Glory to God for the child born among us,

a gift to be nurtured and cared for,

a guest in a world of toil and tears

bringing hopefulness, life through brokenness.

May we, as on Emmaus Road,

recognise him still

in smell of baking bread, in fruits of love.

For we have a dying and a rising friend

and his sap is in us.

Sarah Middleton © TMCP 2004

(used with permission)

Jyoti Sahi: Dalit Madonna, from the Methodist Modern Art Collection © TMCP. Used with permission.

This painting by the Anglo-Indian artist Jyoti Sahi (b.1944) is called The Dalit Madonna. Its image of mother encircling unborn child with the round curves of her body deliberately echoes an iconic Indian symbol – the grinding stone. Grain is thrown into the hollow of a ‘Mother Stone’ before a smaller ‘Baby Stone’ is rotated repeatedly around it, grinding, milling flour. Much else in the painting speaks of grain. Great sheaves of wheat curve round the woman; in her billowing trousers we see ears of corn; the sickle moon hints at harvest. 

‘Dalit’ means ‘broken’. This ‘Dalit Madonna’ will be broken when she’s separated from her child by birth but then later, much more savagely by death. But just as there can be no bread without breaking down grain into flour, Sahi signals the new life made possible through this brokenness of mother and son, new life underlined by Sarah Middleton in her accompanying prayer.

The same brokenness also comes to life in the shared meal we celebrate on this Maundy Thursday. As Jesus breaks bread at the Last Supper, he looks ahead to his brokenness on the cross and gives us a way of being fed by him, offers us the broken bread of himself in which ‘all our hungers are satisfied’.

Listen below to Pange Lingua, an ancient hymn of the church in honour of “these holy mysteries”. The plainsong’s timeless beauty reflects the enduring nature of today’s life-giving gift.