January 2012 was a sunny day as we drove towards The Double R Ranch. When the sign for Highway 79 came into view, we turned off and continued driving, talking away the miles, enjoying the chance to reconnect. But as we climbed into the foothills and reached the tall pine trees we realized our mistake, we had taken the 79 North instead of the 79 South. Having driven for two and one half hours in the wrong direction, we contacted the ranch and found our way south. So the scenic route ended up taking three hours instead of one, but the wonderful conversation while lost on the road was just the beginning of an amazing three-month exploration.

“Design a Chapel” is a project that brought together faculty and students from both Azusa Pacific and Biola University. Under the inspiring influence of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, we were given the task of developing student teams that would prepare all semester for a visit to the Double R Ranch near Temecula, California. There they would encounter homeless men in the midst of their journey towards health and an eventual return to active and vital engagement with their families and society. The job assigned to our students was to design a chapel that would become a spiritual center for the men staying on the ranch. The ranch is operated by the Orange County Rescue Mission and headed by its president, Jim Palmer.

Over the course of the three-month project students attended a conference on Sacred Space, visited the ranch, developed site-specific installations, researched the geological, human and spiritual histories of the region. This was all preparation for their engagement in a Design Charette where they finalized their vision for the proposed chapel. For all of us, it was an opportunity to experience the power of art as it enabled both teams to see beyond their school affiliations and their personal studio production to something greater: art in the service of others through imagining a space where those less fortunate can seek solace and peace.

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This article is taken from our most recent SEEN Journal which shipped out this week. To find our more or order additional copies, visit our online store.

In 2011, my family and I moved to Minot, North Dakota, and while riding my bike to work each day, dodging debris from the recent disastrous flood, I came upon these books, hundreds of them, out in the open, exposed to the elements, battered by wind and rain. They hung in the trees and were strewn throughout the landscape. These books were like human bodies. Bodies scattered across the streets, neglected in ditches, battered on the rails . . . shamefully exposed, as if from a great disaster . . . a genocide, a pogrom. Moved by this grim sight, I commenced on a new journey that would become Codex, and the metaphor of the discarded body directed each successive step.

In an April 15, 2010 interview, Krista Tippett, of Speaking of Faith spoke with forensic anthropologist Mercedes Dorretti regarding her work identifying remains of victims from Argentina’s Dirty War (1970s). Dorretti, an Argentinian, speaks of her task of uncovering and identifying victims while bringing healing, closure, and justice through reparation to the surviving families.

Ms. Tippett: It strikes me, when I talk to you and I read about the work you do, you don’t reverse the indignity that was done or the horror that was done, but in some ways somehow what you’re doing is a counterweight to it. I mean, you’re making death matter, which somehow is a statement that life matters.
Ms. Doretti: Exactly. It is so much the work for the living . . . I was also more impressed at the beginning by all the dead part of it. It took me awhile to understand how this is so much connected with the people that are alive and to dignify the death of the victims.
–
Ms. Tippett: What about this process, though, of individuals reconciling these losses within themselves? And I suppose that if it happens with one person, perhaps it affects families and communities. I mean, in Argentina or elsewhere, have you believed that this work that you were engaged in with people of finding and identifying and at least putting the bones to rest of their loved ones, that that made a difference in terms of how they came through this in the long term?
Ms. Doretti: Yes. Yes. Frankly, that’s one of the main reasons why we do this work. [1]

Justice is a challenging project when pursued years after the criminal events, and still more challenging in the wake of a natural disaster. Who is to blame for all of the catastrophic destruction, irreparable losses, and lingering darkness? How do we make right when no one did anything wrong?

Everyone fights the darkness
their own way.
You with your rifle
the star with its shaft of light
and I with my poem.

- Feryedoun Faryad [2]

Codex is a multi–media artwork involving film, photography, and installation. In some way it addresses injustice through compassion, grief, and redemption . . . an attempt to bring bearing to St. John’s words: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Micah Bloom

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[1] Laying the Dead to Rest: meeting forensic anthropologist Mercedes Doretti,
Speaking of Faith (now On Being), Amercian Public Media, April 15, 2010

[2] #74, Feryedoun Faryad, Heaven without a Passport, Red Dragonfly Press, 2006

There will be a special screening of the Codex film at CIVA’s JUSTart Conference. To find out more, go here.

