Beholding Beauty: Worshiping God through the Arts

By Wipf and Stock

Beholding Beauty: Worshiping God through the Arts casts a vision for how the church can integrate a theology of beauty and aesthetics into its worship practices. Unlike other books that only explore beauty and aesthetic in the abstract, Beholding Beauty is a practical theology that inspires Christians to intentionally incorporate the arts into their everyday lives and their church's weekly worship services. It is specifically designed for pastors and worship leaders who wish to craft theologically coherent, aesthetically invigorating, and artistically stimulating worship services and for all Christians who desire to contemplate the nature of beauty and art from a biblical, theological, and liturgical perspective.
Whether you are an accomplished artist or a novice to the art world, this book will deepen your understanding of God as the original artist who uniquely calls human beings to cocreate with him. It will challenge your presuppositions and convictions about the place of beauty and art in the Christian life and the life of the church. It encourages Christian artists to be even more creative and prolific, and it compels non-artists to consider the artistic gifts and talents God has given them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666722420

Book preview

Introduction

A Brief Reflection on Beauty and Longing

David Horn

Lauterbrunnen (

1863

) by Alexandre Calame (

1810–1864

)

If beauty is something that has to be captured and contained in an experience, it happened about four years ago for me. Of course, I have experienced beauty many times in my life, but nothing like this. The two hours sitting on that outdoor patio in an old hotel in the ancient village of Murren, Switzerland—a village that hangs precariously on the side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley—chiseled beauty in stone for me. That moment is a monument to Beauty!

There were six of us on that patio, and we all experienced the same thing: We had all spent a week walking through the museums and concert halls of Vienna, and we were now experiencing the full splendor of what we had seen captured by the landscape paintings of the masters: various shades of light rushing across the rocky crags of the other side of the cavernous valley, set against the backdrop of a pallet of multi-shades of blue that was the sky. At times, clouds cried rain, but only briefly. The confluence of everything in that experience could not be described in any other way than that it was beautiful: deep friendships, expressing heart-felt sentiments, set against the dramatic natural geography around us, in the midst of our long-drawn-out conversation on the nature of art and other more pedestrian ruminations. All played a part in the stunning beauty of that moment.

Central to beauty is a sense of transcendence that characterized our experience that day and, I suspect, more universally in all moments of beauty. As one aspect of the human experience, beauty stands out like a sore thumb, as it were. Whereas much of our lives may be caught in the mundane, is it not the case that moments of beauty require our attention? They cannot be ignored. They stand apart and above anything else in our lives. It is in this sense that beauty is transcendent.

And it is for this reason that beauty is a much sought-after commodity in our lives. We crave beauty in the same way we crave transcendence. When it is not present, we seek after it to enfold us. When we do experience it, we delight in it, even for a moment. But even when we delight in beauty, is not part of that delight bittersweet? The transcendence of beauty is fleeting. The Romantics perhaps had it right; beauty is but for a moment, and efforts to capture the moment and store it away for a rainy day are futile.

It is the bittersweet nature of beauty that C. S. Lewis calls longing. These two twin sisters—beauty and longing—are joined at the hip. Central to the nature of beauty is a sense of longing for something more. In The Weight of Glory, Lewis states,

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.¹

Beauty, even as it is being displayed in what we see and hear and feel, evokes longing for more. A piece of great music compels us to desire an experience that is something more than what we are having. To see a great painting evokes a desire to see the larger world that it evokes. To hear the cadence of a great poem or feel the rising tension of a compelling story provokes longing in us that transcends the experience of beauty. To overlook the Grand Canyon and comprehend its magnitude demands something more in us. It may overwhelm us, but even as it does, it, strangely, leaves us longing for something more. In the most profound sense, the experience of beauty points to something larger than itself in all its forms.

For the Christian, the headwaters of this longing are not hard to find. It is found at the beginning of Scripture in the great litany of the story of Creation in Genesis 1 where we find the Creator’s great declaration at the end of each day: It was good. Embedded in each day is the beauty of goodness under the very fingernails of creation and—here is the amazing thing—some of that beauty still remains even after the Fall. The apostle Paul declares this residue of remaining goodness for what it is in Romans 8. He describes it as longing:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Rom

8

:

19–23

). 

We live in a fallen world, but beauty still abounds. It abounds, in part, as heart-felt groaning and under the guise of longing for something larger than what is easily experienced. Beauty still exists but is not easily found everywhere. It seeks transcendence and it is in the transcendence of God the Creator and Redeemer that Lewis finds the true source of beauty and our longing.

How is it that we find beauty in our world? Beauty all depends upon what we long for, and what we long for is what is at the heart of our desires. We return again to The Weight of Glory when Lewis declares,

It would seem that our Lord finds our desire, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, flailing about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offering us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a sum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased.²

What we define as beauty for ourselves depends upon where we cast our eyes, and our current state tends to long for all the wrong things. We look downward in the mud when we have an opportunity to look upward at the horizon. Beauty does exist in our world today, but where it doesn’t, it most often is the result of looking and desiring for beauty in all the wrong places. Our perceptions are off; our expectations are wrong; the source of our desires is off-kilter. Beauty becomes distorted.

