Good Friday (Artful Devotion)

Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.

—Isaiah 53:1–12

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SONG: “He Was Wounded for Our Transgressions” | Words by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1941 | Music by Merrill Dunlop, 1941 | Performed by Shane Clark, on Deep Blue Hymns, 2017 | CCLI #7068347

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In Kim Young Gil’s Crucifixion, the torso, arms, and legs are eliminated, focusing attention on Christ’s face and his four nailed extremities. Kim’s use of light and shade creates a compelling contrast: Christ is both illuminated, as if by a divine spotlight, and in darkness, such that even those light rays from above bear tinges of black. The bright-red color of the Passion, of blood, dominates the image.

I scanned this image from the wonderful book The Bible Through Asian Eyes, edited by Masao Takenaka and Ron O’Grady of the Asian Christian Art Association (AACA) and published by Pace in Auckland in 1991. A short write-up on the facing page describes how the painted print, made in the seventies or eighties, came to be: One day Kim, who was working as a schoolteacher in Korea, invited a self-isolating, troublemaking student to his studio. He asked him to remove his shoes and then proceeded to cover them with black ink, and had him step onto a clean sheet of paper. He did the same with the boy’s hands. Those foot- and handprints form the basis of this Crucifixion image, which, when Kim showed it to the class, led the other students to see this former bully of theirs in a new light and start warming to him, and vice versa. The student later spoke of that surprising art collaboration as a turning point in his life and the beginning of his Christian experience.

I noticed a strong similarity between this and the terracotta cross sculpture of Hyo-sook Kim that appeared on the cover of the June 1988 issue of the AACA’s Image journal. The man who manages Kim Young Gil’s website, James Yun, told me, after asking Kim’s widow, that Kim did not know this other artist, so the two either arrived at this concept independently or one was inspired by having seen an image by the other.

Hyo-sook Kim wrote that she intended for the hands to look like wings, alluding to the resurrection. The lotus, which bursts upward from the wrists, can also be read as a resurrection symbol, as the plant takes root in the mud, but its stem grows up through murky waters and its flower blooms on the surface, having risen above the mire. In Buddhist iconography the lotus symbolizes purity or spiritual perfection.

This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Good Friday, cycle A, click here.