Micah Bloom is an artist. He grew up in Minnesota, earned an MFA at the University of Iowa, and teaches in North Dakota. Married for 11 years, Micah and Sara share four delightful daughters, and they all love to make things. Bloom’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he directs the multi-media art project: Codex.

At heart, I have always been a simultaneous artist and philanthropist. I didn’t want my passions to be separated, and so I have always sought to holistically combine them. This project, called Sacred Streets, does that in a way I have been trying to imagine for years.

Sacred Streets is all about bringing beauty and dignity to a community that rarely ever gets it. I want to know the people from this community on a personal level, and the best way I know of connecting with them is to make portraits. To draw a person, in person, is for me a means of being present and attentive to the dignity in them.

While sitting with someone eye to eye for hours, and taking the time to capture their essence in artistic expression, an intimate exchange occurs— they are releasing themselves, baring their lives in an act of transparency, and in turn, receiving a deep and meaningful expression of their being. As I go about this work, I have seen a certain dignity restored in a person in a way that would’ve been difficult to achieve simply through words and impossible to achieve through a hand out. I want to help them feel human again and artistic engagement definitely has the power to do that.

I further this effort of restoration by drawing the portraits on reclaimed objects that are meant to tell a story parallel to the people depicted, a story of being found again and renewed. As the portraits come to completion I integrate shapes, symbols, and materials that resemble traditional images of saints and icons you would see in a cathedral, usually placed as altarpieces or objects of veneration.

If I were ever to try my hand at a recipe for bringing justice to the world, I think my base ingredient would be “feeling human.” That is one thing I think we all deserve, and if it is missing, so is justice. Artists have the power to replace this missing piece because the center of our practice is bringing beauty, renewed meaning, and yes, dignity to the world— things that are intrinsic to humanity.

– Jason Leith

Sacred Streets will be premiering this Thursday in Los Angeles. For more information on the project and opening, go to sacredstreets.org.

Jason Leith is a graduate of Biola University with a BFA in drawing and painting, a minor in Bible and Business and a graduate of Biola’s Torrey Honors Institute. He resides in Southern California where he leads Saddleback Church’s Arts Initiative, Ex Creatis.

Green Doors

Thoughts from CIVA Artist Bryn Gillette about how his art has been impacted by his experiences with suffering in Haiti.

I’ve been painting my prayers for Haiti for over eight years. What began as a starving artist’s meager offering to support the education of orphans, slowly grew into a large scale prophetic plea for God’s heart and destiny over the entire nation of Haiti. I believe it’s my calling to capture glimpses of God’s heart for the beautiful and broken people of Haiti, to show what’s been, what is, and what could be (should be). At its best moments, I feel my painting becomes a thin space between my prayers for Haiti and the canvas, between the hard truths of physical reality and the redemptive possibilities of Divine presence.

In 2005 I painted twenty-one 5″x7” watercolors and sold them to fundraise for the school entry fee of orphans in Haiti. My friend and contact, a once Haitian-orphan himself, was trying to raise the miniscule annual school fee of $50 per student for the twenty-one orphans in his care near Port-Au-Prince. I remember my sense of disgust, confusion, and anger over the injustice of this small cost while life in Fairfield County, Connecticut unfolded around me with such lavish abundance in every area of life. “Our kids pay twice that much for their first-day-of-school outfit while these poor Haitian orphans need just to GO to school!” I combated my sense of helplessness with the only asset I felt I had at the time: my brush. What I didn’t realize then was that this simple act of solidarity was my catalyst to begin a Kingdom assignment. For the past eight years, my artwork has been the framework and platform for me to engage the world in a conversation of “stewardship”: what has God given us, and what are we doing with it?

Cathedral

For the past three years I have been working on a series of twelve door-sized panels titled “Haiti- Beyond The Ruins”. It began as my own reaction to the destruction of the 2010 earthquake, and has grown into a broader discussion of, “What does it take to rebuild a nation?” The first five images are my visual digestion and reaction to the ruins of Haiti, not only the ruins of the 2010 earthquakes, but the greater “ruin” that predated that natural disaster and still remain today. The last seven panels, many of which are still in process, parallel the “Seven Mountains” or the “Seven Spheres of Influence” that it is said are needed to reform and change a society [Bill Bright of Campus Crusade and Loren Cunningham founder of YWAM]. These are: Education, Family, Government, Business, Religion, Media, and the Arts.

