Don Friesen
One does not need a Christian world-view to become convinced that human beings are capable of wickedness. They betray, they cheat, they steal, they kill! Yesterday's newspaper (Ottawa Citizen, March 21, 2009), for example, told of the death of an Ottawa woman caused by a vicious attack on a beach in Barbados; the massacre of sixteen students and teachers at a school in Germany; the ongoing search for the Canadian diplomats kidnapped in Niger; bank robberies; grocery store robberies; gas bar robberies; and murder at an amusement park! In Gatineau, meanwhile, a group of fraudsters – I refuse to call them scam artists – are preying upon unsuspecting, trusting elderly women. And in the background, the collapse of significant sectors of our economy, and stories of the greed that drove us to the brink.
That is but a small sampling of the catalogue of human sin. It does not include the monstrous behaviour of the man in Austria who was sentenced this week. It does not even begin to touch upon the history of genocide and other crimes against humanity, whether they happened in Germany, Burundi, Sudan, Armenia, Rwanda, Cambodia, or the Soviet Union, the latter genocide figuring prominently in many of our family histories.
The human condition has some serious cracks, which has motivated serious writers to try to get us to take human cruelty seriously. Several decades ago psychologist Karl Menninger had the temerity to ask liberal society, Whatever Became of Sin? (1973) A decade later Scott Peck wrote People of the Lie (1983), probing into the psychology of human evil. Our artists have always known of the dark side of humanity. I think of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954; Golding: 1911-1993), a story of a group of proper British boys stranded on an island, and while initially they enjoy their freedom, things get out of hand and the story becomes one of fear, betrayal, and descent into savagery and death. I think of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902; Conrad: 1857-1924), and how the benevolent project of civilization masks the ugliness of European imperialism. I think of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), and his use of a line from Heart of Darkness in his poem, The Hollow Men (1925):
Shape without form, shade without colour,
It's not my intention to depress you, but it is Lent, and to make the dark side of the human condition even more unsettling, consider the perspective of the late Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), the Russian novelist who knew the brutality of the Gulag firsthand; he said:
Jesus encourages us, in the Gospels, to look within ourselves, and to examine those inner impulses which morality treats in an external way. The law says, "You shall not kill" (Matthew 5:21, RSV), but Jesus encourages us to examine the anger within ourselves that would lead to this heinous act. If you are upset by the behaviour of someone else, Jesus encourages us, first, to look at ourselves, and to see whether there might not be a log in our eye that takes priority over the splinter in that other person's eye! Likewise, Jesus encourages us to look at adultery, revenge, lust and such, not only as external acts, but as acts with spiritual roots deep within ourselves. He asks us to examine our intentions, our emotions, and our desires. For Jesus it was never enough to clean the outside of a vessel; he encouraged us to "cleanse the inside...." (Matthew 23:26)
The Upbeat Apostle Paul Gets Down and Dirty
The Apostle Paul does not seem like a person given to melancholy, but his letter to the congregation in Ephesus has some dismal moments. Today's reading begins: "You were dead through ...trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world...." (Ephesians 2:1-2) Another translation puts it more colourfully, saying, "It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it...." (2:1-2, The Message)
The first verses of our reading from Ephesians suggest a grim anthropology, our human existence characterized by sin and death, decay, and other destructive things, but it's not the only place Paul's knowledge of the things which deaden, diminish, dull and destroy crop up; he includes an even longer list of destructive dynamics and behaviours in his letter to the congregation in Galatia, telling them to beware of "fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness...." (Galatians 5:19-21) The list goes on!
But God ...
