against the goads of Christ their Lord and Savior who carried the cross also for them, and calls them to repentance.

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM.