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God, the Artist, and the Muse Lenten Sermon Series: God in the 21st Century Reading: The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET, RAINER MARIA RILKE … Rome makes one feel stifled with sadness for the
first few days: through the gloomy and lifeless museum atmosphere that
it exhales, through the abundance of its pasts, which are brought forth
and laboriously held up (pasts on which a tiny present subsists), through
the terrible overvaluing, sustained by scholars and philologists and
imitated by the ordinary tourist in Italy, of all these disfigured and
decaying Things, which, after all, are essentially nothing more than
accidental remains from another time and from a life that is not and
should not be ours. Finally, after weeks of daily resistance… one
says to oneself: No, there is not more beauty here than in other places,
and all these objects, which have been marveled at by generation after
generation, mended and restored by the hands of workmen, mean nothing,
are nothing, and have no heart and no value; but there is much beauty
here, because everywhere there is much beauty. Waters infinitely full
of life move along the ancient aqueducts into the great city and dance
in the many city squares over white basins of stone and spread out in
large, spacious pools and murmur by day and life up their murmuring
to the night, which is vast here and starry and soft with winds. And
there are gardens here, unforgettable boulevards, and staircases designed
by Michelangelo, staircases constructed on the pattern of downward-gliding
waters and, as they descend, widely giving birth to step out of step
as if it were wave out of wave. Through such impressions one gathers
oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks
and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one slowly learns
to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures
that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part
in… PRAYER O Thou infinite energy that swings the planets and keeps
them in their courses and brings the flowers in their season, give us
of Thine own strength, renew our courage and direct our energies along
the paths that lead to the triumph of the spirit, the dominion of the
mind. We pray for that freedom that truth alone gives, freedom
from the blindness of prejudice, freedom from the corruption of hate,
freedom from the withering blight of pride. Give us that freedom, that
seeks the truth, that brings to us a sense of our ignorance, that realizes
how far short we fall of the life we might lead, that opens up to us
the paths of righteousness and peace. Make us free with the freedom
of the open mind, the freedom of the tender heart, the freedom of the
willing hand. We ask not for escape from the turmoil and trials of the
world; but we ask that we may be enabled to carry our burdens in such
a way as will approve itself to the strains of conscience, to the God
of history, to the liberty of the soul proclaims by prophets, that the
community of free spirits might come here on earth, in our homes, in
our nation, in Thy world. AMEN.
SERMON I would invite you to begin the sermon by calling to your
mind one piece of art – painting, sculpture, music, architecture,
literature – which speaks to you as forcefully as any. I will call
you back to that piece at various times this morning. It was the Beatle George Harrison who maybe unwittingly
characterized the times we live in when he said, "Everything else
can wait but the search for God cannot wait." I think it has been
ever since the late 1960’s that Americans, if not the rest of the
world too, have evidenced a deep yearning for some kind of ultimate
meaning to our days. As this yearning has deepened it has, I think,
come to define much of our culture in the first few years of the new
millennium. So, this Lenten sermon series is meant to outline what it
might be that human beings yearn for. Our first Sunday together we talked about how religion is a language used to express a kind of human experience; the experience of what philosopher William James called the "unseen order." That is, we perceive things, and engage and encounter events and situations of our lives in a mundane way, except for those instances or moments of great depth, when the meaning of human life in general and our lives in particular confronts us or grasps us, and we see life in a deeper way; as containing an "unseen order" of depth and meaning. In the latter part of this last century liberals largely lost the capacity to grasp this depth to life as we let religious language and religiosity fall away. Now, though, what is needed are persons willing to seek an experience of this ultimacy as the foundation of the religious life, but shaping oneself towards experiencing the liberalis of ultimacy; liberalis, of freedom, noble, generous, emancipated from convention, to grow, abundant, bountiful, ample, full large, free from restraint, not narrow in mind; to experience the substance of God as liberalis. In our second Sunday we talked about how in the West orthodoxy
conceived of this unseen order as having a divine object that originates
and controls this order, and how reasonable it is to have an absolute,
unchanging, unmovable God in control of all events. It makes tragedy
reasonable, as the death of a child, for example, becomes an event we
may not understand, but which God has willed in response to our sin.
But, as liberal religionists we pose a competing conception of this
unseen order and the ultimate dimension and depth to existence; equally
reasonable, it is that God is not absolute and, thus, not independent
of and distant from his creation; but that God is interdependent and
immediate, a "feeling sympathy" at the center of existence.
