As my vocation has placed me squarely at the crossroads where the arts, the Judeo-Christian faith, and the common interests of humanity at large intersect, I am grateful for the perspective and insight I gained through Dr. Ellen Davis (view video) and Makoto Fujimura (view video) at the 2011 Brehm Lectures. For several years, I have wrestled with other artists and creative catalysts – and within myself, in the closet of my own mind – to understand the very questions that provided context for these lectures. Specifically, I have considered the role the arts played in the way the Hebrew prophets communicated God’s word to God’s people, as well as the prophetic function of art today. The Brehm Lectures provided additional fuel for my exploration of these themes.
Any serious study of the prophets calls for careful consideration of the artistry that permeates these pages of scripture. Poetry and performance art were integral to the Hebrew prophets’ effective communication of God’s message. As Dr. Davis pointed out, Jeremiah was “one of the greatest poets ever to compose in Hebrew.” From the very beginning of our record of Jeremiah’s interactions with God, metaphor is pervasive. The branch of an almond tree and a boiling pot are images of God’s watchful eye and warn of impending disaster. Throughout the book, Jeremiah relies heavily on poetic devices to communicate God’s heart to God’s people.
While Dr. Davis kept her remarks to the book of Jeremiah, I am fascinated by Ezekiel. For me, this book epitomizes the art of prophecy, or perhaps better put, art in prophecy. Ezekiel relied on several creative forms, including poetry, diorama, model making, allegory, and performance art, to express God’s message of judgment, forgiveness, and promise for the people of God.
What does this mean for artists today? What does it mean for the communion of saints? I think one clear directive the Church at large should heed is to take art seriously. The arts in all their forms are good gifts from God, intended to be cultivated and employed, communicating God’s message for humanity, both eternal and timely. We ask our painters to adorn the children’s wing of our churches, we commission singable worship tunes, we ask our graphic artists to create bulletin templates, and we invite actors to perform skits before the pastor takes the stage to bring the “real” message. But where is the prophetic function of art in this? As I consider the prophetically inspired arts found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, I wonder, What would happen if, on occasion, preachers invited the artists among them to interpret God’s word through their art and let that art be the sermon? Not as a warm up to the sermon, but as the sermon itself?
Dr. Davis pointed out that the prophets’ vocation was “to preside over the unthinkable: the collapse of the royal house of David and the holy city of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.” Today, artists are often functioning as prophets who are likewise “presiding over the unthinkable.” And one who reflects this vocation profoundly is Makoto Fujimura, who, through his painting and writing, has spent the last decade working through the “disorienting events of 9/11.” For many today, he serves as a compass, consistently pointing “North” to goodness, truth, and beauty found in the message of the New Covenant. Like the prophets before him, Mako offers his audience a line to follow back to truth that is rooted in the very fabric of creation, and forward to hope in the covenant of God’s “unbreakable bond,” his promise of reconciliation, redemption, and full restoration on the day when Christ returns to make all things new, and all things beautiful in their time.
Dr. Davis, referring to Abraham Heschel’s writing on the prophets, pointed out that a prophetic gift is one of insight versus ordinary seeing (which is often not “seeing” at all). “The prophet sees with clarity what others do not see, and then communicates it,” she said. One question that I find myself wondering is, does an artist need to be a willing participant? In other words, can a person who does not self-identify with the God of the Bible be a vessel of prophetic art? Can art that contains not the “whole truth,” but certain aspects of truth, be considered “prophetic art?”
Prophets see contemporary situations with divine perspective, and as I look at the art created by some, I wonder, Is this artist not a prophet also? Emily Dickinson, Bono, Wendell Berry, Jacob Riis, Anselm Keifer, Chaim Potok, and even Banksy are just a handful of artists who help me “see contemporary situations with divine perspective.” Their work does not hold the same weight as those whose words have been canonized as scripture, but they hold prophetic impact nevertheless. Dr. Davis further stated that prophets not only bear humanity’s pain and God’s pain, but they also bearing with God through this pain. Do not also artists who are creating work that is good, true, and beautiful likewise bear something of humanity’s and God’s pain through their work? Even if the artist professes no faith in the Creator, God, that artist yet bears God’s image and is imbued with God’s instinct to create. As God spoke prophetically to (and through) the Magi, a Persian king, a donkey, and a Roman guard, can that same God also speak prophetically through artists, objects of mercy, who breathe and create because of the common grace of God?
I have wrestled with this for years, which makes sense, because I spend a lot of time with Makoto Fujimura through my work with International Arts Movement, which he founded over two decades ago. During his lecture on the prophecy of art, Mako said, “One of the key elements of this conversation has to be the doctrine of common grace. Prophecy assumes that the prophet knows God intimately. But art does not. At least, not directly and explicitly.” Exploring the definition and implications of “common grace,” as opposed to “particular grace,” Mako proposed its opposite to be likewise true: “common curse.” The rain falls on the good and the bad alike. And floods come to the good and the bad alike. Just as the righteous and the unrighteous together experienced the tragedy of Ground Zero, people were rescued by both believers and non-believers alike. But during their moment of rescue, they did not stop to ask, Which side are you on? Likewise, if a piece of art communicates truth to me, does it matter what the intention of the artist was? (For more on this, I recommend watching his entire lecture – http://vimeo.com/31984789.)
I once had a conversation with a man that drove this point home and radically changed my view of what it means for something to be “prophetic art.” Discussing blasphemous art, I defaulted to the example of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, the highly controversial photograph of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine. With as much indignation as I could muster, I stated what I thought was obvious to both of us: here was an example of art that had no possible redemptive value. Then the man asked me a simple question. Can you think of another piece of art that more accurately depicts the utter humiliation Christ endured in order to pay for your sins and mine?
I could not. I was stumped. And every Easter season, as I read the accounts from the gospels of Jesus’s torture and degradation, I remember how angry I felt at the Piss Christ. Andres Serrano gave me language to comprehend what my Jesus did for me in a way that simply reading scripture for the past thirty-plus years had failed to do.
There remain many questions that relate to the Art of Prophecy and the Prophecy of Art, but I appreciate that the 2011 Brehm Lectures provided an excellent jumping off point for this dialogue. As I continue to explore these questions in my own world of art, faith, and humanity, I look forward to engaging further with Brehm’s scholars and theologians and the guests they invite to speak into these matters.
Christy Tennant is Director of Global Community for International Arts Movement and Director of Engagement for Christianity Today’s This Is Our City. She is an actress and writer based in Seattle.