Beauty and the Temple

“Where there is no temple there shall be no homes”—T.S. Elliot, (The Rock, II.40)

In the Hebrew Scriptures the Temple represents God’s abode, the place where heaven and earth collide. With the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Spirit becomes “the way God himself is now present on planet earth, by indwelling his people.” (Gordon Fee, Crux, Summer 2008, p. 5) We become the new living Temple of God, the home of heaven on earth. As artists it becomes our job to sing, dance, and paint believing that artistic activity can be a service towards God and one another. T.S. Eliot writes:

The Lord who created must wish us to create

And employ our creation again in His service

Which is already His service in creating.

For Man is joined spirit and body,

And therefore must serve as spirit and body.

(T.S. Eliot, "Choruses from The Rock")

With the Spirit, our living bodies now possess entrée to the seemingly inaccessible. It is through the Spirit, YHWY becomes Father (Gal 4:6; 8.14-17). It is through the Spirit enemy becomes brother. And it is through the Spirit we become empowered to make this world home, practicing for our true home yet to come. We need the Spirit to enable true relationships with the triune God, with each other, as well as with the material world. Much of our Christian teaching has emphasized the first two, but the biblical emphasis on the beauty of the Temple tells us God cares about the things of this world. So much so that N.T. Wright asserts, “The virtue of the royal priesthood, the new living Temple, ought to be the cultivation and celebration of beauty at every level.” (After You Believe, p. 232)

Furthermore, the Spirit joins in our creative activities; it helps give life to our materials. But ultimately life with the Spirit signals a life dependent on God. Christian cultural renewal is at the mercy of Spiritual renewal. There shall be no true beauty in our earthly home, without the beauty of the Temple.

--Maria

Strange Fruit

One of the artists in our community at Redeemer, a classical actress, recently encouraged me to think more about the idea of God’s sanctifying work in our life v/s our own ideas of success: His fruit v/s our fruit. In the process, I’m attempting to draw a tangible connection between our lives in the city, and the purposes of God to reconcile ourselves individually, even artistically, to Himself. How can we see a connection between our personal sanctification and the Grand Work of Renewal that God is bringing about in the world, of which our own salvation, sanctification (and potentially our creative expression) are an evidence?

Perhaps married life is a good starting place. When I got married I had some good intentions, like wanting to love and serve my beautiful-sweet Emily, and see her reach her potential in Christ. But also, in my own sinful condition, I married her to make myself happy forever and found new hope in this “perfectly wonderful person” whose love could make my life, somehow, more pleasing to God. On the surface, those don’t seem like bad things, but they aren’t exactly what God had in mind. He does intend to make me happy forever and He knows that union with Himself is the only hope of that. But happiness is not the point of marriage, though it is a pleasant bi-product. Rather, in laying down my life for my wife each day, as Christ did for me, my heart is transformed to be like His heart, bringing me into fellowship with God who is the source of all true Joy and the only reward worth longing for. It wasn’t even a bad thing that I wanted a perfect person to justify me and make me right with God. That person just isn’t my wife. It’s Jesus. So, those two, seemingly small, distinctions become major shifts in my reality and lived experience.

Just as my marriage is not about making me happy, I had to realize that my being in New York may not be for the reasons that I initially had in mind. But that doesn’t mean that the Sovereign God of my life and this world doesn’t have a reason for me being in NYC. In fact, I can take a pretty good guess that it has a lot to do with the life of Christ being formed in me (which involves a very unpopular word beginning with an “s”), and the hope that I, yes even I, can join Him in His work of renewing all things, through creative endeavors which flow from a heart and life which are being renewed through suffering (I waited until the end to drop the “s-bomb”). And He is so lovingly faithful in bringing about this end, that He will allow many trials and Graces to come until Christ is fully formed in me. “Christ in me, the Hope of Glory”!

I can’t help but think of Paul, the apostle, chained to the wall of a prison cell, probably unable to write on his own after being cruelly beaten, but joyously testifying in a letter to the church in Philippi. He writes in Philippians 1:29,

“...for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake…and, “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit…”.

Perhaps the most exultant part of his letter to the Philippians is in chapter 3 when he says,

“( vv. 7-11) Whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as [dung] in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

God bless you as you seek His purposes for your life and creative work in the city. Grace is at work here, in us and around us. Thank God for that Reality check.

