Sensible Resurrection

The resurrection of Jesus puts into effect the possibility of eternal life. But what does this incredible event have to do with the arts? CFW’s next Gospel & Culture lecture will feature Dr. Jeremy Begbie who will speak regarding A World Made New: The Art of the Resurrection and the Resurrection of Art.

We'll prime Dr. Begbie’s lecture by reflecting, here on this post, the topic of resurrection. To begin with we must acknowledge how for various reasons our modern world suffers a faith crisis surrounding the sensory. We mistrust the senses; hence we can’t seem to make much sense of art, never mind the idea of someone coming back from the dead. Perhaps John Dewey is correct when he surmised we fear what life may bring, especially since we tend to see opposition between mind-body, spirit-flesh (Dewey, Art As Experience, 22-23). So instead of allowing the resurrection to breathe life into our work as artists, it lives comfortably tucked away in our doctrines and confessions—apart and separate.

Fortunately the narrative of John 20 takes great pains to make sure we understand the disciples encountered not an idea but a risen physical body—nail holes, split side. As John Updike describes in his poem, Seven Stanzas at Easter, “molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle.”

In fact, the chapter highlights Thomas’ discomfort with hearsay regarding the resurrection; he needed to see the risen Jesus. A radical confrontation with the concrete cannot question or doubt that God is involved with the stuff of this world. And just as Thomas was accustomed to witnessing Jesus incarnate the wonders of the kingdom, he also desired to look upon the manifestation of eternity in the shape of the risen Christ.

John Dewey remarks how our society utilizes the senses to arouse passion but does not move beyond “to fulfill the interest of insight” (Dewey, Art As Experience, 19). Good art making is dependent on both the senses and good sense. And, in a similar fashion Thomas needed to fulfill this new Godly insight through all of his being—including experience. He needed to touch the ridges of torn skin to thereby and passionately proclaim Jesus as “Lord and God.”

Likewise, some of us are not content with only a theoretical assertion that Jesus is currently living in a marred physical body. We want to make sense of this information in some weighty way. This passion should stir us to mediate this astounding God-action through our actions whether it be through dance, poetry, or just living a full life practicing for the one that is to come.

Thomas’ need allows us to ground Jesus in the fragility of materiality—“regathered out of enduring might,” as Updike reminds us. Seven Stanzas at Easter also calls us to remember:

It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His flesh; ours.

Please join us on Saturday evening, March 10, as Dr. Begbie help us discover A world made new by Christ's bodily resurrection.

--Maria

The Art of Suffering

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot, Second Quartet, East Coker, III

Suffering loosens the belief we are in control. When all we undertake falls apart and God seems to have gone on vacation, distress discerns an action that can be accomplish; that of waiting. What accompanies an artist’s wait? We create in hope. It is this aspect of art that reflects Christ’s redeeming work in the world allowing us to render every act of creativity as a sign of hope. Art reaches for the eternal despite our society’s refusal of such categories. As Christians we understand this hope as the beauty of redemption through the salvific works of Christ.

Edward Farley in Faith and Beauty maintains beauty is a manifestation of Christ’s redemptive work. Redemption allows us to uphold what is deemed valueless. Here, the darkness becomes light, the cast off is repurposed. Artists have the ability to take what is broken then reconstitute and employ it towards art. For Farley it is this transformative action that constitutes beauty. “Redemption reaches and reshapes into new freedoms all the ways in which the human being is infected by sin” (Faith and Beauty, 93).

John Dillenberger goes further and suggests difficult art needs to exist. He relates how the “literary and the visual are… affirmations in their negations; indeed, they negate in order to affirm” (A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities, 224). Artist make plain what needs to be—what should be, what can be. Ultimately, it is hope that drives the impulse of art making for it seeks to grasp Jesus’ work of redemption and transformation. Whether we are believers or not we all long for renovation. The nature of transformation, therefore, must fall under the Christian artist’s purview. In our own work we accept the waiting and the mysterious chaos of our lives then proceed to shape, arrange, and re-form it. Jeremy Begbie encouragingly reminds us, “In Christ, all that is ugly and subversive in the cosmos has been purified, beautified and fulfilled. Therein lies the promise for the transformation of all things” (Voicing Creation’s Praise, 175).

Redemption does not negate or ignore the ravages of sin but restores all things. Jesus’ transformative power goes further to redirect and transforms our inordinate desires. It is in the waiting where our love, hope, and faith finally reaches out for the Triune God. Barbara Brown Taylor speaks about this in terms of disillusionment. “Disillusionment,” she writes, “is the loss of illusion—about ourselves, about the world, about God—and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth” (The Preaching Life, 8). It is in darkness we begin to see, feel, know. While waiting for God we offer him the pain, suffering and the waiting, which in turn, makes our work his.

Wait—for the darkness shall be light,

Maria