78: Saint John's Bible with John Ross

Host: Brandon Nappi 

Guest: John Ross 

Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast

Explore more of the history and images from The Saint John’s Bible project here: https://saintjohnsbible.org/

Brandon:    Welcome to the Leaders Way podcast, a show for people who are not ready to give up on the world. We convene sacred conversations with luminaries, scholars, and spiritual leaders who explore the creative vision needed to lead change in our aching world. I’m Dr. Brandon Nappi, lecturer at Yale Divinity School and executive director of the Office of Transforming Leaders at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. I’m so glad you’re here.

Reverend Dr. John Ross, welcome to the Leaders Way podcast. 

John: Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here with you. I am so excited to talk about the St. John’s Bible. 

B:         We have some edition here at Yale. I’m sure you’ll tell me exactly what edition is breathtaking and beautiful, but before we dive in, to the main character in this story, I’d love to hear about the supporting character, which is you. Tell me about your road to the St. John’s Bible, your ministry, your UCC clergy person. Can we hear a little bit about your vocation story and what you’ve been up to before the work with this beautiful Bible? 

J:           Yeah, I’d be happy to tell you a little bit about that. Certainly, I am a late comer to the St. John’s Bible story, being in my role for just the last four years, but I discovered it for myself over 15 years ago. There were some pages on display in Phoenix at the Phoenix Art Museum, and I was out there with members of the church that I was serving at the time. Snowbirds, it’s tough duty to go out and visit the members that are out there in the wintertime. We went and saw some of the pages on display there, and I met a couple of the people that I work with every day now. I was blown away right out of the gate. I remember saying to my wife in the parking lot, I said, “That is the most remarkable collaboration between the human spirit and the Holy Spirit that I think I’ve ever seen,” because it took both. I was serving as the senior pastor of that church, and about five years later in 2014, on the 10th anniversary of my role there, a family ended up giving a heritage edition to the church in honor of my 10th anniversary, which to this day is still one of the most meaningful gifts or acknowledgments that I can recall from my own ministry. I had about eight more years in that role with the heritage edition, and so I’ve had a lot of time putting it to good use, at least in a religious setting.         

When I left full-time local church ministry after 30 years, St. John’s came calling because I knew a bunch of the people there. It’s only about an hour and 10 minutes outside of where I was here in the Twin Cities. I got home that night and I said to my wife, “Shil, what do you think if I become a Bible salesman?” She didn’t like that characterization, but we both really liked the narrative arc of the whole story. I’ve only served two churches across 30 years, both real outliers in the UCC and that they’re both 3,000 member-plus congregations. Being able to stay in the religious space and in Scripture daily and in and around something that I’d already known and something that is from here in Minnesota where we have now been for over 20 years and just love and will never leave, it just kind of fit. It’s turned out to be even more of a joy than I ever would have expected. It’s taken me to places and to meet people that I never would have expected to meet. I went from serving a few zip codes in the western suburbs of Minneapolis to really getting to travel the whole world with a one-of-a-kind piece. It’s been a real blessing.

B:         Many of our listeners, maybe even most of our listeners are going to know the St. John’s Bible, but some are not. We can use some images, I hope, in post-production. For someone who’s never encountered this remarkable work of art, how do you describe this for folks who are not looking at it and seeing it? This is a challenge. 

J:           Yeah, no, it is. It’s almost a daily challenge for me. I tend not to try to overreach. I say things like it’s the first handwritten, monumental Bible in over 500 years, really since the invention of the printing press. If they’re interested still and they want to hear more, then I can tell them more. But at the end of the day, that’s the storyline. It’s the first of its kind, commissioned by a Benedictine Abbey since the invention of the printing press for obvious reasons. What I get to take around the world is this fine art reproduction known as the Heritage Edition, which is a stunning piece of art in its own right. The process of creating the original manuscript spanned 15 years with 23 artists and theologians and scholars and cost several million dollars. The Heritage Edition, they commissioned the same Welsh calligrapher, Donald Jackson. They commissioned him a second time to create this fine art reproduction. The original artist signed off on every single page. They did this because one original copy in one location would not allow them to fulfill their vision for this from the very start, which was to ignite the spiritual imagination of people around the world. 

If you think of the Book of Kells, which is this incredible thing there in Ireland, you have to go there to experience it. What they managed to pull off with the Heritage Edition, as you described the one there at Yale a few minutes ago, they’ve managed to bring the St. John’s Bible to the people all around the world. And that’s at the heart of this ministry, is to bring it to people, put it to use. The original can stay behind glass and in a vault and in an exhibit, but the Heritage Edition, it’s built to be used every day.