It’s my goal to finish these paintings and begin a tour of the work to institutions of higher education and cultural influence, where this new body can serve as a catalyst for conversations about first world stewardship, and the rebuilding of broken nations. I had naively hoped to finish these pieces while the public conscience was still focused on Haiti. I have since learned that now, more than ever, we need artists to keep issues before us that the Media has discarded. More than the work’s need for time to evolve, I have found it was my own heart that needed the time to grow and change with the weight of the subject. “What does it take to rebuild a nation?” If it’s anything like building a painting, it takes time, love, and a lot of hard work.

To further explore the interaction of justice and the arts, join us at our Biennial Conference, JUSTart this June. Also, look for more of Bryn’s writing and art work in our forthcoming issue of SEEN Journal.

In a warm, faithful chapel on the grounds of a Benedictine monastery in Hingham, Massachusetts, the congregation of Church of the Cross Boston engaged in an expression of art and play. A diverse body of doctors, theologians, musicians, social workers, engineers, teachers, students, retail workers, veterinarians and others, together dropped to their knees around a raised altar and played with children’s blocks building structures large and small. Purposed piles of blocks were marked out at various stations around the center, and groups formed to make castles and fortresses, sky rises and small villages. As blocks inevitably fell, the sound of wood crashing on the hardwood floor was met with a collective echo of “Aww!” Care was placed into every inch of the tiny building project; while great heights were attempted with a combination of intention and abandon, joyful expression, and raptures of laughter.

The chapel’s modern architecture was complemented by the sharp edges of the temporary miniature structures that grew into the natural shape of the space. There seemed to be a sacred pull to get on one’s knees in awe of the sovereignty of God and the beauty of His holiness. Vaulted ceilings and gilded images of Mary and Jesus and of St. Benedict carrying his Holy Rule emphasized this draw. Stations of the cross painted in simple yet solemn pictures on the sides of the chapel walls served as essential reminders of the season of Lent. A solid, wooden cross with a painted image of Jesus on one side and a carved image on the other provided a visual reminder of Him on whom the purposeful play was centered. Worship music, experimental jazz, and pre-recorded scriptures and quotes played in the background. In this space a body of believers was able to, as John Milton stated, leave off the soul’s “severe schooling” for a while and engage in “delightful intermissions”. In this intermission, the participants were present in the space while simultaneously shuffling aside their titles and accolades, and with child-likeness, created structures made by assembling 1,400 wooden blocks in a corporate act of worship.

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4, ESV)

The foreman, creative visionary and worship leader of the Play Project, Shannon Sigler, knows well the “re-alignment,  surrender, and, ultimately, welcome childlikeness” there can be when the serious weightiness of adulthood encounters the imaginative, faith-filled make-believe of a child at play. As an artist, a theologian and a mother of an energetic toddler, Shannon has immersed herself well with the “mental reorientation” that occurs when approaching Christ with childlike faith. Her experiences playing with her son Eli provided a new frame of reference for what it means to be a child in the presence of God. This proved very evident in how she involved  the congregation in an earnest, communal act through the creation of a sculpture. On the purpose of the project, Shannon states, “This playful experiment, as I call it, will seek to discover an affective side to a community’s engagement with God. It will call those of us living in a very intellectual city into a place of light-hearted play. It will encourage a childlike embrace of the things we can’t quite wrap our minds around. “

“Good liturgical art is art that serves effectively the actions of the liturgy…” Nicholas Wolterstorff  (Art in Action)

The end of the retreat offered time for reflection on the retreat as a whole and, specifically, the Play Project. Rector Mark Booker thanked Shannon for taking the risk, a risk in inviting the church to worship through playing with blocks. One parishioner noted that the whole group participated in joyful activity as beings made for creativity. For two hours on a sunny Saturday, one church actualized an art installation, not as professional artists but as blithesome children. Light danced in through the great windows onto the cream colored blocks of rudimentary shapes, and they were molded by mature hands into one sculpture made for one purpose – praise of the Father. Members of Church of the Cross for these moments reimagined worshipping Christ while shifting the paradigm from that of busied, burdened adults to the wonder and unquestioning faith of a child. For those two hours, a faithful little kingdom of natural wood blocks stood as a fixed reminder of how Jesus calls us to enter into His Kingdom – simply, joyfully, purposefully.