Kenyon

Working Out Of The Resurrection

Just as Jesus becomes the face of the Father, his broken and resurrected body gives access to the Spirit, who helps us live a renewed life. According to N.T. Wright, from the moment of the resurrection, “the forces of decay and death have suffered their major defeat, and from now on new creation is under way, with its first signs being the new life of those who believe the Gospel.” (The Redemption, p.84) Wright understands how the resurrection not only impacts our future, but is a reality that transforms Christians in the here and now. Therefore, Beth Felker Jones is correct in stating “Resurrection doctrine is indicative not only of final hopes, but also of present attitudes toward the bodies of the living.” (Marks Of His Wounds, p. 4) Jones believes God revealed himself through our senses by the Spirit which “has granted us the body of the Son.” It is through a broken body, that new life emerges. What this means for artists is amid the brokenness, “we can invoke nature with proper care…we can appeal to the nature of our own bodies, as we know it through the risen body of Jesus who is the paradigm of our own redemption.” (Marks Of His Wounds, p.100)

Life with the Spirit transforms our thinking about bodies and bestows a new attitude towards the things of this world. In her book Marks of His Wounds Jones directs us to the Augustinian understanding of embodiment and our inordinate desires. Our bodies and the material world are not necessarily the source of our sins; it is our disproportionate desires for these things. Through the Spirit, it becomes possible to possess a right relationship with God, that reorders our desires appropriately. Our art, then, becomes the means through which we can understand God and the world in a deeper way, not an end unto itself. By the Spirit, the material realm no longer enslaves, instead, we become free to value and nuture the things of this world, including art and the things it points to. Miroslav Wolf understands having dominion over the natural world means being responsible for God’s created order not “simply the satisfaction of human needs and wants.” (Work in the Spirit,p. 147) Thus, through the Spirit, we fulfill the Cultural Mandate, not because we must, but because we long to. Christ’s resurrected body prompts our desire to see all things become new again. Therefore the resurrection, according to Paul, allows us to give ourselves “fully to the work of the Lord,” this includes our art making endeavors, because we know that our “labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58)

--Maria

A Dialogical Journey

Recently, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting with lots of pastors who are seeking ways to better serve the artists in their cities and congregations. It’s been exciting to see that God’s Spirit is moving in cities around the world to build bridges between artists and communities of faith. These meetings have also given us the opportunity to step back and really clarify the concepts that we have found to be most vital in this dialogue concerning artists and the gospel.

This year, Redeemer Arts Ministries will be embarking on a ministry-wide dialogical journey, exploring what it means for us as artists to allow the Gospel to change our hearts, our communities and our world.

How can we learn to articulate our spiritual callings as artists? What descriptors, what roles and words can we assign to one who is called to the work of renewing culture through art-making? We came up with six descriptive roles or themes in which we'll root our discussions:

The Artist as Disciple

The Artists as Theologian

The Artist as Creator

The Artist as Servant

The Artist as Cultivator

The Artist and Beauty: The Glory of the Lord

Over the course of the ministry year, we will be using these roles as a framework for our discussions at IAF and in the various vocation groups. We invite you to join the dialogue through attending arts ministry events and by posting your responses to our weekly blogs as we unpack these concepts in the coming months.

See you soon at InterArts Fellowship!




Kenyon

Embodied Soul Work

Through Christ, love took form as a body. Jesus, the ultimate love offering, is the foundation for a theology of embodiment. How does this theology relate to artists? Since we will soon relaunch a dance industry vocation group let’s refer to a dancer’s work. Hours of discipline result in wounds and pains to the body; artistic activity can be physically challenging. Yet through the bleeding and bruising we are able to witness the wonder and awe of patterned movement and physical elegance. Beth Felker Jones speaking of Christ, but a fitting remark for a dancer, proclaims, “If we want to know the shape of a holy life, we look at the wounded body.” (Mark of His Wounds, p.111)

Stanley Hauerwas commenting on the disciplined life of the artist writes, “Artists, who must learn to submit to the medium in which they work, demonstrate the kind of training necessary for any of us to see the world rightly.” (Hauerwas, “Fully Human; Art And The Religious Sense.” Image Number 60 (2009): 103) But the regiment of an artist is not just an analogy or a paradigm for the well-ordered life of a Christian, it is reflective of true Christian embodiment. Just as the ascetic directs the body to God, the dancer can likewise make room in the body for God to nourish self and others. What makes anyone want to exert such effort? Love—therefore, Jones is correct, “Love must have a body.” (Mark of His Wounds, p.108)

A theology of embodiment is crucial for our technical age, with our rational ethos. The Church needs dancers, painters, and actors to teach us how to inhabit our bodies. Christians are called to be present in space and know how to move in space with real presence in order for love to take shape physically. Let us, then, offer up to God our bodies and our bodies of work and begin to praise him. Let’s dance.

--Maria

Gold Rush!

