Art And All That, Part VII

I keep thinking that I will blog on another subject, but then God ordains that something comes up during the week that seems relevant to this topic, and so here we are at Part VII. 

Although we’ll be talking about Art, it’s been the “week of technology” at our house.  My parents have gifted me with a laptop (thanks, Mom and Dad, and thanks God!) which arrived Friday evening sans some of its basic software (boo, Toshiba) but otherwise in working order, making me giddy and keeping me from posting this as usual on Friday night.  Earlier in the week the girls and I were delighted to receive our Christmas Present To Ourselves.  This is a new tradition at our house which began when the nestlings commenced moving out and off and starting their own families.  Those who are still at home all contribute to a larger gift that will benefit everyone instead of purchasing separate gifts for one another.  This year we were blessed to be able to purchase a fairly nice telescope to add to our binoculars from last year.  We ordered it early so that we could catch a few fall night-sky events before it gets too cold for us girls.  As we opened it, we were singing Christmas songs. 

Next year, we’ve promised ourselves new linens throughout the house!
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My precious son-in-law sent me a link to a blog this week that produced plenty of fodder for my own blog.
 
Does anyone else find it interesting to discover the ways God used art in scripture? 

In this case we will be looking at visual arts, drama, and dance. 

Thinky Things (this week they come first as well as last!)

As you attended church today (if you did), did you look at your surroundings?  Were there visual reminders of the gospel other than a cross?  Stained glass windows?  Paintings?

During the service:  was there a drama or skit today or within the last month at your church?
 
Lastly, when was the most recent time you experienced a liturgical dance at church?

You see, music is not the only art God created for worship.  All genres of art find their most glorious heights of artistry when used to point us to the glories of Him Who Created Art.  Yet for long and long the church has shunned certain genres of art and banned them from the worship services of the gathered church.  As a result, many of these genres have been given over entirely to humanists and pagans. 

In looking through scripture, however, we find that God has not shunned any type of art in communicating His message to us!  Visual arts (the heavens declare…) drama (Prophecies of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Agabus) Dance (Miriam, David).

Consider Ezekiel.  Below is a rather lengthy passage in which God commands Ezekiel to represent by visual and dramatic arts the punishment He is about to inflict upon Israel for their disobedience.  To some phrases I have added highlights to point out the art.

    “And you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem. 2     And put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it. Set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3     And you, take an iron griddle, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; and set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.
4     “Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. 5     For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6     And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year. 7     And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city. 8     And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege.
9     “And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it. 10     And your food that you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from day to day you shall eat it. 11     And water you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hin; from day to day you shall drink. 12     And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.” 13     And the LORD said, “Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.” 14     Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth up till now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has tainted meat come into my mouth.” 15     Then he said to me, “See, I assign to you cow’s dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread.” 16     Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. 17     I will do this that they may lack bread and water, and look at one another in dismay, and rot away because of their punishment.

5:1     “And you, O son of man, take a sharp sword. Use it as a barber’s razor and pass it over your head and your beard. Then take balances for weighing and divide the hair. 2     A third part you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. And a third part you shall take and strike with the sword all around the city. And a third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. 3     And you shall take from these a small number and bind them in the skirts of your robe. 4     And of these again you shall take some and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will come out into all the house of Israel.
5     “Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. 6     And she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her; for they have rejected my rules and have not walked in my statutes. 7     Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you are more turbulent than the nations that are all around you, and have not walked in my statutes or obeyed my rules, and have not even acted according to the rules of the nations that are all around you, 8     therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. ( Ezekiel 4:1–5:8)

I’ll admit, that is not my favorite story in the Bible!  It is heavy with guilt and the wrath of God:  we all need that reminder more frequently than we get it.  If we heard it more often, perhaps we would remember that from which we have been saved, and be less inclined to take salvation for granted.

Zoe is a dancer who is reading through the Bible and blogging her thoughts as she goes through each passage.  Here’s a sample of what she has to say concerning this passage:

  “The neat thing about this is that God is using something besides just preaching to get a message across.  He's using visual representation and physically acting out the prophecy in a symbolic way.  Hey, that sounds an awful lot like drama!  Ezekiel has become, in a very weird sense, a performing artist prophet.”