– Micah McDonald

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The Play Project was an art installation created by the Church of the Cross Boston Community at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, Massachusetts. The project served to draw the congregation into an expanded expression of worship while encountering deeper levels of childlikeness in relationship to God and each other. The project was funded by a Kickstarter, and the 1,400 building blocks were donated to play centers via Horizons for Homeless Children, serving Boston’s homeless youth population.

One of the criticisms of “contemporary worship” following 9/11 was that the style of worship provided no space for real lament. I would suggest that this is not a problem merely limited to “contemporary-styled” services. Whether it be the so-called “happy-clappy songs” of some brands of “contemporary worship,” or the saccharine, humanistic sermons that will be given in many mainline congregations this Sunday aimed at inspiring us to love our neighbor better in light of this tragedy; our North Atlantic congregations often seem unable to provide space for grief over the world’s pain and sin within our worship services. If we are to be faithful to the gospel and also honest about this moment we must lament, and we must proclaim the hope that is ours in Christ.

Our Song Is a Response to God’s Mighty Acts
So how do we hold in tension the empty tomb while wrestling with the anguish of the present age when we come together for worship? The history of Christian worship provides us an answer. The early Christians were marked by a distinct understanding of the Triune God and history. Through the incarnation, the eternal Logos entered into time. By His suffering, death, and resurrection, Christ decisively acted in time, and by His ascension, now holds time together. Christ, the Lord of time, now sits at the Father’s right hand interceding for the world by the Spirit. This fundamental principle—that God’s mighty acts are the foundation for our faith and worship—was as important for the early church as it was to the Hebrew people. And, like the Israelites, the early Christians understood worship to be a response to God’s action, not a shamanistic forcing of God.

Let me clarify what I mean by worship (particularly music in worship) as “response.” In the “already-but-not-yet” age in which the church operates, the church is called to function sacramentally—that is, manifesting to the world the world’s past, present, and future existence in the light of the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ. Musically, this might be understood as thanksgiving, but it is a particular kind of thanksgiving, one that is much more than a vague appreciation for God’s goodness. It is a thanksgiving which is rooted in the rehearsal of God’s mighty acts. This is something we see in the Old Testament. Consider, for example, the “Song of Moses/Miriam,” from Exodus 15:

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD :

“I will sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider
he has hurled into the sea”
(Exodus 15:1, New International Version).

The song continues with a recounting of God’s deliverance of the Israelites through the Red Sea—which becomes the content for praise and thanksgiving. While the majority of the “Song of Moses/Miriam” is concerned with what God has done in the past, the song ends with a proclamation of God’s revealed (future) promise to the Hebrews:

You will bring them in and plant them
on the mountain of your inheritance—
the place, O LORD, you made for your dwelling,
the sanctuary, O Lord, your hands established
(Ex. 15:17, New International Version).

This is merely one example of a consistent biblical emphasis which provides a foundation for music in the church. God’s accomplishments in the past and His promised action in the future serve as the essential foundation for the song of the church.

Crying “Kyrie” and “Maranatha”
But what do I do on Sunday with the real, present grief that my city is experiencing? The second facet of music as a “response” is the dual, ancient cry of the church: “kyrie eleison” and “maranatha”—“Have mercy, Lord!” and “Come, Lord Jesus!” Such a response acknowledges that Christ is our only hope in the midst of a suffering world. This dual petition is founded on God’s activity. The mystery of the ascension is that Christ has already achieved victory over the future. Obviously, this is not to say that the future has already occurred, but the church lives in the certainty of a promise (Christ’s return) that has been revealed. Thus, when we cry, “Lord, have mercy!” we do so in certain hope of God’s future action, the final coming of our Lord.

