Advent (which begins this Sunday) is my favorite season of the church year. I was baptized on the first Sunday of Advent, 1966, and have an affinity with the anguished cry of Isaiah in one of the readings for the first Sunday in Advent:
- O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
- so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
- as when fire kindles brushwood
- and the fire causes water to boil--
- to make your name known to your adversaries,
- so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
- (Isaiah 64)
It is akin to U2's cry in "Peace on Earth," an bitter song written in the aftermath of the bomb that exploded in Omagh on 15th August 1998, just a few months after the Good Friday agreement that was meant to bring peace to Northern Ireland:
Jesus, sing the song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth
Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So, what's it worth?
This peace on Earth
In the context of the utter revulsion we feel at the ravages of war and hatred, the cry "Come, Lord Jesus." is no sweet carol. It is a gut-wrenching cry, full of at one and the same time lament, confession, and profound hope. Hope not based upon sight, but upon a promise, a promise that all will be made well in God's time.
Advent is also a natural time to mediate on the doctrine of the incarnation, the Christian idea that the God of heaven dwelt in fullness in the man Jesus. In the famous and poetic words of John's gospel, "The word became flesh and dwelt among us." I have been working at the intersection of art and incarnation, drawing on my Lutheran tradition of the theology of the cross, mainly engaging pop music. My book on U2 was a first foray into this area and my forthcoming book, Broken Hallelujahs, will offer a fuller discussion of my general approach while engaging a much broader range of pop music. In this light, I was surprised and delighted to find this as I work my way through Charles Taylory's amazing book, A Secular Age. As he finished chapter 2, "The Rise of the Disciplinary Society," he is speaking about the Reformation and its affirmation of ordinary life. He writes regarding this shift introduced by the project of reforms, and by the Protestant Reformation espeically:
"A Christian worships God in his everyday existence, in work and family life. None of this is to be considered profane. Now I believe that there is a connection between this aspiration, and some of the profound shifts in representation, which one can see in Western painting in these centuries." He notes how this shift , seen in Renaissance Italian and later Netherlands painting, moves from painting Christ, Mary and so on as icons and considers them in their everyday humanness. This has been, so Taylor argues, a hallmark of of secularization, a shift towards interest in things for their own sake. As he does again and again, Taylor here shows that at least intitially this move is not secular, but a shift in theological perspective. He rather sees this turn in art as reflecting "a strong Incarnational spirituality". "The realism, tenderness, physicality, particularity of much of this painting . . . instead of being read as a turning away form transcendence, should be grasped in a devotional context, as a powerful affirmation of the Incarnation, an attempt to live it more fully by bringing it completely into our world." (144).
Great. That just seems exactly right, and opens up a needed space for reflection on reformation and art, which I'm trying to explore in relation to popular music.
Anon,
Chris
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