Before I moved to New York I was a commuter, coming in on the train from New Haven to audition for Broadway and television. I always made a point to connect with old friends who had found their way to the city. Scouring the theater district near Times Square, I’d knock on stage doors and wait for their tired, cheerful faces to appear. It was like panning for gold, something you can do on the fly if you happen to be walking along a river with a rich mineral deposit. Cities are like that, urban frontiers with gold rush magnetism, rich in culture and opportunity. New York’s gold rush attracts artists from far and wide who come with pockets empty and pans jangling, hoping to find those luminescent moments of glory, crowning their young lives with the shining gold of recognition. But did God really call us to New York City merely to pan for gold, to strive for recognition? Well, no. In His rich love and mercy, God has given us this time and place to graciously shape us (you and I) into His treasured possession. While we do good work and make art happen, we become like rich deposits of gold that shine amid the current of this city.

God meant this to be a richly rewarding journey for us, one that leads to our maturity and wholeness. When we envision our art as the context in which God can do deeply sanctifying work in our lives, then the work of art making, whatever discipline it may be, moves us towards God,not just recognition, approval or a false sense of identity. Such pursuits are poor substitutes for our true callings as servant-leaders. As we strive merely to be faithful with our gifts, we become gifts to others, to the city, and most of all to God. Our true calling is to become like Him in His death and resurrection for the glory of God. Sometimes the “death" can look like a missed opportunity or a seeming failure in which we see what we've been truly trusting for our identity, comfort or hope. I surprised myself last month while having a drink with a friend and chatting about a recent missed opportunity. "That was my only life-line in the city!" I exclaimed with a truly pitiful sigh. He smiled and gently repeated my words back to me with his hand on my shoulder. Thank God for His Holy Spirit who is with us along the way to instruct our hearts and minds as we continue reading scripture daily and prayerfully sharing our lives with others.

In the Screwtape Letters Off-Broadway, Max McLean portrays a voracious demon surviving on human souls for food. During one of his disdainful lectures on “tempting”, he quips that the best way to destroy a human’s spiritual potential is to keep them always focused on the future or past, never enjoying present pleasures or provisions. It's the kind of joke that gets a knowing chuckle from the audience, as we all recognize in ourselves a constant striving for more. In a similar way, a ravenous pursuit of recognition detracts us from our true callings as artists in the city: to enjoy and to become the gift of God. God became a Gift for us in Christ, and we are meant to become like Christ who was a servant to all. So what has become our gold, our treasure? For what reward do we walk by the riverbed with pans jangling? What drives us as we write, rehearse, network, audition, study, design, paint, perform and collaborate?

Recently I came across a video of Bill T. Jones accepting a commission to create a new work. His stark humility and brazen generosity remind me of what a gift it is to be an artist: To have this food for our souls, and to be able to extract meaning from living in a way that is transferrable to others. I’m reminded that I must continue my journey as an artist for some other reason beyond recognition. Even in New York City, those moments are too fleeting to sustain a faithful pursuit of the work. God created us as artists not to pursue the glittering lights of the city but to become the glittering lights of the city. As we work, faithfully pursuing our craft with joy, our art becomes rich deposits in the river, flowing steadily on toward the city of God.

Take care in the city, friends. I hear there's gold in that river!

Kenyon

Video of Bill T. Jones, Receiving a commission

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt3fdKj-P6Y&feature=related

Word and Deed

Genesis Chapter 1 portrays the transcendent God creating the world through speech. At the pinnacle of God’s creation is humanity. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” is the decree God imparts to the male and female in Genesis 1:28. Genesis chapter 2 depicts a more intimate God, physically handling materials and transforming them into his creations. The dust of the newly created earth becomes an aspect of mankind. “By means of the mysterious ed [moisture], the dry, dead earth became admamah, living Earth.” (Kessler and Deurloo, A Commentary on Genesis, p. 42)

In Genesis 1, God creates through speech; in Genesis 2, God fashions life through his hands. All that exist comes into being through word and deed. In the same way, the New Testament portrays Jesus bringing life through both command and action. In Luke 5 he instructs the paralytic to get up and go home. While a few verses before, Jesus touches an unclean leper and orders him to be clean. But, my favorite story is that of the Centurion, found in Luke 7 and Matthew 8, who astonished Jesus with his faith. In this narrative work and command are tied together through the job details of a pagan official. When the Centurion commands, action is demanded. This is a fact from his daily life. Faith, then, for the Centurion is not a personal preference, it is a fact. If he can command action, the creator of the universe can work beyond earthly expectations. One may surmise how the Centurion holds an integrated faith and work theology, being able to see through his work, the shape of kingdom life.

For Christians, stories, poems, commands, warnings, and songs shape our lives. Words work their way into our being and doing. Through them God speaks truth, but he also gracefully eases his wisdom through our daily activities of work, play, and worship. The Centurion understood how all of life comes under God’s sphere of influence. Perhaps he perceived, like the psalmist, how the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands; how day after day they pour forth speech. Psalm 19 tells us the “commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.” God’s commands, his words to us, illuminate the works of Jesus, Word and Flesh. Artists rely on both God’s words and his deeds in order to abundantly create through both.

--Maria