THE GIFT OF ART

Nature as Art   (Matthew 6:26-29)

            Since we are devoting this weekend, in part, to the celebration of the arts, I want to offer three short meditations this morning to the subject of art. And I want to begin with my favorite piece of art, being the artwork, so to speak, of God the Creator: the world of nature.

            You see I believe that one of the ways we know God is through the beauty of nature, in much the same way that artists are known by their individual style. A painting by Van Gogh, a play by Shakespeare, a cantata by Bach, each is so rich with the style of the one who created it that to the sensitive eye or ear it couldn’t have been created by anyone else.

            In the words of the 19th Psalm, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” It is the same thing you see. To the spiritually sensitive, not just the sunsets and starry nights, but rain forests, garter snakes, and human faces, are all unmistakably the work of a single hand. To behold God’s glory in the creation; to sense God’s style, if you will, is to come very close to the very presence of the Creator. A few years ago at one of our Diaconate meetings, our moderator began the meeting by asking a question. He asked “What was the most spiritual day you experienced during the past year?” And did you know that almost all of the responses had to do with an experience in nature, that it was in nature in which they felt most touched by God’s Spirit, most strengthened by God’s Spirit.

            And indeed the glory of God’s art of creation is more beautiful than any human artist can re-create. Just think for a moment; it would be unimaginable to accuse an ocean wave of ever making an aesthetic mistake, and nobody has ever, I think in history, drawn an objection to a badly formed cloud. And as our scripture reading noted, simple flowers are still the standard for majestic beauty. No one has ever criticized a bird for singing off key. And only once in history has there been a complaint about the stars. And this was a Frenchman in the 18th century who criticized the Good Lord for not arranging the stars in fine geometrical patterns that would be edifying to the intellect, but had instead scattered them in random across the skies. Unfortunately, however, this Frenchman did not have a correct view of the galaxy, and close by it does indeed look as if the stars are just randomly scattered. But if you go out a tremendous distance you will see that this galaxy is beautifully formed as a double helix.

The glory of God’s creation is indeed the most beautiful art of all. Ah, but we have a responsibility.  It was Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Bishop of South Africa who said, “We are made to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew….Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful….but all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”  Amen

The Art Parable  (Matthew 13:31-34)

            One of the distinct functions of an artist is to teach us to see that which we never really noticed before. The artist Georgia O’Keefe started painting very large flowers because, she said, “they are perfectly beautiful, but they are so small and people are moving so fast, that they don’t see their beauty. If I could paint that flower on a huge scale,” she said, “then you could not ignore its beauty.” Art, said, Paul Klee, “does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes it visible,” because, you see, the artist has the function of teaching us to see!

Now in thinking on all this it was interesting for me to realize that Christ was also an artist in this sense. Christ taught us to see life in a new way. He did not use brush and paint to do this, but words. With words he painted parables, verbal pictures, if you will, which help us to see life in a new way. And because his parables served this function you might even more properly call them “art parables.”

            The art parable, like most art forms, first catches our attention, and then after it has captured our attention by its form, it then proceeds to take us to a truth that we had not seen before or to a truth that we now see in a new light.

            For instance, there’s the Parable of the Good Samaritan. When Jesus said to love your neighbor, a lawyer asked him to clarify what he meant by neighbor. He wanted a legal definition which he could refer to in case the question of loving one ever happed to come up. He presumably wanted something like this: “a neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of not more than three statue miles from one’s own legal residence, unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as ‘neighbor’ to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever.”

            Now that’s what the lawyer expected to hear, because that’s how he most likely perceived a neighbor. But instead of all this, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan and helped those present, and particularly the lawyer, to see one’s neighbor in a new light, simply as meaning anybody who needs you, or anyone who extends compassion.

            Jesus knew that a straight legal answer would reside in our memory but a short time, but a parable, an art form in words, will not only attract the attention of the listener, but like most art, it will find a permanent seat in the memory, for it is not merely a string of words but an unforgettable image. And that is why Jesus’ teachings are so unforgettable. Jesus, you see, was an artist, and understood that the role of an artist is to help to us see. Amen

Worship as Art  (Psalm 92:1-4)

Many of us here, me included, have a difficult time playing for the sheer enjoyment of playing. We allow play if it will improve us. I play racquetball, for example, to help keep me in shape. Some of my friends no longer “play” golf, rather they “work” at their golf game. I heard that God has a special punishment for golfers who are always working at their games. Just when you’re at that point when you are going to give the game up and quit, God grants you a terrific shot.

Well, it’s the same with the arts, in a way. Some people will go to concerts or the ballet or to art museums, even if it bores them to death, because they think it’s good for them, that they might somehow get culture. Now this is unfortunate, because those people miss the true beauty and joy of the art experience. Those who really understand art just sit back and enjoy the art form for its own sake.

Art and play are very similar in this way. It’s interesting to me that we use the word “play” to describe what an orchestra does. An orchestra “plays” a symphony. You see in playing a symphony there is no real goal, orchestras don’t do it to reach a certain point such as the end of the composition. If that were the case then orchestras would have races and the orchestra to finish the piece first would be the best. But thank goodness that’s not the case. For to play a piece of music is to enjoy each moment of that composition, measure by measure, note by note, to enjoy the art of music for its own sake.

For Christians, I believe, worship can also be experienced in this way. The Tibetans use a wooden cylinder mounted on a stick for saying prayers. They sit comfortably and spin it around with little effort and their prayers are said for them by this prayer wheel, and they relax for the few minutes it takes. Westerners think this is superstition, a meaningless ritual, it doesn’t require any great effort or thought, there’s no work involved, any child would enjoy doing it.

Now many of us feel that we have to work at our worship, that the effort of coming to worship, the great thought we put into our prayers, will somehow improve us. But often, in the midst of all this effort, we miss the true joy that worship can bring. Like a painting, some people try so hard to figure out what the artist is saying through the painting that they miss the beauty of the art for its own sake.

Worship doesn’t have to be work, worship can be play, worship can be art. We can sing and praise God for the sheer enjoyment of praising God. We can give thanks for the sheer enjoyment of giving gratitude. We can enjoy the quietness and the solitude of prayer for its own sake and often without the need of expressing thought or forcing words.

There’s a story in the 26th chapter of Matthew which exemplifies this. Jesus is visiting in a house with his disciples and a woman comes in and anoints him with an expensive ointment. The disciples are indigent and say, “what a waste, the oil should have been sold and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus stops them and affirms the woman’s act. The disciples missed the point, they missed the moment of pure worship, the outpouring of gratitude and joy for the very presence of Christ in their midst. There are times, you see, when that pure form of extravagant worship, worship for its own sake, is good. It brings us back to the foundation of our Christian faith, it brings us back to the very reason we reach out in compassion to the world, and that reason is the presence of Jesus in our midst. And every so often we need just to affirm this presence and rejoice.

In terms of worship, the Psalmist couldn’t have said it better as in the portion of 92nd Psalm we heard with new ears for our Call to Worship:

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,

  to sing praises to thy name, O most High;

  to declare thy steadfast love in the morning,

  and thy faithfulness by night,

  to the music of the lute and the harp,

   to the melody of the lyre.

            For thou, O Lord, has made me glad by thy work;

             at the works of thy hands I sing for joy.

                                                                                             Amen & Alleluia