What is it about Jesus which has led painter to put paintbrush to canvas, poet to put pen to paper, potter to throw clay upon the wheel, dancer to leap and bow among the pews, dramatist to seek the nearest stage, composer to wring notes out of thin air and musician to follow suit? What has the artist to do with the theologian? Or perhaps more to the point on this Sunday morning surrounded by the arts, what has the second commandment to do with the incarnation? "Thou shalt make no graven images," said the Lord our God, and we shudder at the thought. "He is the image of the invisible God," confesses the apostle Paul, "the firstborn of all creation; for in him [by him] all things in heaven and on earth were created...." What, we are left to wonder, has the imagination, has human creativity to do with faith? What, we are constrained to ask given our Lenten series, what are we to do with Jesus...aesthetically?To be sure, within our tradition, there is an emnity between artist and theologian. Just go to the Grossmuenster in Zurich and notice the faint smudges left where zealous Reformers rubbed out the artist's paint which once adorned her now barren walls. Or try to find, somewhere in this lecture hall, to see a suggestion of the story from whence we draw our strength. To be sure, dour Calvinists still abound, huffing and puffing about turning sanctuaries into a concert halls on Sundays such as this, unable to delight in the gift of God's gospel proclaimed in the sustained speech of song and the sublime sound of ancient instruments.
More nuanced followers of Calvin assert otherwise. On one hand, they insist that "The Christian church begins by listening to the address of the prophets and apostles, which was not babbled, or mimed, or put to music, or danced, but spoken and written in statements and groups of statements." Karl Barth. The same theologian who later wrote that when he got to heaven, he would first of all seek out Mozart and only then inquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin and Schliermacher: "...it may be,' he wrote, "that when angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure." With Handel this morning, then, we surley join the angels, going about our task of praising God, suspending, for the most part, spoken statements and groups of statements, in favor of unfettered praise.
Nevertheless, this Sunday notwithstanding, Presbyterians are more predictably a community of word upon word upon reasoned word: a people who have denied ourselves the artist's gift lest a graven image or a sudden rush of emotion compromise our Reformed mentality...a tradition so intent on avoiding idolotry we have even been known to turn in fear from the sublimity of Michaelangelo's David lest we worship culture rather than the Creator.
Yet the word became flesh, and therein lies the undeniable bond between faith and art, between theologian and artist, between believer and those who would help us behold His face and hear his voice. For if it is true that in Him the Word became flesh...if it is true that He is the image of the invisible God...if it is true that in Him or by Him all things in heaven and on earth were created, then through Him our creative imaginations are given a ground and a destination. Or, to put it another way, in him and through him we are given an imagination for the God who is God.
Imagination, says Webster's, is "the act or power of forming mental images of what is not actually present...or creating mental images of what has never been actually experienced." But we have seen Jesus, Word made flesh, image of the invisible God. And having seen Jesus, all other seeing and hearing and moving and feeling, all other singing and dancing and sculpting and composing will never again be the same. For having seen Jesus, the ground and destination of all that we could think or imagine, I am convinced Reformed people need not be as nervous as they are about art and artists and this gift of God we call the imagination.
For having first heard the Last Word, our ears now bend to hear hints of the same sublimity in every poet's line; having seen completely the compassion of God's own way of seeing in Him, we may watch for parabolic glimpses of the Kingdom breaking through the actor's voice; having followed in the final footsteps of this Man of Sorrows, we can delight in the merely human mimic of Him who danced in the morning when the world was begun; having known in Him the grace note sounded throughout all eternity, we need simply recognize in symphony and cantata and chandos what has previously been announced with the sound of angel voices; having seen His face by way of the words of scripture, we then may seek His face through the stokes of any given artist's oils. "The artist," says Gerardus van der Leeuw, a Dutch Reformed theologian whose writing on the matter of religion and art would bring even a Calvinist to his or her senses on the subject, "The artist makes the depth of things resound."
"Perhaps," writes van der Leeuw almost wistfully, "there are a few generous, humane Christians and a few reflective, reverent servants of art, Christians who have learned, through the manifestation of their Lord, to love the whole manifest world." Perhaps because of him who reveals the height and depth and length and breadth, we can be those who may look around in the manifest world, without fear...in fact with great delight...for glimpses of the One whose face we have fully and finally seen in the face of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for the gift of the artist and so the musician, who makes the depth of things resound. Amen.