M.H. Abram’s amazing critique of Romantic theory, The Mirror and the Lamp, indirectly speaks to the distortion we most often feel.³ Abram makes the observation that Romantic sensibilities were a watershed moment in our history of perception. Prior to the nineteenth century, the artist looked outward to the natural world with the confidence that there was a concrete and relatively objective world. Even if the artist didn’t see this objective world as the product of the divine, it at least pointed that way. After the Romantic period, the gaze of the artist looked inward as a basis for understanding their vision and forms.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the role of the artist was mimetic. The artist imitated with confidence what he or she could see. The beauty of a landscape painting, for example, was measured by how close it represented what the artist sought to imitate faithfully of the world around him or her. After the Romantic period, however, the reality of what was painted was measured subjectively from within. The artist defined what he or she saw and felt. Rather than the artist being one who held up a mirror to the world for all to see its beauty, the artist became his or her own lamp that illumined their own subjective vision of what he or she saw. What an amazing transformation of two different visions of the world.

Without saying anything about Abram’s critical literary critique other than to use his two metaphors, beauty is no longer sought after by looking at the outside world and, potentially, at God. Beauty is now being defined by the artist him or herself. The ugly, the grotesque, the violent, and the mundane can now be passed off as beautiful. To use the words of W. B. Yeats in his poem Easter Rising to encapsulate the modern approach to beauty: All changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born. Beauty is what we want it to be. Or is it? In our current, modern sensibilities, what is lost is a sense of the transcendent, and a longing that no longer exists within the subjective vision of the artist.

All this leads us to the doorsteps of this little volume. What is worship? Worship clearly rests on the side of the mimetic vision, of pointing a mirror outward to something larger than ourselves. In worship, we have an opportunity to see the source of beauty in God the Creator and in Jesus our Redeemer and not in ourselves. Worship, at its core, is longing, longing for something—for Someone—beyond ourselves and our own human achievements. It transcends the mundane; it broadens our horizons; it offers us vast and eternal vistas; and it captures our imaginations if we allow it to. In so doing, it offers us a perspective on our lives that has the potential of bringing beauty back into our world in whole new ways.

Worship takes on many different forms, forms that you may not even have realized or exercised yourself. How does beauty that is expressed in the culinary arts, or in fragrance, or in the world of fashion, or fiction, or sculpture, or, heaven forbid, winemaking even, bring glory to God? They can! Buried deep in each is an element that has the potential of provoking longing in our souls for something more. I trust these pages will offer you a fresh vision of God and how he has made us, made in the image of God. If it would do so, that would be beautiful!

1

. Lewis, Weight of Glory,

12–13

.

2

. Lewis, Weight of Glory,

1–2

.

3

. Abrams, Mirror and the Lamp,

57–60

.

Chapter 1

God

The Original Artist

Jason McConnell

Creation of the Animals (c.

1551

) by Il Tintoretto

Jacopo Robusti—Il Tintoretto ( 1518–94 ) means the little painter guy. A Venetian painter and draughtsman, and a representative of the school of mannerism, Il Tintoretto’s work marked the transition between the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He was initially inspired by the work of Michelangelo ( 1475–1564 ), but he soon developed a style of his own which utilized an array of vivid colors and dramatic contrasts between dark and light, a technique that would later be perfected by Caravaggio ( 1571 –1610 ).

The horizontal lines in The Creation of the Animals flow from right to left in a whirling motion. In a blaze of golden light that pierces the darkness still enveloping the newly created earth, God the Father is suspended in mid-air during the act of creation. (Notice how this portrayal echoes Michelangelo’s figure of God in the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel painted forty years earlier.) The birds of the sky and fish of the sea rush forward on the fifth day while the land animals stand behind their creator, waiting in eager anticipation of the sixth day, when they would be unleashed to roam the earth. Il Tintoretto’s luminous landscape scene captures the essence of God’s artistry and creativity.

Call to Worship (Psalm 8)

Leader: Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory in the heavens.

People: Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

Leader: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

People: What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

Leader: You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

People: You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

All: Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Hymn O God, the Joy of Heav’n Above by Charles Coffin (1736)

O God, the joy of Heav’n above,

Thou didst not need Thy creatures’ love,

When from Thy secret place of rest

Thy Word the earth’s foundations blest.

Thou spakest: worlds began to be;

They bow before Thy majesty;

And all to their creator raise

A wondrous harmony of praise.

But ere, O Lord, this lovely earth

From Thy creative will had birth,

Thou in Thy counsels didst unfold

Another world of fairer mold.

That realm shall our Redeemer frame,

And build upon His mighty name;

His hand the word of power shall sow,

That all the earth His truth may know.

When time itself has passed away,

His Church, secure in Heav’n for aye,

Shall share His table and His throne,

And God the Father reign alone.

O Father, Son, and Spirit blest,

One God in Heav’n and earth confessed,

Preserve, direct, and fill with love

Thy realm on earth, Thy realm above.

Scripture Reading (Genesis 1)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

And God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault sky. And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

And God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food. And it was so.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Theological Reflection

And God stepped out on space,

And he looked around and said:

I’m lonely—

I’ll make me a world

And far as the eye of God could see

Darkness covered everything

Blacker than a hundred midnights

Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,

And the light broke,

And the darkness rolled up on one side,

And the light stood shining on the other,

And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,

And God rolled the light around in his hands

Until he made the sun;

And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.

And the light that was left from making the sun

God gathered it up in a shining ball

And flung it against the darkness,

Spangling the night with the moon and stars.

Then down between

The darkness and the light

He hurled the world;

And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down—

And the sun was on his right hand,

And the moon was on his left;

The stars were clustered about his head,

And the earth was under his feet.

And God walked, and where he trod

His footsteps hollowed the valleys out

And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw

That the earth was hot and barren.

So God stepped over to the edge of the world

And he spat out the seven seas—

He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—

He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—

And the waters above the earth came down,

The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,

And the little red flowers blossomed,

The pine tree pointed his fingers to the sky,

And the oak spread out his arms,

The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,

And the