The absolute God of orthodoxy offers the judgment of a gallows at the
center of existence. Liberal religionists, on the other hand, offer
sympathy of a heart; infinite and ultimate, a heart which invites and
urges there be more compassion, more justice, more love in existence. Last week we posited that this center of existence, this
heart, is what can be called a "Divine Relativity"; that is,
that it is readily available to each individual in his or her experience.
Nature is an expression of this divine spirit, a house where God lives
with human beings, such that together we are co-creators of existence.
Thus human experience of what lies at the center of this unseen order,
a heart, God, likes like unto a relationship; a covenant. God and humanity
are co-creators. Today we’re beginning the second half of this sermon
series, not talking about the nature of the God, but the nature of the
divine/human relationship in the places where it is made evident. And
there’s no better place to start that conversation than with art. Think of that artistic piece that speaks forcefully to
you. Was the artist who created it inspired? And could organized religion
have channeled that inspiration? Western religion has had a deep ambivalence about art
because, I think, it is such a powerful medium for the divine to appear
in existence, and all organized religion has ambivalence about power
it cannot control. The ancient Hebrews tended to negate it, making it
a commandment not to make an image of God. Just before Moses descended
with the Ten Commandments, Aaron made an image of God in the shape of
a golden calf, declared an act of idolatry tainting the fruits of art
in the Hebraic mind. Early Christianity evidences not much concern with
art until the fourth and fifth centuries when it engages Greek thought
and is directly influenced by it. In Greek thought those who excelled
in the arts and sciences were said to have been blessed by the Muses,
the source of inspiration. The Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus,
the king of gods, and Mnemosyne, "Memory." Each Muse represented
a certain aspect or kind of art or science; one each for comedy, tragedy,
dance, love poems, flute playing, sacred music, astrology, history,
and epic poetry (the highest rank). Those who were blessed by the Muses
could use song to heal the sick and comfort the heartbroken. This is
why in the story of The Odyssey, the poet or the singer or the actor
could, through the inspiration of the Muse, cause men and women to forget
their troubles, to remember a time when things were whole in their lives.
It’s why the poets and singers were so powerful that Plato claimed
they could mislead, so he declared them banished from his Republic.
The ambivalence towards the power of art originated not just from religion. Yet, it is in the Church where this ambivalence is explicit
even to this day. If you go into an orthodox, sacramental church, like
St. Andrews downtown, the ambivalence towards art is there, although
hidden. Hidden because the sanctuary itself is such a marvelous piece
of art. There are stars on the ceiling, stations-of-the-cross all around,
gorgeous mosaics. It is the universe portrayed explicitly through art.
But each piece of art serves church doctrine. It is a means for communicating
the unseen order as the church determines it to be so conceived. Some
Protestant Churches are not much different, giving over the determination
of church doctrine not explicitly through bishops and popes, but implicitly
through committee decisions as to what is appropriately art. The ambivalence
is palpable if veiled. Still other Protestant Churches express this
ambivalence directly. I remember being given a tour of one of the Christian
Reform Churches by its Senior Minister. He showed me a few pieces of
inconsequential art tucked by in a hallway, and pointed out that the
squabble over putting art in the church almost cost him his position.
Of course, there was no art in the sanctuary, because to Protestant
Christianity art is secular and the secular world is profane; whereas
the church is religious, the sacred realm, and these two realms, the
secular and the sacred, art and religion, should be kept distinct. Religious communities in the modern world are ambivalent
about art because art, powerful art, judges the inadequacies of our
institutions and communities to embody fully the spirit of God. The
Muse and the God of organized religion wrestle with one another for
the allegiance of human spirit. Most all of organized religion has sought
to control the artist explicitly or implicitly, in order to win the
contest. Most all of organized religion has sought to control the mind
and heart of the individual in order to win the contest over the human
spirit. Yet, there is a path beyond this ambivalence; an ambivalence
which is not far from the spirit of our age. Yearning for God, yet suspicious
and ambivalent concerning whether the church and organized religion
can free and fulfill, or shackle that yearning. So, a religious community
that aims towards freedom, as does the Free Church, as does this Free
Church, has a mighty task before it. Find some way through the ambivalence,
because the ambivalence over art is just a reflection of the deeper
ambivalence over how to free the human spirit through religious community. Art is the product of culture and time. A painting by
Rembrandt tells of a particular time and place, in addition to its subject.
