By Rev. James Loughran, SA
The graphic design or artwork for the 2025 celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is a creation Howard Trant and the helpful team of Fuzati, along with input from the staff of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute. Its primary theme is a visual invitation to resurrection. That invitation is offered to those who can answer “yes” to the question, “Do you believe?”
Who asks this question? The Lord Jesus asks this of his friend Martha, who has offered Jesus hospitality several times in Bethany, outside of Jerusalem, along with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus. Scripture assures us that Jesus loved the three of them with a special bond of friendship. To them he was akin to the three visitors to Abraham in the Book of Genesis. They recognized him not only as a messenger of God, but as Messiah. To him, they were representative of the whole body of humanity who were willing to accept him as he was, itinerant and poor, but full of the grace and truth of God.
Now Lazarus is dead, and Jesus arrives to a scene of mourning and weeping. It is a scene of hopelessness and resignation to the idea that death is the end of life. One must give up to death, which conquers every life, and move on as survivors accepting the human condition. Martha exhibits a little disappointment in Jesus’ tardy arrival. She says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus assures her that Lazarus will be raised. Martha retorts that she knows he will be raised at the end of time, at the resurrection of the dead. Jesus’s words to her are direct, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus then looks at her and asks, “Do you believe this?” Martha responds, “I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the one coming into the world.” The story continues with Jesus raising Lazarus and commanding him to come out of the tomb, and with the words, “unbind him and let him go.”
The community of Bose in Italy is an ecumenical community of men and women who work and pray together in a semi-monastic tradition. They were asked by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity to arrive at a theme in the autumn of 2023 that would align with the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, held in 325. That Council, in a truly ecumenical spirit, gave the successive generations of Christians a common confession of the faith in the Nicene Creed, perhaps the most significant symbol of Christian faith after Jesus himself and the Scriptures. The Council also proscribed various “canons” or agreements on Church discipline. One of these was a common date for Easter. As a happy coincidence both Western and Eastern celebrations for Easter in 2025 will be on April 20. So, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity takes on a singular significance in 2025.
In determining the graphic design for the posters, prayer cards and worship bulletins for use in the United States for 2025, due consideration was given to the anniversary of the Council. However, the use of Jesus’s question, “Do you believe this?” takes place during the resurrection of Lazarus. Thought moved from a static rendition of the Council or the Creed towards what they ultimately imply. It is highly important for Christians to agree on our beliefs, so that we might bear a unified witness to the world. Howard Trant and the rest of those involved in the creative process agreed that a visual representation of what the response of God would be to confessing those beliefs would draw interest.
The act of saying ‘yes” to the question, “Do you believe?”, as with Martha, means we trust the promise of the Lord Jesus because we confess he is the Messiah. He is the resurrection and the life. If we live and believe in him we will never die. This act of faith is a living out of the confession of beliefs. The response of Jesus is invitation. As he was raised from the dead and conquered death, death has no more power over us. Thus, the graphic displays an open tomb from the inside, with the light of the Divine One inviting us to leave death behind and ascend the steps and go to him.
The light is powerful in this depiction. It is attractive, almost mesmerizing. It is warm, loving and inviting. Who would not want to walk out of the darkness, out of the dankness and coldness of death?
The question, “do you believe?” is also powerful. Some of us, like the Apostle Thomas, might say, “seeing is believing.” The drama of this piece is that it quite clearly depicts what is being offered if we say ”yes.” We always celebrate Easter with great joy in its promise that gives us hope. No longer do we have to accept that death is the end, as the mourners do at Bethany. There truly is an eternal kingdom. The door of the tomb was opened forever by Jesus. He awaits us.
As we commemorate the beginning of a common and uniting statement of beliefs, proclaimed first at Nicaea, we Christians are drawn together as one body. We are even more deeply united in what those beliefs promise for ourselves and those who come to believe because of our common witness.