Embodying The Artist's Intent

• Do you remember the last time you took a day and went to visit the Cummer? Or any art museum?
  • What can be so much fun, but equally challenging, is the need to engage the pieces of work for what they are.
  • Some of course, might seem pretty straight forward, but others might be more abstract. Yet, they arrest your attention - you witness something. Your heart is connected somehow.
  • It's fun, then, to get a crowd together and talk about it, speculate.
  • But, imagine if you have the opportunity to hear from the artist themselves. explaining the work, the symbolism, the experiences that explain it.
  • Now, with new knowledge, you may see the piece differently. It may be alive to you in different ways. Does it mean necessarily that your initial view might be incorrect or confused? Not necessarily. But you are better informed, and now you have a new story to enhance what you see.
• We are all seeking this understanding out in our lives all the time.
  • It's not a far stretch to consider our lives here on earth like a beautiful, if complex abstract painting. We are thrown into exploring the canvas with what we bring, and don't always have an artists explanation.
  • But our hearts crave the story; the explanation.
• Acknowledging that depth for each of us helps us to grasp why a circumstance like in Acts occurs.
  • Paul found himself furiously provoked at seeing all the idols around him. Interestingly about the word here - it can be used both positively and negatively.
  • Distressed doesn't tell the full story. Instead, what we may want to consider is that Paul was fired up. And Paul then brings everything of himself into the story telling - he is acting as the residential scholar of the artwork: passionate, informed, deeply interested.
• And it's truly important here to note that here, in spite of his provocation, Paul is not engaging in a prophetic role. He is not calling people to task.
  • I understand the impulse to - the prophets have a long history of bringing people back to the right story, the right narrative.
  • Yet, a prophetic approach here would have led to further accusations of "babbling," a pejorative term on the part of the Stoics and Epicureans.
  • Let's go back to consider the artwork of our lives: if we are sitting in the museum, and a supposed expert on the work took us to task completely for our absolutely trash take on the work, and who did we think we were, well, we're likely going to ignore them as best.
  • However, after we might find some shared connection, well, then, we might see that safe taking to task as impassioned debate amongst equals. We might see it as a space to wrestle, to grow.
  • And indeed, it is rare for the prophet to prophecy outside of the culture in which they find themselves in.
  • So, instead, Paul's role becomes one of storyteller - of evangelist.
• And so, with the curiosity piqued by the people he's speaking to, engaging in storytelling, Luke provides us a glimpse of what he did:
  • He first acknowledges what is.
    • Here, Paul finds a way to connect heart to heart, story to story, soul to soul.
    • After all, Paul himself is also extremely religious in every way!
    • Moreover, Paul describes the story the Athenians are telling without judgement, as hard as that may have been given his frustrations.
    • Because, of course, as we are trying to make sense of abstraction, we bring our stories and experiences, as incomplete as they may be. Those stories and experiences are not wrong, they simply are.
    • So by just acknowledging what is, Paul gives it dignity, and a foundation in which to explore further.
• However, Paul does not stop just simply at acknowledgement.
  • Because to reveal the artist intention, we may need to provide more information, new stories: in order to meet somewhere in the middle.
  • My favorite philosopher, Hans Georg Gadamer, described this process as a "fusion of horizons" - that somewhere, between you and me, what is spoken and what is heard, story against story, we are able to create meaning.
  • So Paul goes about that work - he knows the artists and poets of the day (which may be a good reason if you wonder why we might look at what's happening in TV or in the movies!). And he knows his own story, what God had done with him.
  • And so he weaves together the cultures, finding a space in the middle; enacting a fusion of horizons.
• What might we discover then, in the middle? In the fused horizons, between art and viewer, God and humanity?
  • Do you know this poem from Emily Dickinson?

The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and you—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea— For—hold them—Blue to Blue— The one the other will absorb— As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God— For—Heft them—Pound for Pound— And they will differ—if they do— As Syllable from Sound—

• In the depths of who we are, what we're experiencing - our hearts, minds, spirits - as we direct them to the world, we witness the Spirit and a fusion there, too.
• Jesus himself acknowledges in our gospel that he won't be here much longer - the closest we'll ever get to seeing the artist enfleshed amongst us, teaching us about how the piece was formed.
• Yet, even still, we are made aware of we will not be abandoned or orphaned, but the Spirit, the Advocate, will be with us.
• And for us who have perhaps had the opportunity to hear the revelation of the artist, the meet the Spirit in between our vastness and God's, we find ourselves remade, our stories redeemed, redirected.
• I wonder about the story for each of us here, today. Individually, corporately.
  • Especially as we are within weeks of starting work on the sanctuary, heading quickly towards starting construction - what story is on the canvas for each of us? Even as we may look at the picture from Mother's Day two years ago - how might our story have changed?
  • As we look at pictures from Sanctuary from 8th Street, of the movie Wednesday night, how are we explaining to our Athens where story connects with story? How we invite a few fusion?
  • Where might we need to consult the Advocate again?