B:         And it’s just breathtaking. We can talk later about how folks can access it and see it and maybe even visit to see one of these Heritage Editions. But I’m curious if you could tell a bit of the story. Was there one monk in particular? Was this some dinner table conversation about monks? How did this happen? And then of course, how did they ever go about choosing the artists? And what was that journey like? 

J:           Yeah, so it’s a fantastic story. And we’re always smart to have three-minute versions of stories and 30-minute versions and three-hour versions. 

B:         Oh, give me the juicy details. 

J:           I’ll give you somewhere between the three and six-minute version. How about that? Actually, the monks didn’t choose the artist. The artist chose the monks. Donald Jackson is at the heart of this whole story. The monks and the Benedictine tradition made it happen, but it was Donald Jackson’s idea from the time he was about 12 years of age. He was a gifted calligrapher and illuminator from a very early age. Eventually, he would become the scribe to the Queen of England for nearly half a century. And so he was sort of a global phenom in the whole calligraphy space. But from an early age, he dreamed about handwriting the Bible because it would be like the greatest accomplishment ever for somebody in his art form. In 1981, there was a collection of calligraphers who were getting together because their art form was under attack by the personal computer. Right? Right, of course. All of a sudden, everybody’s got a hundred fonts on their kitchen table and a home computer. So for the first time ever, they had an international gathering of calligraphers. And a woman from here in Minneapolis named Joe White, she managed to convince Donald Jackson to come and be the keynote speaker. And they did it at St. John’s because they could get really cheap space up there in the summertime when the students were gone, plenty of dorms, a big room where they could all get together. And there were several hundred of them that gathered. 

And in Donald’s telling of the story, he came to St. John’s and saw what was there. For example, the most blatant example is the Abbey Church and the huge bell banner that’s out front. The St. John’s Abbey Church and bell banner built in the early 60s was way ahead of its time. Every Catholic Church in the world looked the same and the icons and the statues and all these things. But this thing didn’t look like anything else ever; designed and built by Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer. When he saw that, he and–as he tells the story, he thought these guys might be crazy enough to commission him to handwrite the Bible. 

And so about 15 years later, after he developed a really good relationship with several of the members of the monastic community, he was having lunch with Father Eric Hollis in Chicago after some kind of a conference or meeting there. And he said in 1995, he said, “Father Eric, what are you guys going to do to mark the new millennium?” And Eric said, “I have no idea.” And Donald said, “I have an idea.” And so he said, “You guys should commission me to handwrite the Bible.” Eric brought the idea back to the whole monastic community. They spent about three years praying about it, discerning it, which sounds like a long time for us. But remember, these guys measured time in centuries. And they came back with a decision to do it and commissioned him in 1998. 

The purpose was, as I said before, to ignite the spiritual imagination of people around the world, bringing back this medieval art form. They would do it using all medieval techniques, so vellum, quills, crushed ink. And they did it not only to mark the new millennium, but also to celebrate their own 150 years in the Collegeville-St. Cloud, Minnesota area. On Ash Wednesday of 2000, Donald Jackson put first quill to vellum and wrote the words “In the Beginning,” which were not from Genesis, but from John’s Gospel, because they were going to start with the Gospels in case, God forbid, something happened to Donald and his team and they couldn’t finish it, at least they would for sure have the Gospels. But as we now know, they were able to complete the whole thing. 2011, they brought the final book, final pages to Collegeville. And along the way, as I said, they commissioned him again. 

So he was directing two major projects at the same time and doing it from Wales, where they built a special scriptorium for the whole thing. They had seven calligraphers total, kind of working around the clock. They had seven artists and illuminators around the world also. It’s pretty miraculous that they pulled this thing off. Truly, they had to lay the whole thing out according to the commission, which called for 160 original illuminations, which as we know is art that incorporates precious metals. And it had to be the whole Bible, the new Revised Standard Version, including the full Catholic content. They finished it in 2011 and here we are.

B:         Wow. Amazing. And the original is where? 

J:           The original was kind of spread out all around the world for a while because it’s not bound yet. But when COVID hit, it all came home and it hasn’t left campus up at St. John’s in Collegeville, Minnesota ever since. Tim Ternus, who’s the curator of the original manuscript, he’s in the process of figuring out how to get this original manuscript bound because nobody alive has ever done it. Nobody has done this, again, for several hundred years. So trimming, folding, stitching, binding, 1100 pages of vellum, it’s never been done. It’ll be seven volumes, just like the heritage edition is. That process is underway at this time. 

