(Note:
This blog entry is based on the text for “Pictures at Your Exhibition”, originally
shared on September 16, 2021. It was the 149th video for our YouTube
Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
I visited the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont the other day. We are fortunate to have scores of excellent art museums and galleries in the LA area. The Getty Center and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in LA, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino are just a few of many places we can easily go to view the literally world-class collections of art on display.
What does art have to do with our expression
of the Christian faith? Today, we’re going to find out.
Ross Douthat is a conservative who was a
senior editor of The Atlantic magazine and is now a columnist for The New York
Times. He writes about how most of American Christianity’s current wounds have
been self-inflicted in his 2012 book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation
of Heretics.
Toward the end of the book, he observes that Christianity has been in
similar decline several times in its history and two things have brought it
back: holy living and the arts.
Christianity has been a patron of the arts for most of its history.
Think about the times when the church has been the strongest and most
influential in any society, and it will parallel a time when its support for
the arts has been the strongest.
Which was the cause, and which was the effect? Was there more art
because Christianity ran deeper or was Christianity deeper because there was
more Christian art? Hard to say. Correlation does not equal causation, as they
say.
But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that artistic expressions
and the renewal of the church can go hand-in-hand, but not because the Church
is the patron. The patron is just the purse. How that happens is the work of
God.
Renewal can come with art when the Christian artist uses the medium in
which he or she works to make the truest statement possible. The artist goes to
the most real part of themselves to make a statement. The art is an expression
of the artist’s faith.
I remember an old story about a superstar actor who took part in a
worship service built around the 23rd Psalm, the one that
begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” He rose and delivered
a dramatic and nuanced reading of the psalm. When he had finished, the congregation
burst into applause, a rare occurrence in that church.
Next, a beloved Sunday School teacher of many years walked slowly to the
lectern and recited the psalm. There was silence when she finished, except for
the sounds of weeping within the congregation.
Afterward, the actor asked the pastor, “Why do you think it was that,
when I read the psalm people applauded, but when she read the same psalm,
people wept?”
The pastor answered, “Because you know the psalm, but she knows the
Shepherd.”
Christian art does not have to be representational, that is to depict
Bible scenes, or events from the history of the Church, or particular social
values. The artist doesn’t have to be a Christian. That’s not the power of it. The
power is in what is revealed to you.
Art, in this sense, is not so much seen as experienced. It may result in
an epiphany. It may not always be a pleasant experience. It may broaden what it
means for you to be human.
Christian art doesn’t need to show you an external picture of an event to
be Christian. It is Christian art because the Holy Spirit speaks to you through
it, because it resonates with what you already “know” of the presence of God
within you.
The work of the Christian artist, in this sense, is like what 16th
century church reformer Martin Luther said about being a Christian
businessperson when he said that the Christian shoemaker doesn’t do his(sic)
duty by putting little crosses on his(sic) shoes, but by making good shoes,
because God appreciates good craftsmanship.
I would like to think that what Luther meant by “good” craftmanship is that
the shoemaker is fulfilling his or her calling from God, his or her vocation.
He is doing what God has called, equipped, and sent him or her to do.
Artists often speak of creativity as a “flow”.
The Holy Spirit, God’s personal ongoing presence for good in the world,
is described in both the Old and the New Testament of the Bible as “streams of
living water” (Jeremiah 2:11-13; John 4:5-14; John 7:37-39 are examples). The
Holy Spirit wells up from within us. And it flows.
Author Ernest Hemmingway once said that writing is easy. You just sit
down at your typewriter and open a vein. OK, that’s a very “Ernest Hemmingway”
thing to say, but is that not the creative process. You start with a
starting-point and the rest flows.
But you never know what will be heard or through what medium the Holy
Spirit will speak. How often did someone come out of a worship service, shake
my hand, look with earnest and grateful eyes and say, “Oh pastor, when you said
[that thing] about [that thing], it was exactly what I needed to hear today”
and I had no recollection of preparing or saying anything like what they had
heard. I think that that can be the work of the Holy Spirit.
The experience of the Christian in the presence of art is like what
Christian philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard said about Christian
worship, that the question to ask oneself after worship is not, “What did I get
out of that?” But “How did I do?”
How open is the worshiper to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and to
act in accord with it?
It’s not a matter of sophistication, but an openness and willingness to
hear the voice of God.
The experience of a Christian standing before a work of art is like one
of the things Jesus spoke of when he said, in Matthew 13:10-16:
10 Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in
parables?” 11 He answered, “To you it has been
given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not
been given. 12 For to those who have, more will be
given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even
what they have will be taken away. 13 The reason I
speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing
they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ 14 With
them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says:
‘You will indeed listen, but never understand,
and you will indeed look, but never perceive.
15 For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look
with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.’
16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
What do we see when we look at a work of art? What do we see when see
experience the natural world?
The answer is found in who we are and in what we bring to the act of
seeing
We see the world through the lens of the active living presence of God within
us forming and inspiring us.
It is our truest selves. Seeing is a form of believing but believing is
a way of seeing by we who see through the eyes of faith.
How open are we when we stand before a work of art, and to what end? Is
art just one experience after another, or is it leading somewhere?
God the Holy Spirit is feeding you and guiding you toward the end of
history.
Open your heart, strip yourself of everything but the voice of God to
fearlessly see and hear what God reveals. Be blessed by that act of viewing and
turn toward God.
But our lives are given meaning right now.
Our lives are, themselves, the works of art of a creative and redeeming
God. God, who created us for a living relationship with God, opens our hearts
not just to experience art but to see and to live in that art. He came to die
to restore the relationship that we rejected. In this is our living witness to
the reconciling and transformative work of Jesus Christ for us on the cross. In
this is life.
What are the pictures at your exhibition? What do you show to others of
yourself, your faith? What stories do you tell? What of your inner life do you reveal?
What has the Holy Spirit revealed to you through artistic media? That is your
witness.
May your art be the media through which others see God and come to a
living visible relationship with God.
The web site for Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College says, “The
Benton Museum of Art originates lively and innovative art experiences that
foster creative and critical thinking.”
Creative and critical thinking are at the heart of the Christian faith,
and both are in short supply at this point in the pandemic. But they are two of
the means that will get us through it.
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