We have lived for too long with The Arts as the pretty bit around the edge with the reality as the non-artistic thing in the middle. But genuine art, I believe, takes seriously the fact that the world is full of the glory of God, and that it will be full as the waters cover the sea, and at present, (Romans chapter 8) it is groaning in travail. Genuine art responds to that triple awareness of what is true - the beauty that is there - of what will be true - the ultimate beauty - and of the pain of the present; and holds them together in tension, as the Psalms do, and asks 'why?' and 'what?' and 'where are we?' And you can do that in music and you can do that in dance and you can do that in painting. And our generation needs to do that, not simply to decorate the gospel but to announce the gospel. Because again and again, when you can do that, you open up hermeneutic space for people whose minds were so closed by secularism that they just literally cannot imagine any other way of the world being.
I have debated in public in America with colleagues in the New Testament Guild who refuse to believe in the bodily resurrection. And again and again the bottom line is when they say, 'I just can't imagine that.' The answer is, smarten up your imagination. And the way to do that is not to beat them over the head with dogma, but so to create a world of mystery and beauty and possibility that actually there are some pieces of music that when you come out of them it is much easier to say 'I believe in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit' than when you went in!
The Christian imagination is being refreshed. Down in the African gallery in the British Museum there is a tree of life. It stands about nine feet high, spreading branches and little animals around the foot. It was made in Mozambique by four local artists, sponsored by Christian Aid and by the British Museum itself. And it is made from de-commissioned weapons after the civil war. They got these piles of old rusting weapons. And part of the irony is that no-one in Mozambique makes guns: all of them are imported from everywhere else in the world for that long, long civil war. And they say, 'actually there's a piece of an AK47 that if you cut it like this and turn it like that, turns into the shape of three nice leaves.' And I stood in front of that tree and thought about the Isaiah's promise that their swords will be beaten into plowshares. And that tree of life is a way of saying to the Mozambicans and hence, thank God, to the rest of us, 'Open up your imaginations and think of the possibility of a world without guns, a world without violence, a world without barbed wire and land mines. Open up your mind to the possibility that there might be a different sort of power and a different sort of glory.' Maybe there are artists reading this who are going to do that - maybe for your country and maybe for the world - in what you write, in what you play, in what you paint and what you sculpt - in what you dream and turn into reality. We need to re-envision our worship and mission in the light of this picture which John and Mark have set before us of the Kingdom of God, so that we will be servants of God's larger project, and so that our worship will never collapse into being mere self-indulgence - just singing our favourite songs - but will be adoring the God in whose image we are made, in order that we can be renewed in His image for the world. Because the image is not simply me reflecting God back to God, though it is that: it is us being an angled mirror, reflecting God into the world.
And as we stand at the foot of the cross, and we stand open-mouthed by the empty tomb, and as we pray again for a fresh move of the Spirit, we hear God saying, 'This is my new creation. Welcome. Now go and make it happen.'
From a sermon I heard Bishop N.T. Wright deliver in 2006, and have never forgotten :)
Thank God for sending the Holy Spirit to reveal the glory of Christ in us through our art! :)