A Michelangelo statue tells of a particular time and place, in addition
to its subject. A musical piece by Duke Ellington tells of a particular
time and place. That is because art is a product of culture and time
as surely as it is the product of a single artist, who is a creature
of culture and time. It’s why Rilke, in realizing this, despairs,
writing that the art objects in Rome, "are essentially nothing
more than accidental remains from another time and from a life that
is not and should not be ours… all these objects, which have been
marveled at by generation after generation, mended and restored by the
hands of workmen, mean nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no
value." I remember the first painting where I finally understood
what art does to a person. At the Milwaukee Art Museum, almost two decades
ago now, I stood in front of a wall size, impressionistic style mural,
looking past painted depictions of barbed wire, at some forms in the
distance that suggested the Nazi death camps but were indistinct. As
the viewer I couldn’t discern whether I was looking into the camp
or whether I was looking out from the camp. That was what the middle
part of the 20th century had done to time, to my life and yours, and
I felt it. Cosmic time had changed. Ultimacy had been manifested in
human events in a unique and powerful way, and this painting not only
captured that moment 60 years ago, but transported time in making that
change happen every time someone looked at the painting. The art object
had joined the meaning of its subject in revealing this unseen order!
It’s why Rilke recovers from his despair to write, "but there
is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty… slowly
[one] learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal
endures…" Art is a product of culture and it is impossible for religion
to hide from culture! Art must serve the explicit doctrine of the church,
declares orthodoxy, or it cannot reveal God; or the implicit doctrine
of the church declares other churches, or it cannot reveal God? Or,
says another part of creedal Christianity, art can’t be in the
church because the church is about religion and art is from the secular
world, from which the purity of religion must be protected? Balderdash!
It is as impossible for religion to hide from art, as organized religion
would suggest, as it is for religion to hide from freedom! Theologian
Paul Tillich suggested the path beyond the ambivalence, beyond religion
hiding from culture, when he wrote that the form of religion is cultural
and the substance of culture is religious. The form of organized religion is cultural. In worship,
for example, there is drama, singing, listening, thinking, speaking,
using the critical mind to discern what conscience says each one of
us must do. Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson said that to be religious
is for each of us to consider our lives "passed through the fire
of thought." There is nothing in a church that doesn’t come
from culture; yet, the substance of culture is religious. Religious
emotion is not some totally different and distinct kind of emotion.
It is sympathy raised to an ultimate concern. It is compassion raised
to an ultimate concern. It is seeking righteousness and demanding justice,
raised to an ultimate concern. It is seeking a loyalty beyond creed,
color, sexual orientation; a loyalty beyond family and tribe and nation.
It is seeking a loyalty appropriate to an ultimate concern. There is
no clear demarcation between our lives "out there" and our
lives "in here." The Free Church represents that understanding
of existence, of that unseen order, when it is said that our aim is
to liberate and cultivate the human spirit. Anywhere, everywhere, anyone,
everyone. When I stand in a pulpit or you sit in a pew, I’m
convinced the role that is our "twin" is the artist. Both
the artist and the religionist are fueled by the Muse; by inspiration
which none of us can comprehend or control. The Muse is free because
the spirit is free. And it is the spirit that both frees humanity and
is the evidence of that freedom. When I sing a hymn I sing loudly because
it is a vision of what the world can become that my voice is stretching
itself to create. When I hear a sermon or preach a sermon, even the
most boring sermon heard or preached, I am painting in my mind a realistic
critique of the world as it is, so that its tragedies and injustices
and indifferences and terrors can uncover its redemptive possibilities.
And when I’m in my home I want art of all kinds surrounding me,
which has been created by those who know the unseen order of things
is as a universe made into a community manifesting freedom. The whole ambivalence over God, the artist, and the Muse
comes down to this. The Free Church has to make a place for the artist
to do freely his or her art. Not art to serve the Free Church, although
there are many ways that the church needs to be served with artistic
products. But, art for the sake of art; for the sake of unveiling an
unseen order to things; art for the sake of engaging and confronting
humanity with ultimacy. In other words, art for the sake of expressing
and manifesting the free spirit. And when that is done, then humanity
will have learned how to live in a community infused with the freedom
that is the evidence of the divine. When asked whether he believed in God or not, pianist Arthur Rubenstein replied, "No. You see, what I believe in is much greater." That is what every human being yearns to experience and know; that something greater, "the dearest freshness deep down things," wrote the poet. That church which proclaims freedom as the shape God takes in this world knows no church or pope or doctrine or preacher can hold that. It is vibrant everywhere, inside the sanctuary and out. It is evident to us at profound moments; but, especially, when we, in community, heed this call of the artist to the religious life: Seek the depth of things.AMEN. |
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