B:         Do you have some favorite images or themes that are striking for you? 

J:           The tradition that I was raised in and that I served is, I guess, maybe the best term that I prefer is just progressive and open where the God is still speaking stuff, right? We really believe that, which means there’s place for everybody at the table. I have been so pleasantly surprised by the progressive posture of this monastic community. So the themes that they built in are perfectly aligned with my own theological ideas. The practical application of the Catholic faith and the role of women and stuff like that, I struggle with it, but most of the monks up there do too. But the themes of inclusion, the themes of justice, the themes of transformation, themes of hospitality that are stated and run through the whole St. John’s Bible really resonate with me.

So illuminations like the genealogy of Jesus that incorporates not only the names that are on the page of Matthew 1, but the names of women who are not in the text. It incorporates Jewish imagery. It includes Hebrew and English, all the names in Hebrew and English, but they also made a very intentional decision to include Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, at the base of this family tree in the shape of a menorah so that on one side it was Sarah and on the other side is Hagar, mother of Ishmael, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, which is just such a significant way of saying like all means all, right? Like if we believe that all of creation is in God’s family, in the family tree of Jesus, if you will, then we have to acknowledge all. Just to be as clear about that as possible, one of the reasons this is one of my favorite illuminations is really subtle in the background of this whole candelabra/menorah-looking family tree is a real subtle pattern of the human DNA, the double helix DNA strand, which again was the artist’s way of saying everybody is in this picture. That’s pretty cool. 

B:         Were the folks who were doing the illuminations the same, folks who were doing the text itself, or was there a collection of souls who specialized? 

J:           Yeah, in some cases the artist could both script and create the art and images, a few of them, but there were seven people that did all the handwritten lettering and there were seven who did all of the art and in some cases a couple of them did both, if that makes sense. 

B:         Wow. Yeah. 

J:           And imagine in the year 2000 when the people who were giving them direction on what to draw were mostly here in Collegeville, Minnesota, the committee on illumination and text, but the artists were kind of all around the world, but mostly in the UK. So they’re corresponding by fax. They had to communicate entirely by phone and fax and because everybody’s working simultaneously, they would literally ship these priceless pieces of vellum that were maybe where just the lettering was done and they left a blank spot for the illumination. They’d put those things in FedEx tubes and ship them across the Atlantic Ocean and just hope it arrived. 

B:         FedEx is not a sponsor of the show, but maybe they will be after this.

John, I wonder if you could describe any significant challenges or breakthroughs that occurred in that process that took many, many years. 

J:           You know, there’s a difference between a theologian and an artist, right? And this whole work was a collaboration of both because Donald Jackson on his own couldn’t have created a theologically sound and a scripturally accurate depiction of different patterns. 

B:         Coherent … yeah.

J:           And the monks, they couldn’t do the art or they would have done it themselves, right? So it was a collaboration. And the first committee that they formed was called the Committee on Illumination and Text. And this is the group that gave direction to the artists. The first thing they did was choose the New Revised Standard Version. They had to decide which translation and then they had to decide which passages were going to be among the 180 original 160 original illuminations. And then they had to give some exegetical and theological background to the artists, so they would know what to draw, right? Like these are artists. They’re not theologically trained scholars.

And early on, as I understand, as the story has been told to me, it was a painful back and forth process. The CIT would send over, you know, a 25 page description on, you know, pick the verse, whatever it was. And Donald and his team would labor through these essays, all part of the whole schema. You know, they’d make their best effort to follow those directions and then send a draft back to the committee, who would say, “Yeah, you’re on the right track” or “you nailed it.” Or, “Whoa, you know, this is way out in left field. What are you doing here?”

They really struggled for a while. But as I’m told, they just got better, not only in their communication methods, but in their understanding one another and the role that they were going to each play in that dialogue. And, you know, the result is spectacular. They started with Gospels and Acts, and a lot of them will tell you they wish they had finished with that. Because they got better and better and better in their dialogue, almost being able to finish each other’s sentences by the end. 

B:         Yeah. Is there a documentary film that describes this? 

J:           The BBC did one super early as it was just beginning. So 25 years ago. And it’s good. It’s called “Illuminating the Word.” But there’s so much that has happened since then. We have not committed yet to doing the next documentary just because it’s such a massive effort, massive expense. But we will be doing that soon and maybe even through the binding process. Like, “Okay, now it’s done. Let’s tell the whole– let’s tell the rest of the story.” But we’ll see how when that happens. But there is an authoritative book called Illuminating the Word. And it’s a big thick book that tells the whole story of the creation. And that–the second edition includes the heritage edition in it. 

