When we were growing up in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, my father went to a farmer’s market around Easter time, and discovered an amazing form of art: incredibly decorated eggs. They were bright, intricate, symmetrical – full of vibrancy and delicacy. They weren’t jewel-encrusted, but to my father’s eyes, they were as beautiful as a Faberge egg. So he bought one, took it home, and tried to duplicate it himself. I remember him learning how to make a tiny hole and blow the yolk through so the egg would be hollow, and then paint those intricate designs all over them. He made several such eggs, and they were never as bright as the original eggs, but they were definitely works of art, and they lasted a long time.
Where were those finely decorated eggs from? A country I’ve been hearing a lot about lately: Ukraine. Every day I hear about the atrocities going on in Ukraine, but whenever I hear that name, I think of the phrase “Ukrainian easter egg” – and I can picture that exquisite beauty. You should Google that phrase yourself.
Hearing the news about that country and seeing the images of destruction leaves me heartbroken every day. I hear about the five million refugees who have had to flee their homes, and I wonder, “What did they bring with them?” In some cases, I have heard, it’s just the clothes on their back. But I also wonder, did anyone bring any of those beautiful eggs with them to their new land? Perhaps not … but wherever those Ukrainian people end up, there is one thing I’m sure of: they will start decorating eggs again. After all, we discovered them in Canada, 5,000 miles away. Hopefully Ukrainians will keep painting those eggs, wherever they end up in the world – and as sad as evacuations and forced migrations are, there is at least the benefit of spreading the art.
This makes me think of a talk I saw on YouTube by artist Brian Eno. I could say music producer Brian Eno, or philosopher or many other labels (people tend to use lots of hyphens when describing what he is), but I’ll just say he is an artist in the broadest sense of the world, and he would certainly enjoy all the art that is currently on display in our church this weekend. His talk was entitled “What Is Art Actually For?” and it was given at a London architecture school in 2012 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIVfwDJ-kDk). One of the things that worries him is the cutting of funding to art schools in general, which has forced them to try to answer that question: what is art for? Why is it valuable? In his talk he brought out several screwdrivers, and pointed out that the “business end” of a screwdriver is always the same – made out of metal, with the same shape. But the farther you get from the ‘business end,’ the more stylized and artistic it gets – more colors and variation in shapes. So he proposes the idea that “Art is everything you don’t have to do,” the nonfunctional part of life, the part that is not related to what you must do to stay alive. As he puts it, “You have to move, but you don’t have to dance. You have to speak, but you don’t have to make poetry. You have to make sound, but you don’t have to make music.” Art is the nonessential side of life. The epitome of a nonfunctional, “useless” object is a sculpture. Perhaps you’ve thought about that in terms of buying things: if you have any money left over after buying a new furnace, you can afford to buy some pottery or embroidery or a sculpture.
The trouble with that idea, Eno points out, is that it doesn’t hold up. You would think that people who have to spend all their time focusing on survival, people who don’t have any resources to spare, wouldn’t waste their time with art. But they do. There is no society on earth, no matter how poverty-stricken or war-torn or distressed, that doesn’t make art, doesn’t sing, doesn’t dance. If everyone everywhere does it, it’s not a luxury: it is a core part of life.
Did they make art in Biblical times? There are references to jewelry, and dancing, and music, and weaving, and making fine clothing, and of course, countless descriptions of architecture. Take something like pottery: yes, it is as functional as a screwdriver – you needed vessels to pour things in. But were they artistically done? Were their regional styles that differed from how other people made the same functional objects? Of course. Or, to put it another way: were they expressive? Jesus’ own father, Joseph, was a carpenter, which I imagine means making necessary things for people’s survival – but carpenters can also be expressive and artistic.
Rather than debate what is art and what isn’t, I will focus on a word that is usually associated with art: the word “expression.” All art, I think you can say, expresses something. You could philosophically debate whether jewelry is universally essential, but I would say this: self-expression, in whatever form, is essential to life. So rather than looking at what particular art forms exist in the Bible, I want to delve into the role of expression in the Bible.
Take, for example, Psalm 150, the very last of the Psalms. The word “expression” does not appear in it, but the entire Psalm is an instruction to praise the Lord, and lists many ways you can do that: the sound of the trumpet, the harp, the lyre, the timbrel, dancing, strings, pipe, the clash of cymbals, and finally breath itself: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” And you can think of the act of breathing itself as like those screwdrivers – God gave us lungs so that we can inhale and exhale life-giving air. But clearly he also gave us lungs so that we could speak, and sing, and shout, and cry. We have tear ducts so that the surface of our eye doesn’t try out, … but also so that we have a means of expressing sorrow and joy, and those expressions appear throughout the whole Bible. The word “cry” might not mean tears streaming down your cheeks: it can mean making a loud wailing sound with your voice, and there are references to crying in almost every book of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. In Mark 15, it says that the last thing Jesus did before he died was to cry out. If you need to cry out, but don’t want to use your voice, you can do it through painting, or dance, or sculpture, or any other form of art.
