Wandering through a museum gallery recently, we came upon a full floor of religious art from earlier centuries, one painting after another sharing stories of the Bible. The Annunciation. The Transfiguration. David and Goliath. David and Bathsheba. Lot’s wife. Delilah with a fistful of hair. The woman at the well. More nativity scenes than we could count. John the Baptist with Jesus. John the Baptist, without Jesus, speaking to people gathered under a tree. John the Baptist’s head on a plate. The Prodigal Son.
And then, from Caspar David Friedrich, this beauty, titled Easter Morning (ca. 1828-1835).
In the gallery, people moved mostly in silence from painting to painting, Biblical story to Biblical story … except for one younger pair, a man and a woman.
Gesturing at the paintings, the young man kept saying, “I have absolutely no context to understand this.”
He wasn’t expressing hostility; he was simply perplexed. What for us had been a meaningful journey through key parts of the Biblical narrative was a complete enigma for him.
His companion gently responded, “Well, just try to imagine…try to give yourself over to these stories. People find them meaningful. I think they start from faith in the meaning…” He looked at her with an expression hard to categorize (longing? frustration?) and began again.
“I mean, I just have no way of understanding why any of this is so important to people – or why gifted artists spent so much time and effort painting these scenes. How could anyone believe this? Why did they choose to paint this?”
At that point they moved on and so did we. But as we walked away, we found ourselves thinking about your church board and the challenges you face as bearers of the Easter message of hope and life and resurrection, in a world where that young man speaks for so many when he says, “I have no context for this.”
In the following poem, Billy Collins tackles a related challenge. He wants to help his students enter into poetry, but they have no context for it. They have no way in.
Introduction to Poetry
BY BILLY COLLINS
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
A recent TMC podcast featured a dynamic conversation about preaching with Cynthia Hale and Tom Long. Asked what has changed about preaching, Tom responded, “I used to think that, as a preacher, my challenge was boredom in the pews. I now think it is [the need for] formation.”
When have you encountered a piece of art or music and found yourself saying, “I have no context for this”? How did it make you feel?
How might you respond to the young man in the museum? What could you say?
What specifically does Collins ask his students to do with a poem? What do they do instead, and why?
Do you agree with Tom Long that the challenge for preachers has changed from boredom in the pews to a lack of formation? If so, how does that show up in your congregation?
How are you, as a church board, wrestling with the challenge represented by that puzzled young man?
Where is that challenge reflected in your church board agenda? If it isn’t reflected, how could you bring it into your next meeting?
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