This is more than a distant, passive hope in what is to come. We must also understand the priestly function of the church in the midst of the “already-but-not-yet” tension. The music of the church, like prayer, assumes that our pleas for mercy are not simply deferred to a distant future, but somehow allow us to participate in the current work of the Spirit. Grounded in the truth of what God has done in the past and promised for the future, the church is invited to freely participate in the work of Spirit in ministry to a broken world through prayer and action. The point is essential: music which responds “kyrie eleison/maranatha” to events like the marathon bombing, functions as intercession and is anything but passive.

Singing the Story, Crying Out to God
So as I continue planning music for worship this Sunday, I in no means seek to obscure the hope that is ours, in Christ, of a final day when He will return; neither do I want to gloss over the horrific events that happened this week by failing to provide space for my congregation to sing out our grief. My aim is to choose songs that rehearse the story of God’s mighty acts in Christ, while crying out “Lord, have mercy!” and “Come Lord Jesus!” I do so in the certainty that Christ not only hears our prayers (sung and spoken) and guides our steps during this trying time, but that He will indeed return and make all things new in His everlasting Kingdom.

Matt Sigler

Merge in the Gaze, Maria Fee

Why should artists move toward integrating their art experiences with theology? One reason is to combat the current approach to theology as solely an intellectual exercise. Knowledge also comes by way of embodiment – tacit information is just as valuable as the theoretical. Furthermore, while it is easier to love in theory, it is not the approach Christians should take. Love makes itself known through the material and through our interactions with the world. This is why when art and our daily encounters with the world enter into conversation with theology, far away God-concepts suddenly draw near. Indeed, God does not desire to be known theoretically – this is why he sent his Son. Hence, it becomes the job of his people to incarnate Christ in this world.

In Desiring the Kingdom, James K.A. Smith sees a problem with the way we impart much of our Christian education: “We hand young people…. a ‘Christian worldview’ [a set of ideas]…But such strategies are aimed at the head and thus miss the real target: our hearts, our loves, our desires.” [1] Theology needs to be more than head knowledge. As Thomas Franklin O’Meara points out, it is also “the discernment of the presence of the ‘More’ amid sin and grace.” [2]

Cultus, Maria Fee

Through the process of creating we must materialize whatever inklings we can muster of our triune God and his actions in the world. Art allows us to muddle through the mysterious with surprising results. Take for example Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece created for the Monastery of St. Anthony. The artwork theologically depicts the atonement, but does so by affectively bringing the viewer into the misery and mystery of Jesus’ death. The painting’s figures seem to have been captured in the midst of a forceful shake casting an air of anxiety and feverishness. And, the fact that the gruesomely depicted Jesus bears the skin diseases of the monastery’s infirmary patients is further proof that this religious relic does not offer the viewer an abstract idea to ponder, but seeks to unite human suffering with God. Here we have theology in action.

It is interesting to note how the theologian Karl Barth hung a reproduction of this altar piece in his office. The crooked finger of John the Baptist, forever frozen in time, continually pointed Barth back to Christ. [3] It seems formal theology has need of art. This is why artists must begin to grapple with all God has to offer through their material resources.

Maria Fee

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[1] James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009,) p.33.

[2] Thomas Franklin O’Meara, “The Aesthetic Dimension in Theology”, Art Creativity and the Sacred, ed. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (New York: Crossroads, 1984) p.215

[3] Clifford Green, Karl Barth Theologian of Freedom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), p. 11.

This post is the final in a multi-part series engaging the vocation of the artist from a theological perspective, originally developed for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC by Maria Fee and Kenyon Adams. View the first post here.

Constellation of Practices, Maria Fee

Colin Gunton nicely states the Christological dimension of creativity. With the freedom gained by following Christ what, then, is the nature of our creative activity? The artist should follow the one who serves as priest, prophet, and king.

Jesus’ three-fold ministry applies to artists in various ways, but, for the limited space here we will offer the following concrete ways artists can preserve Christ’s activity in the world. The artist as priest is primarily the keeper of sacred stories; these stories connect us with the living God. The artist as prophet upholds and reveals God’s heart. And lastly, kingly servants are builders and participants of kingdom community.

The common understanding of priest is that of a mediator offering sacrifices to God. In the Epistle to the Hebrews Jesus is revealed as the ultimate mediator reconciling us to God through his body. Jeremy Begbie suggests this sacrificial action lets our art actions become priestly. Artists can be “priests of creation” working “to articulate and extend” the praise of God’s creation made possible through Christ.[2] With components of the cosmos artists create narratives that reveal the nature of God.