So it is easy to recognize that self-expression is an essential part of human existence, and one of the great things about us as a species is that we have figured out so many ways to do it. Since Earth Day was last Friday, think about how the earth itself and all the forms of nature in it are expressions of the divine. The earth is the Lord’s work of art, and so much human art mimics nature.
Let’s return to Psalm 150 and look deeper at the why question. The whole Psalm is an instruction to praise the Lord. To some people, this sounds odd: if the Bible comes from God, why is He always telling us to praise Him? Is He that insecure? Can He not last a day without hearing billions of people telling Him how great He is?
This is, of course, a misunderstanding of the purpose of praising God. It is not for God’s benefit: it is for ours. Some people keep a gratitude journal, jotting down things they are thankful for every day. Some of those people do not even believe in God. But they still see a tangible benefit from keeping a journal like that: it is a reminder of how good life is. It fills their heart with joy. Perhaps in the journal they express gratitude to particular people, and maybe they’ve said thank you directly to those people and maybe they didn’t – but it is still good for the writer’s own heart to acknowledge that thanks. Like an actor who wins an Oscar and they begin the acceptance speech with thanks – it may be nice for the people being thanked to hear their name on television, but it is perhaps even more important for the person winning the award. It reminds them that they did not do it alone. It prevents their ego from swelling dangerously large. And ultimately, it solidifies the connections between people.
It seems to be related to another kind of conversation that pops up throughout the Bible: instances of the Lord asking people questions. The first such question in the Bible occurs in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit. God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” If you have a simplistic understanding of what’s going on, this makes as little sense as God telling us that he needs to be praised every day. God is omniscient – he sees everything, he knows everything. But Adam can easily hide from him? No, that’s not what is going on. God is not asking because He doesn’t know what has happened. God is asking for Adam’s sake, not His own sake.
Likewise, there are countless other stories in the Bible where God asks questions that He must already know the answer to. When He took the bodily form of Jesus, this continued: Jesus often asked questions that were some variation of, “What are you doing?” Why did He ask that? Is it because He is as ignorant as the rest of us, and doesn’t know what’s happening most of the time?
No, it is because He wants us to see the situation; wants us to look at our actions and acknowledge the reality of the situation. Often, it is not until we say it out loud that we realize what is going on in our own hearts. Could God just say to Adam, “I saw what you did; I heard the whole conversation; you can’t hide anything from me.” He could have, but that is not how God teaches – by just telling. We must reach him halfway. In the famous prophecy from Isaiah, he is called “Wonderful Counselor.” Any good counselor will tell you: you won’t get far with a patient by just telling them what to do all the time. You must start with the question: “How do you feel about that?” So, as the infinitely wise counselor, God is always asking us that question: “How do you feel?”
And today, we can be grateful that he has given us so many different ways to answer it – so many channels, so many art forms, so many different means of expression. And when we express ourselves through any of those means, we learn to see what is true in ourselves. Sometimes we don’t know how we are feeling until we paint a picture, or write a song, or write a poem.
Art is a conduit – a channel through which God flows through us back to Himself. If you talk to artists about where their art came from, or how it feels to produce art, they will frequently use that conduit metaphor. Instead of being explicitly religious, some will talk about “the Muse” or “inspiration” – but there is usually a recognition that it comes from somewhere else, and the artist is just the channel, the pipe through which it flows. By flowing out to others, it connects everyone to the source. It is a way for everyone to revel in the beauty of nature, the beauty of life. The best part is, every time that essence flows through a different person, it comes out differently than if another person had been the conduit. Art shows us that there is infinite variation in how beauty can be expressed. We all contribute a piece. Even if you say “I am not artistic; I can’t paint or sing, I’ve never made jewelry” you are still an expression of the beauty of life. The way you dress, the way you set up your home, the way you do the most menial of tasks, the way you talk to others, the way you show love to friends and family – they are all artistic expressions. And like any form of art, they are all ways to help others connect to God.
Amen.
READINGS
Old Testament reading: Psalm 150
Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
New Testament reading: Mark 15:33-37
At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
Reading from Swedenborg: Secrets of Heaven #1869
How much a single word of Scripture contains has been shown to me by a revelation of people’s individual ideas. Surprising to say, ideas can be revealed so vividly in the other world that they actually become visible and take on a shape, as if they were images in a painting. One individual whose ideas were revealed in this way was a person who had lived a life of charity, or mutual love, and had taken pleasure in the Word during his time in the world. When his thoughts were revealed, countless beautiful objects appeared, bringing with them a delight and pleasure that touched the heart. I learned that these visible manifestations have further inward layers that can be revealed, and when they are revealed, sights still more beautiful and delightful present themselves, bringing happiness itself with them. All angelic ideas are like this, because the Lord himself lays them open.