B:         If you’re enjoying the Leaders Way podcast, you might like to join us in person as a Leaders Way Fellow. The Leaders Way at Yale is a certificate program exploring spiritual innovation for faith leaders. The Leaders Way at Yale combines the best of divinity school, retreat, and pilgrimage. Fellows meet in person at Yale for a week over the summer, then continue their learnings and mentor groups online. You can also take an online course or workshop with us here at Yale. Our learning space for faith leaders is hopeful, practical, and imaginative. Learn more on our website at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu. Clergy and leaders from every country, denomination, and seminary background are warmly welcome to join us for all of our programs. Now, back to the show. 

So every time I’ve encountered the St. John’s Bible—at the National Cathedral, here at the Beinecke–it’s been a kind of curated experience. It’s been a kind of art museum kind of experience. But I know that folks are using this for contemplative practice. They’re using it in churches and in worship in various ways. What are you bumping into? How are folks using this amazing work of art? 

J:           Well, there’s a real span of ways in which it’s being used and put to work. So in the largest sense, for example, the Diocese of Hamilton, Ontario, has a single heritage edition, one of the 299. And they have a full-time staff position, an amazing woman named Bridget Kerr, whose full-time job it is to take it all around the diocese to the local parishes, to the schools. It lives, it resides in the cathedral, but they use it for everything from teaching children calligraphy, to high mass, and all kinds of other ways, coordinated by that woman across this huge geographical area. On the other hand, a young man who had a fascinating story about his grandmother and her collection of books that were lost in her passing, he was blessed to be able to acquire a heritage edition for himself. And he has it in his study, in his home, where he spends time with it every morning in a devotional kind of state. Eventually, he’ll donate that. But for now, he’s just enjoying it privately and with family and friends.

For me, in a Protestant church, we used it in worship. We used it in formation, education, our fourth grade Bible class, we’d always take a different volume down there. We used it for outreach, to draw people into our building who may not otherwise come, whether for the art or the sacred text itself. At the end of the day, it’s a Bible. Manifestly, it’s a Bible, any way that you can imagine using a Bible, as well as a digital expression of it. Because Yale, for example, has access to the full digital library. So a professor or a pastor or faculty member there can access those digital files to use for a class, to use for a Bible study, to use for a private quiet devotion, or Visio Divina. 

I was just meeting with a group from a Catholic church in the DC area this morning. They were asking, “How do we use it?” And I wanted to frame it in a way they can remember. So I told them, first of all, it’s contextual. Second of all, it’s creative. And third, it’s collaborative. So it’s contextual because every place is different. You can’t say, “Oh, here’s how you use it.” You say, “I don’t know. You tell me how you’re going to use it.” They have to figure it out themselves because every context is different. But it’s creative. I mean, at the end of the day, this is an unprecedented piece of art in the world. 

And we get to play off of that creativity with our own creativity. And it’s collaborative. It’s a great way. Everybody from a minister of music to the adult education minister to the head senior minister, everybody can find a way to use it and collaborate in special ways around it. 

B:         Have you been surprised at all? Do you have any stories of surprise? I mean, you must hear so many stories of encounter; I’d love you to share maybe one or two. 

J:           One that I wasn’t present for is really striking because it has a backstory. Donald Jackson was working on an illumination called Luke’s Anthology, which is like a collection of the parables. He was working on that in September of 2001, the day the towers fell. Those parables are all about being lost and found. They’re all about forgiveness. And he was literally working on the one for the prodigal son when this happened. And he had his own personal revelation that he was not going to be able to hate his way out of that moment. Hate those terrible people that did this terrible thing. He was only going to be able to forgive and love his way out of it. And so he incorporated in gold, silhouetted, world trade towers, the twin towers. It’s real subtle, in the background of the prodigal son illumination. And when they rolled that page out as an original page at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, there was a woman that saw it who had a son who perished in the towers. And when she started connecting the dots between the words of Jesus and the inclusion of this image of the towers and forgiveness and all this stuff, she just kind of fell to her knees and wept over the prospect of being able to forgive. This thing takes on a life of its own, really wherever it goes. 

There’s lots of really deep and meaningful, powerful stories like that. And then there are fun, cute ones, like the little girl who looked at the feeding of the 5,000 illumination. And she said, “Oh, that looks like my grandma’s picnic blanket.” It does kind of look like a picnic blanket, but it wraps all around the edges and in the margins of that particular page. So there really are just endless stories of the way that people experience it. Yeah. 