The poet Robert Frost wrote how “poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget.” Narratives, whether a collection of images or words, aid memory. This is how the Scriptures operate for the Christian. The Bible is a collection of narratives that shapes our present and future life by reminding us of God’s promise, provision and grace. Therefore, the artist as priest is the keeper of the stories that help mediate God’s work in the world.

While the priest may help us remember and experience God, the artist as prophet conveys his concerns. Many times prophetic work can be a simple pronouncement of the good. We see this in1Corinthians 14 when Paul instructs the worshipping community to offer prophecy for the building up of the corporate body. Prophetic art should strengthen, encourage and comfort, but we know at times it also relates difficult truths about the world, about God, about ourselves. John Dillenberger states how sometimes “the literary and the visual are…affirmations in their negations; indeed, they negate in order to affirm.”[3] The arts help us to recognize our humanity, both its glory and its brokenness. Hence, prophetic work reveals God’s heart despite the difficulties that may arise.

Prophetic art exists in and for community. If Jesus is the good king his priority becomes care of his kingdom. A thriving kingdom provides the basic needs for its inhabitants. Therefore, by seeking human flourishing through our practice of medicine, economics, law, or art, we become kingly servants. Furthermore, the arts play a major role towards positive social interactions and communal cohesion. Our experiences in choir, band, or drama are really dress rehearsals for life together. Likewise, our corporate worship bonds us together through songs, prayers, and the sacramental movement towards the table. This, too, is practice for our eternal life worshipping God.

Kingly, prophetic, and priestly artists understand that their work happens in and for community. Lewis Hyde reminds us that “the spirit of an artist’s gifts can wake our own.”[4] Art can be a catalyst to incite others to remember, encourage and produce good works.

Maria Fee

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[1] Colin Gunton, “Creation and Re-Creation,” Modern Theology 2:1 (1985), p. 18.

[2] Jeremy Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise (London: Continuum, 1991), p.177.

[3] Dillenberger, A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1986),p. 224.

[4] Lewis Hyde, The Gift (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), p. xvii.

This post is the third in a five-part series engaging the vocation of the artist from a theological perspective, originally developed for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC by Maria Fee and Kenyon Adams. View the first post here.

I gather (sunagow), Maria Fee

In Genesis 2 God animates Adam with his Spirit and places him in a garden to cultivate it. In Exodus 35 we witness once more God filling a person with his Spirit, then he sets him to work. Bezalel was to build and beautify the tabernacle, but he was not to do this on his own. He would become a master-teacher enabling the Israelite community to create God’s dwelling place.

Art happens through relationships. All serious artists voluntarily submit to a school, a philosophy, a particular training, a mentor or a master. Despite how art is typically understood as a type of self-expression, the vocation of an artist entails the sacrifice of training. Stanley Hauerwas astutely recognizes how “artists, who must learn to submit to the medium in which they work, demonstrate the kind of training necessary for any of us to see the world rightly.” Artists must surrender to a master, to a medium, in order to fully extend creativity, personhood, and the way they see the world.

This is a bit how Christian discipleship works. However, when the artist as disciple follows Jesus it becomes possible to hand over self because this master has traveled through death and beyond for his disciple’s sake. Furthermore, Jesus shapes the artist into a new creation with renewed purpose (2 Cor 5:17-20) and sets him into community with both God and his kingdom of believers. Jesus, the master, redirects the artist’s attention to the kingdom’s agenda and grants a wider perspective that reveals God’s patterns in the world.

Just as God’s being is constituted in triune community, our true personhood, and our art, can only occur in and through relationships. Our expressions as artists are limited and shallow if we only rely on self. In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, T.S. Eliot reminds us how “no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” We are to be in fluid relationship with a community of other artists. As Christians we are also connected with the Master who offers us the world. Yet Eliot wisely understood we gain this world through the process of “continual self-sacrifice.” The artist as disciple becomes a receptacle “for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images” in order to assemble creations out of “new combinations.” The artist as disciple is not self-serving, but makes room for others and the world in order to create a space for God. Bezalel did not build the tabernacle on his own, but shared his gift of the Spirit with the community. Together they made it possible for God to dwell among them.

