I usually like happy things...

First off- I want to apologize for this half-done post. I wanted to get it out of my draft box though before we made our flight over the pond. Not as many links as I would like... but in reality how many people really follow this blog anyhow? Anyway...
I am more of a happy-things type of person. It's funny, because I wouldn't say I am a particularly positive person. I am married to a ridiculously positive person, but I am probably more melancholy than many. Me, myself, and I are quite an odd grouping sometimes. I like bright colors and surround myself with fun patterns, quirky movies, and melodic music with lively horn sections and deliberate vocal harmonies... and generally really funny and well humored people. I just simply like happy things and gravitate toward them. Soooo... when I get to really foreboding parts of scripture, like I did today in Matthew 24, i actually get really nervous. I'm all good when Jesus is saying "love one another.... you are blessed.... yielded a hundred fold..." and so on. I like happy-go-lucky-he-tells-nice-stories-about-plants-and-sparrows-Jesus, so when I am following him through the gospels and he starts saying things about all of these terrible things that will happen before the "Son of Man" comes back in glory, I get all nervous and like a little kid in a scary movie i start to pull my blanket over my head and peek very cautiously through the crochet florets in the afghan... don't pretend you didn't do that. "Good news?" I think "the HECK good news! More like foreboding-and-freak-out-worthy news! Jesus just said earthquakes and wars were a 'you ain't seen nothin yet' sort of thing... eek!" I have a terrible tenancy to kind of.. you know.. read as fast as I possibly can through these things and then move on including all of the "I will be betrayed and then they will kill me" parts. Move through it quick.. like a band-aid. Because obviously speed-reading through the 'icky' parts makes everything ok. *sigh*

I have an art habit... this includes making and viewing art. I love art museums.. I fell in love in Jr. High in Dayton, OH in front of some of Andy Warhol's soup cans and haven't really ever looked back. I can happily spend all day in a good museum. In college as an exchange student in Sydney, Australia I would spend every Wednesday from about noon to 9pm chilling in the Art Gallery of New South Wales visiting some of my old buddies like Picasso and Rothko and then making new friends like Lin Onus and Dadang Christanto and Lawrence Weiner. Viewing art is something I really enjoying taking time at the vast majority of the time. I studied pretty hard in my Art History classes and memorized slides and dates (most of which i struggle to remember now... but... oh well..) and took time with my ten-pounds worth of text book studying the pages and looking at the images of the past and the present. It was some time in one of my many readings in my beloved Gardner's Art Through the Ages that I happened upon a rather gory altar piece that smacked me in face. Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece is pretty serious and very 'not happy'. Grunewald painted this particular piece for the chapel of a monastery.

The thing that got me with this piece was how really gruesome it is. Check out Christ's writhing fingers bending in unnatural ways... his gangrenous skin with sores.. not to mention his mother Mary white as a ghost, fainting at the sight of her son in such a state. This is NOT a pretty picture. Not happy... but I found it fascinating. I'm not the only one... it become quite an icon later in the 19th century when expressionism really took off in all of its' angsty-ness (not a word.. i know!).

I have to admit that I have a hard time making it through rough parts of the gospels and the crucifixion is no exception. It scares me and my heart sinks into my stomach... but I don't think I completely understood how good that is until my exploration into religious art which finally gave me the opportunity to slow down and give these frightening stories a second glance.. with a little help from my art history book of course.

A lot of people get real pissy about the Catholic church and the dark ages and Renaissance and get all huffy about how they did absolutely nothing to help people come to know Christ. Well... I would have to beg to differ. For one thing- the Catholic church commissioned some serious art with the ability to transcend time and class to communicate the story and heart of the gospel.

Grunewald made me a believer in this area. His Crucifixion was one of the first times i really 'got' why this whole death of Jesus was a big thing. I mean... my mind had sort of gotten it before. I'd heard plenty of talks about the horrors of torture in Christ's day and plenty of "come to Jesus because he died for you" altar calls, but on the flip side I had also seen a lot of Jesus holding baby sheep paintings, and a ridiculous amount of mass produced crucifixes that feature a remarkably peaceful and very squeaky clean looking Jesus. These two things weren't really connecting for me. That glow in the dark Jesus hanging on my vacation Bible school bookmark didn't really look like he was working too hard. He was just chillin' there on the glow in the dark cross ready to take my sins and let me into glow in the dark heaven... what?!

As I mentioned, this piece was made for the chapel of a monastery. More specifically a monastery known for hospital work geared toward people with skin diseases. If you can imagine yourself as a 16th century peasant for a second and bare with me... take another look at that painting and what is happening. You are a peasant who is at this monastery because you have gotten leprosy or some sort of skin disorder that has made you a serious outcast. The people around you are becoming disfigured to the point that your stomach churns. You don't understand why God would ever let this happen and you are pissed off and are pretty sure that God hates you.. BUT you've decided to take a chance and pray in the chapel.

You get down on your knees at the altar with a lack of words, and eventually look up through your folded hands and there is the Lord with disfigured flesh, skin that is diseased surrounded to his left by his mother and his followers. Peter (red cape) catching Mary who just can't handle it and Mary Magdalene freaking out still toting her alabaster jar and weeping. On the right John the Baptist (yes I know.. he wasn't at the crucifixion and they knew it too..but they didn't have a dream sequence option in oil painting so this is what you get), like an apparition, points symbolically reminding us that the prophets have foretold that this would happen.. that God would take our place, our diseases and suffer worse than anything we would suffer so that we would know peace and be with God forever. You find yourself, your situation as one of these characters and a realization that you are not alone and God 'gets it' can happen. This painting is tipping the 16th century viewer off all over to place to recall that story of Christ in a new way that is relevant to their place and situation. It is crazy. To me this is awesome because God's word is communicated visually so specifically to meet people where they are and bring them in. These monks and clergy are commissioning works that are using the media of the day to transcend barriers to communicate the sacrifice and understand of God.

As a visual learner in the 21st century art like this is an amazing opportunity for my faith and learning to collide. Saints of the past take my hand and walk me through the anguish and the pain and the majesty of the story of scripture. Nativity paintings of this era from churches show Jesus over and over again on Mary's knee wrapped as a child in a blue robe with a red sash... blue for heaven and red for flesh and earth. Divine wrapped in flesh. Visual cues that the people of their time, while illiterate to the written word, gain understanding through a visual language of colors and symbols and emotions. Jesus being cast to death with my leprosy to die for my sins. MY disease. MY situation. MY Christ.

Wow I like art.

So.. the bar should be set really high. How am I communicating for my culture the story of Christ? How are the creations of my heart and mind reaching people where they are? Am i communicating with excellence and innovation? Have I informed myself culturally? Have I built in a literacy for multiple intelligences in how I communicate?

Lord! Help me take a cue from the history of your story being illustrated! Let me approach your story with intelligence, excellence, intentionality, creativity, compassion and innovation. I don't want to hand a hurting person a plastic, happy gospel. I want to hand them something dynamic that connects the dots. I want to strive for a museum worthy witness.
B