Maybe Paul had his down moments; if even half of the things he mentions were going on, in society and especially in the church, I don't blame him for feeling forlorn. However, Paul never dwelled on the negative. Whenever he presents the bad news, the good news is never far behind, and there is a wonderful two-word linchpin in our passage that signals the good news! Verse 4 begins with the two words, "But God..." You can have the grimmest anthropology possible, but God did something. You may have been stuck in the primordial mud of human degradation, but God stepped in. You may have been in a slimy pit, sinking in miry clay, but God made a difference. You may have received the worst news possible, but God brought good news! And the good news is that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but ...have eternal life." (John 3:16) Or, as the psalms say, so graphically, "(God) lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God." (Psalm 40:2-3, NIV)
Paul was familiar with the dark side of humanity, but it was nothing compared to the glory and grace of God! God, he wrote, "who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him ...so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us.... this ...is the gift of God...." (Ephesians 2:4-8)
In 1906, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). Years later a millionaire art collector asked Ms Stein what she had paid for the painting. "Nothing," she replied. "He gave it to me." The art collector was incredulous that such a priceless work of art could have been a gift. Similarly, the gift of grace God gave us is priceless, but costs us nothing. It flummoxes the mind! But theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) advised, "Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" ("You Are Accepted," The Shaking of the Foundations) Accept the gift of grace, with grace.
God's Amazing Artistry
Perhaps Paul also struggled with accepting God's acceptance, for as he looked at human society, there was, on the one hand, the slimy mud of human weakness, willfulness, and sinfulness, and on the other hand his lofty view of, and his strong belief in, God's transforming grace and love. To Corinthian Christians Paul had written, "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we ...also bear the image of the man of heaven." (1 Corinthians 15:49) And I like to think that as he mulled this over, choosing his words carefully in his letter to the Ephesians, that his mind went back to walks he had taken in Ephesus, down in the Artists Quarter.
The ancient city of Ephesus, in Roman times, bore the title, "the first and greatest metropolis of Asia". It was an illustrious city, distinguished for the Temple of Diana, and for its theatre, which was capable of holding 50,000 spectators. It was the largest ever built by the Greeks. The Temple of Diana, built at the city's harbour, was raised on immense supports because of the swampy nature of the ground. It towered over the harbour. It was a magnificent sanctuary, and because so many people came to the city to worship Diana, there was a huge demand for souvenirs, replicas, portable shrines, statues, and other Diana memorabilia. It was a place where artists and artisans flourished!
Paul was a tentmaker by trade, and it doesn't take much imagination to think that he hung around in the Artists Quarter, mixing with other independent artisans. No doubt he watched artists at work, turning out their pieces of art, watched them as upon completion they marked each piece with their initials, or a signature of some kind, and as Paul wondered what to write to the Church in Ephesus, a thought began to form in his mind, and he began to write, "We are God's work of art...." He liked that.
We are God's work of art, destined to be God's masterpiece! A messy masterpiece, to be sure, but much like the first act of creation – creation itself – when "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of (it)" (Genesis 1:1, KJV), so too creative acts since then begin with giving birth to something that was hitherto not there, or something, that if it was there, may have been flawed and ugly, but in the skilled hands of the artist became something beautiful! I love the words T.S. Eliot uses to describe the artistic endeavour; he writes:
("The Rock," 1934)
There is in the New Testament a sustained delight in the fact that that which was deemed useless turned out to be eminently useful; that that which was deemed insignificant turned out to be of ultimate significance; that that which was deemed ugly turned out, in fact, to be beautiful!
We Are a Work of Art, in Progress
We are God's work of art. We are, of course, a work in progress. A masterpiece takes time to complete; it's not the result of some hurried and haphazard effort. It took Michelangelo (1475-1564) four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a complex design comprised of some 300 figures. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503. He lingered over it four years, left it unfinished, then continued to work on it for three years after he moved to France, but only finished it shortly before he died in 1519, sixteen years after he began. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) made his first plaster cast of The Thinker in 1880, but it wasn't until 1902 that he completed the large bronze and marble sculpture.
The creation of a masterpiece is a process. We don't become a finished work of art all at once. Paul writes that we were created – past tense – but we are – present tense – God's work of art. In Greek the present tense indicates a continuing action. We are and will continue to become God's masterpiece. The Scriptures assume that those who choose to follow Jesus enter into a process of transformation, "being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another....: (2 Corinthians 3:18, RSV) We have a part in this transformation; we are to "...put on the new nature, which is being renewed in...the image of its creator." (Colossians 3:10, RSV) We are to "put on ...the new life which was made by God's design for righteousness and the holiness which is no illusion." (Ephesians 4:24, PHL) And all this until we are a "new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) and come to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13) To achieve such a masterpiece takes much more than one master stroke. God has to work at it, shaping us, sculpting us, hammering and chiselling away at our lives until the very likeness of Christ takes form in us.