B:         How can folks encounter it in the world? I presume there’s some options. There’s some museums that from time to time will have exhibits, but it sounds like at the moment, all the originals are there in Minnesota. There’s the Heritage Edition. Can you lay out the various ways that folks can work with the editions? 

J:           First and foremost, they could just call me because my job now is to go to people with this thing. And I love to go and tell the story, especially I can bring a volume or two anywhere. Secondly, I would say they should visit our website, St. John’s Bible.org. There’s a little hamburger menu. There’s a brand new website. It’s terrific. It says, “See the Bible.” And under that, it lists all the locations around the world. You can actually do a searchable map, and maybe there’s one in your neighborhood. Just call them up and say, “Hey, I’d like to come see it.” There’s also a brand new experience of it called “Turning the Pages,” which is a digital experience of it. It’s unreal. Especially on a laptop or a good size screen, you can zoom in and see with such level of detail even the hair follicles on the vellum. Oh my goodness. And it’s the whole Bible. It’s all right there, and it’s free and open to the public. Anybody, it’s really good on the phone, but it’s even better on a bigger screen. Wow. I guess those would be the best ways. When in doubt, contact our office, the website, search for those locations, or just enjoy it on the screen. You can’t beat the real thing. If anybody’s in the Minneapolis area or coming through with a few extra hours, I promise you, you won’t regret making that one hour drive up to Collegeville. 

B:         Yeah. Yeah. And so when you traveled, I imagine you’re coming to churches who are praying with it, who are maybe praying about purchasing one of the volumes, or are there volumes to purchase? 

J:           Yeah, it’s all seven volumes. You acquire the whole Bible. The whole. You can’t pick and choose one of the seven. They made 299 seven-volume sets, and they’re available for acquisition by anyone, institutionally or individually. In my four years, I have mostly worked with individuals who intend to give it to an institution. Because these things are built to last. These books will last a thousand years or more. They’ll outlast all the buildings on most campuses and families that have capacity and want to leave a legacy gift have figured this out. The cost of the heritage edition right now is $200,000, and that comes with a whole bunch of things beyond just the seven volumes. But what it means is a family can put their family name on the inside of that book and know that they’re leaving a gift and a legacy that’s related to the sacred text that will last for hundreds and hundreds of years. $200,000 is a lot of money by any measure. I understand that. But for some families, that’s a pretty low level of gift to be able to leave a named gift behind. So I’ve mostly been working with individuals, but it always ends up at an institution.

B:         It’s our tradition to end our podcast with a rapid fire set of questions we call Holy Cow, because people will be so astonished to learn things about you that they might not otherwise know. Are you ready for my five? 

John, your favorite snack that people want to know. 

J:           Thelma’s ice cream sandwiches out of Des Moines, Iowa. 

B:         Wow. Okay. Road trip. Favorite way to unwind after a long day. 

J:           I’ve become a bit of a bird nerd and we have a terrific deck off the back of our house that’s way up off the ground and it’s like an aviary out there.  I love it. 

B:         Oh my goodness. That’s beautiful. Random former job before pastoring?

J:           I made donuts. Remember that commercial? It’s time to make the donuts. 

B:         It’s time to make the donuts. Yeah. That was like at Dunkin’ Donuts? 

J:           Yeah. No, it was a little private bakery in Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up. And at two o’clock in the morning, I had to go over there and burn all the hair off my hands, flipping those little donuts as they floated by. 

B:         Oh my gosh. Yeah, that’s amazing. Bad habit that you’re willing to share.

J:           I’m addicted to Facebook Marketplace.

B:         What have you purchased recently or sold recently? Oh, you name it. I think I just sold our entire outdoor patio furniture set maybe tonight. My wife will be so surprised. 

B:         Fantastic. I love it. And who plays you in the movie version of your life? 

J:           Mark Wahlberg. 

B:         Oh, wow. 

J:           I want that dude’s biceps in the worst way.

B:         Oh my gosh. Well, John, it’s been just such a blessing to have you here. And thank you for the work you do. And hopefully some folks will get excited and come and encounter this amazing work of art and of course the spirit that animates all of it. 

J:           Yes, indeed. My pleasure to be with you. 

B:         Thank you for joining us today on the Leaders Way podcast, a show for people who are not ready to give up on the world. We hope you found the episode expansive and nourishing. If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform. Your support helps us to continue bringing you sacred conversations with luminaries, scholars, and spiritual leaders who are dedicated to transforming our world. For more information about our guests and to catch up on past episodes, visit our website at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu. Follow the show on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast to stay updated on future episodes and events. Until next time, I’m Dr. Brandon Nappi walking with you as you lead with courage, wisdom, and compassion.