Maria Fee

This post is the second in a five-part series engaging the vocation of the artist from a theological perspective, originally developed for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC by Maria Fee and Kenyon Adams.  View the first post here.

Maria Fee has recently commenced her PhD studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena. She previously served as an arts ministry coordinator in the Center For Faith & Work (CFW), Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Maria was the visual coordinator for various Redeemer projects and facilitated collaborative programs such as the in-house literary magazine, creative showcase night, the writers vocation group, and an annual juried exhibition.

Maria’s work as a painter reflects her own theological queries regarding being and becoming within a communal body. She holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Painting from Queens College, C.U.N.Y. and a M.A. in Theological Studies from New Brunswick Seminary. Maria is a native New Yorker and married to Brian Fee, also an artist. They have three grown children.

Kenyon Adams is the Arts Ministry Coordinator for the Center For Faith and Work (CFW), Redeemer Presbyterian Church. His rich cultural engagement with New York City and its artists has helped attain quality speakers, presenters and leaders for ongoing CFW events and programs. Kenyon is also a singer, songwriter, and actor.

Genesis Seed, Maria Fee

In the first chapter of Genesis, God poetically fashions the world, engineers the propagating capability for all of life, and affirms what he has created. It is also here we learn that we are made in his image, imago dei. Subsequently, God places us at the forefront of his creation to care and cultivate the possibilities therein. He involves humanity in his cultural project.

Theologians and pastors look to Genesis for a biblical model regarding cultural engagement. This is a great place to start, but artists quickly find themselves in a quandary. While Christians may like the idea of art, we live in the reality of a broken world. Art can reflect God’s glory as well as human sin-patterns. This is why most Christians at best restrain their use of the arts towards spiritual formation, or at worst renounce it.

Despite God’s affirmation in Genesis, sin makes it impossible for us to see the world rightly. We must then ask, is possible for Christians to love the world despite its brokenness? And, the answer is yes. While Genesis validates God’s creation, Jesus, through the Spirit, enables us to see it rightly.

The good news is a restoration program has begun. Jesus invites us towards the activities of re-creation. Christ, the builder of our faith, reestablishes the original Genesis plans. The Epistle to the Romans relates how we, too, can follow the builder’s guidelines. Jesus, who was delivered over to death for our sins, is raised to life and has purchased peace between God and humanity. Through Christ, sins are no longer counted against us. We can now take part in his construction crew. Jesus’ death-resurrection act not only gains access to God and his mission, it also obtains hope. We get to view the final blueprint featuring God-Glory—the world to be despite (and through) its present sufferings (Romans 4:25-5:2).

Maria Fee

Christ’s purchase of peace offers hope. Jesus somehow takes our sins—our persistent need for self-glorification—and transforms it into God-glory. We must, however, daily hand our work, our plans, over to him. This Gospel-centered hope saves us from fearing our human frailty—for it is in weakness we come to know the creative Christ. As Kenyon

Adams repeatedly states, “our art becomes the context for his renewing work.”

The Genesis narrative details the regenerative capability God set into motion in every living thing. With the created world’s seed-laden potency, think how well equipped we are to handle creativity. Through Christ, we do not hold back our artistic actions. Instead, we become as fruitful as God intended.

Maria Fee

Maria Fee has recently commenced her PhD studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena. She previously served as an arts ministry coordinator in the Center For Faith & Work (CFW), Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Maria was the visual coordinator for various Redeemer projects and facilitated collaborative programs such as the in-house literary magazine, creative showcase night, the writers vocation group, and an annual juried exhibition.

Maria’s work as a painter reflects her own theological queries regarding being and becoming within a communal body. She holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Painting from Queens College, C.U.N.Y. and a M.A. in Theological Studies from New Brunswick Seminary. Maria is a native New Yorker and married to Brian Fee, also an artist. They have three grown children.

Kenyon Adams is the Arts Ministry Coordinator for the Center For Faith and Work (CFW), Redeemer Presbyterian Church. His rich cultural engagement with New York City and its artists has helped attain quality speakers, presenters and leaders for ongoing CFW events and programs. Kenyon is also a singer, songwriter, and actor.