Art to Heart Communion

J.M.W. Turner: The Fighting "Temeraire" being towed to her Last Berth to be Broken Up

©2002 by Jeff Dugan

It’s hard for an American to understand the emotion that a 19^th century Englishman could attach to a warship.  But then, we’ve never been threatened with invasion by enemy forces and protected so valiantly by one like the ship in this painting.  This is the “Fighting Temeraire,” which was no ordinary battleship in Turner’s time.  It was the hero of the battle of Trafalgar, where Nelson defeated Napoleon.  The Temeraire sailed between the enemy forces and Nelson’s ship and absorbed the brunt of the French cannon fire, while Nelson was protected.  By the end of the battle, the Temeraire had nevertheless taken two French ships captive. 

Here Turner paints the scene as the glorious old ship is towed to its final berth, where it will be broken apart for scrap lumber.  The sunset evokes the nostalgia of the end of the day – the end of the Temeraire – and the end of sailing ships altogether, which were being replaced by machines like the ugly, black, smoke-belching tug that tows the Temeraire.  It’s a scene that heralds the exchange of an age of grace, beauty, and mystery, for the unproven promises of fire and smoke, machines, and technology. 

It’s not a faithful likeness.  We know that in the real scene, the great ship had already been stripped of everything of value, and all her beauty.  

But as the world rushes headlong after the seduction of anything and everything new, Turner restores her masts and her grandeur, and parades her past us one last time as if to say, “Remember.”

Remember, when cold calculation fails to nourish your spirit, that there was a day when grace and beauty filled the earth.

Remember, as you seek certainty in the promises of the future, the faith that secured your safety in the past.

That’s what God does for us with the story of the journey through the wilderness.  He takes ancient history and revives it for us, as full of His majesty and glory as if it were yesterday, and parades it past us one more time as if to say, “Remember.”

Remember, when you find yourself adrift and without bearings, that there was a time when a people lost in the wilderness found salvation not by their own means, but by trusting only in the God who had delivered them in the past.

And so today, we emulate that ancient tribe in remembering the moment of our own deliverance.  We remember that it is Christ’s blood, and not our own supposedly pure hearts that saves us; it is the sacrifice of His body, not our own labor, that carries us home.

Let us gather at the table, and remember.