She admits that:

This probably isn't the number one thing you're supposed to get out of reading Ezekiel 1-12, but for me, as a performing artist, it really stuck out.  

Performing Artist Prophet.  Now that’s a different—and interesting-- perspective.  It makes me think all kinds of things, like…I wonder if his friends (did he have any friends?  He had a wife…) thought “oh, that’s just Ezekiel trying to get attention.  Honestly, I wish he’d quit that sort of thing.  It takes attention way from God.”  Or, “That’s pretty cool…look at all the attention Ezekiel is getting! I can draw, too…I’m going to draw some stuff on clay.  My heart is right, so it will be God speaking just like Ezekiel.”  Or maybe when Ezekiel heard all this he wished there was a way to resign from being a prophet:  just like sometimes I’d like to resign from being a teacher/performer.  In fact, as it turns out, Jeremiah did feel that way, but found his call and message stronger than his desire to stop prophesying:

    If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot. 

As a performer, I understand this tension:  So many times I am judged for the very gifts that God has given me to use to proclaim His message; at the same time, I know that I must proclaim it somehow, using the gifts He gave me (and not other gifts that He has NOT given me) and I must do so in a very humble yet excellent manner.  This makes me glad God promises to accomplish these things in me, because trying to balance all of that for myself is impossible in my own wisdom and strength.

My particular gifting is in the area of music, which is currently and historically an accepted art in the church, even when it is restricted only to the singing of the human voice.  But a dancer’s perspective is quite different:

Dancing, though, is probably the most iffy art there is for Christians.  For so many centuries it was denounced by the Church or important leaders within the Church, although there were always some who objected to demonizing the art as a whole.  A few years ago I read an article that's actually fairly recent arguing that dance, while not inherently evil, probably always leads to bad things - the author claimed that it was the Israelites' dancing that angered Moses and caused him to break the original 10 Commandments, and even blamed Michal's anger at David's behavior on David!  As a dancer, I found this incredibly disturbing.  Fortunately, I think that with the rise of dance ministries (more than even the rise of Christian dance companies), people in the church are beginning to see dance as simply a visual, physical way of expressing an idea or emotion, and that expression can be worship.

I certainly hope she is right about dance becoming a more accepted art form in the church.  I have personally witnessed a few rare instances of liturgical dance that made me catch my breath at the glimpse it gave me into the heart of scripture.  It could be a powerful way of communicating the gospel.

Zoe continues:

Anyway, so back to Ezekiel.  It's just comforting to see that the things we're just now figuring out, Ezekiel was commanded by God to do.  He was using art, as it were, to tell a story or to present a message.  That is the purpose of art - not to be worshiped or even to draw attention to itself, but to tell you something about real life.  Art has a way of breaking down barriers.  A lot of people will not listen to a sermon, or if they hear something that starts to sound like one, they'll just close their ears.  The arts have the ability to reach beyond our defenses and speak straight to our hearts, sometimes without us even knowing it at first.  That's why they're so powerful, and maybe that's why God had Ezekiel do this.

Or, you know, maybe He was saying it's okay to let your kids play in the dirt.

Well…perhaps letting your kids play in the dirt was a secondary interpretation!  Still valid you know, but not the main point *extracts tongue from cheek*.

More Thinky Things

What forms of True Art do you personally prefer?  Are there forms of art which are not useful to the Body of Christ and therefore useless for worship or proclamation when the Body gathers (if you argue for this, you MUST provide scriptural support.  Ha.  For that matter, if you argue the opposite you must also use scriptural support.)  The “Worship Wars” continue to be fought in church after church.  Why?  What’s the big deal about worship that we need to fight over?  What’s the big deal about Art And All That for the Body of Christ?  And what is the result of the church’s abandonment of certain genres of art over the centuries?

Well…that’s a lot to think about.  You can read Zoe's entire post here . Ponder, post and, until next time:

Hold Fast