In the fifteenth century, members of the influential woolen cloth guild in Florence, along with others, commissioned a series of twelve large Old Testament sculptures for the buttresses of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the construction of which had began (1296) almost two centuries earlier. Two figures were created, and in 1464 an artist (Agostino di Duccio) was asked to create a third, a sculpture of King David. He didn't get very far, and stopped when his mentor (Donatello) died. Later another artist (Antonio Rossellino) was commissioned to take up where the first one left off, but for some reason the second artist's contract was terminated, and the large block of marble remained neglected for twenty-five years. Wind and rain weathered it down to a smaller size, which worried those who had commissioned the work of art. Leonardo da Vinci and others were consulted, but it was a young artist – Michelangelo – who was given the task in 1501.
Michelangelo worked on the massive biblical hero for two or three years. The project was not promising. The marble was weathered; too shallow, according to some artists; and compromised by cracks and flaws. Michelangelo set to work on a seriously flawed block of marble that earlier artists had almost ruined. Marble carving is difficult and unforgiving. A figure comes alive only after thousands and thousands of precisely-directed blows. Michelangelo had to work with stunning creativity to shape his masterpiece around the flaws and cracks, as well as the false starts of previous sculptors. It seemed an impossible task, but when he was done, he had created a masterpiece of unsurpassed beauty! He had created David, a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture, a marble statue seventeen feet high that portrays the towering King David.
Most of us are painfully aware of the cracks and flaws and false starts in our own lives. We become discouraged, and think it's too late to make any significant changes, but just as Michelangelo worked around the cracks and compromises, around the flaws in the weathered marble, so God is quite accustomed to working with less-than-perfect materials, making out of flawed materials something beautiful. Our very flaws and failures are a vital part of the unique masterpiece God is creating. God's transformation of those things we thought spelled our ruin are the very things that cause others to gasp in awe at the skilful artistry of our Maker. We may not recognize the Artist's intention, but the New Testament assures us that "everything that happens fits into a pattern for good" (Romans 8:28, PHL), and that the one "who began (this) good work in (us) will carry it on to completion...." (Philippians 1:6, NIV)
Someone has said that "art has inexhaustible riches."
Who can say, for example,
(For Good Measure," May, 1991, by Paul F. Bosch)
Speaking of potential masterpieces, I have read in the New Testament that God is also working on an impossible but impressive mosaic! God calls it, The Church, and it's made up of millions of those smaller works of art called Christians. You are invited to be a part of it!
"We are the hollow men ...
Our own Dark Side
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Paralysed force, gesture without motion...."
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." (The Gulag Archipelago, 1973)
Those of us who have had to face our dark, shadowy side know full well the truth of his perspective.
"We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning (God) ...meant us to live it." (Ephesians 2:10, JER)
Several translations (RSV; NIV; NASB; KJV) use the word, "workmanship" – "For we are (God's) workmanship" – but the Greek word is "poiema," the word from which we obtain the word, "poem," an artistic creation of another kind. We are God's "handiwork" (NEB) is another possible translation.
"The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Out of the slimy mud, beauty! It's ironic, but it's an irony not unfamiliar to the Scriptures, which declare beautiful the feet of those who proclaim Jesus, the very One who: "...had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2, RSV) It tells us that the very stone that the stone-masons "rejected (became) ...the cornerstone...." (1 Peter 2:7, NEB) The New Testament declares, without any embarrassment, that the gospel, though a priceless treasure, is kept in earthen vessels! (2 Cor.4:7) Mud vessels! Clay vessels, which start out in the potter's hand as slimy mud!
Out of the formless stone, when the artist united himself with stone,
Spring always new forms of life ...
Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless
Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings ...
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation."
"There's always something more there
Similarly, who can say that we've seen all there is to see out of you and me?
– a kind of inexhaustible treasure
of mysteries
and surprises
and unexpected depths and heights
that you never can completely comprehend.
that Glenn Gould
got everything that's there
out of the Goldberg Variations?"
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.