. . . the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings . . .
—Malachi 4:2
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.
—Isaiah 9:2
LOOK: The Sun by Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944), The Sun, 1911. Oil on canvas, 455 × 780 cm (14.9 × 25.5 ft.). The Aula, University of Oslo, Norway.
Over twenty-five feet across, Edvard Munch’s The Sun is the centerpiece of an eleven-piece cycle of oil paintings on the theme of enlightenment commissioned for, and still located in, the Aula (assembly hall) at the University of Oslo. It shows a blazing sunrise over the coastline of Kragerø in Norway, its multicolored rays extending to adjacent canvases, which portray men and women reaching up toward the light.
Though he didn’t have an explicitly Christological meaning in mind, Munch did see the sun as the source of all life, as he wrote about in his notebooks, and in his work it is often read as a symbol of the eternal.
LISTEN:“Again the Lord” | Words by Anna L. Barbauld, 1772 | Music by Ben Thomas, 2015 | Performed by Ben Thomas on Bring Forth, 2015
Again the Lord of light and life Awakes the kindling ray Unseals the eyelids of the morn And pours increasing day
O what a night was that which wrapped The sleeping world in gloom O what a Sun which rose this day Triumphant from the tomb
This day be grateful homage paid And loud hosannas sung Let gladness dwell in every heart And praise on every tongue
Ten thousand different lips shall join To hail this welcome morn Which scatters blessing from its wings To nations yet unborn
Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859–1937), The Three Marys, 1910. Oil on canvas, 42 × 50 in. Fisk University Art Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.
Based on Mark 16:1–4, this painting shows Mary Magdalene (leading the way), Mary the mother of James, and Salome approaching the tomb of their rabbi, Jesus, the Sunday after his crucifixion. They came bearing spices to anoint his body. They expected it to be a mournful day.
Imagine their response when they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty! That’s the moment the artist Henry Ossawa Tanner shows us here. Not the Resurrection itself, but the emotional reaction to it, or rather to the evidence of it.
What do you read on the faces of these women? Surprise? Confusion? Fear? Curiosity? Caution? Wonder? Love? Some mix thereof?
They are illumined by the light of an angel who is out of frame and who will speak the news to them presently. Mary Magdalene lifts her hand to her face in a gesture of self-reassurance, while her companion raises her tensed arms at the elbow in a defensive posture, as I read it. Compelled but still somewhat guarded, they progress toward the mystery.
Born and raised the son of a minister in the AME Church in Pennsylvania, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) was an African American expat to Paris whose biblical paintings, inspired in part by his two trips to the Holy Land, garnered him international acclaim. In Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art, art historian James Romaine identifies Tanner as “the most artistically gifted and theologically astute American painter of biblical subjects.” A master of conveying nuanced mystery, “Tanner paints personal experiences rather than public spectacles,” Romaine writes, communicating more through suggestion than depiction and urging the viewer to undergo, like the figures in his paintings, their own experience of spiritual sight.
LISTEN: “Dum transisset Sabbatum” (When the Sabbath was past) | Text: Mark 16:1–2 | Music by John Taverner, 1520s | Performed by Alamire, 2010
Dum transisset Sabbatum, Maria Magdalene et Maria Jacobi et Salome emerunt aromata ut venientes ungerent Jesum. Alleluia.
Et valde mane una sabbatorum veniunt ad monumentum orto iam sole.
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
English translation:
And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. Alleluia.
And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulcher at the rising of the sun.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
The third responsory at Matins on Easter Sunday, this text has been set to music by many composers. The motet by English Renaissance composer John Taverner is the most famous. The video above is just an excerpt. The full piece lasts about eight minutes and alternates between plainchant and polyphony.
The high point of the church year, Easter is a fifty-day festal season, beginning today, that celebrates the Resurrection of Christ with concentrated vigor! The first eight days of Easter are called the Easter Octave. During this octave I will be publishing daily art-and-song posts, as I did for Holy Week, in the hopes that these works of beauty will help you to bask, wonder, and rejoice in the world-changing truth that Christ is risen.
LOOK: Alleluia by Helen Siegl
Helen Siegl (Austrian/American, 1924–2009), Alleluia, 1975. Color woodcut, 20.5 × 12 cm.
Jesus flipped the script on death! On the bottom of this woodcut, Jesus hangs dead on a tree. The sun and moon have gone black. In the center of the composition, a large crown of thorns encircles instruments of the passion: the titulus, the rooster, the three nails, the spear, the sponge-tipped reed, the scourge, the bread and the wine. But Jesus emerges victorious from the whole ordeal. The serpentine creature that bares its teeth could be read as the serpent from Genesis, whom God prophesied would have his head crushed by the offspring of Eve (Gen. 3:15), or as the sea monster from the book of Jonah as an allegory of the tomb in which Jesus spent three days before emerging anew (Matt. 12:38–41). Sun, stars, planets—the cosmos rejoices. Its Savior has risen.
LISTEN:“Praise the Savior, Now and Ever” | Original Latin words by Venantius Fortunatus, 569 CE; adapted into Swedish by Johan Olaf Wallin, 1819; translated into English by Augustus Nelson, 1925 | Music: American shape-note tune (HOLY MANNA), attributed to William Moore, 1829 | Performed by the musicians of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis, 2007
Praise the Savior, now and ever; Praise him, all beneath the skies! Prostrate lying, suff’ring, dying On the cross, a sacrifice. Vict’ry gaining, life obtaining, Now in glory he doth rise.
Man’s work faileth, Christ’s availeth; He is all our righteousness. He, our Savior, has forever Set us free from dire distress. Through his merit we inherit Light and peace and happiness.
Sin’s bond severed, we’re delivered; Christ has bruised the serpent’s head. Death no longer is the stronger, Hell itself is captive led. Christ has risen from death’s prison; O’er the tomb he light has shed.
For his favor, praise forever Unto God the Father sing; Praise the Savior, praise him ever, Son of God, our Lord and King. Praise the Spirit; through Christ’s merit He doth us salvation bring!
This song has its roots in one of the oldest Easter hymns, “Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis” (Sing, My Tongue, the Glorious Battle)—from the sixth century. It’s been copiously translated and adapted over the years. This version comes from Redeemer Indy, a Presbyterian church in Indianapolis. While working as a worship director there in the 2000s, Bruce Benedict found the English text in the Trinity Hymnal and paired it with the shape-note tune HOLY MANNA to give it an “Easter jamboree vibe,” arranging it for bluegrass instruments.
The Psalter Hymnal Handbook notes, “The text sets forth the gospel of Easter: Christ who died has risen in victory (st. 1), has set us free from sin (st. 2), and has conquered death and hell itself (st. 3); to that confession we respond with our praise—a doxology to the Trinity (st. 4).”
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”
—John 12:24
LOOK: Untitled by Kwon Young-Woo
Kwon Young-Woo (Korean, 1926–2013), Untitled, 2002. Korean paper on canvas, 51 3/16 × 51 3/16 in. Photo: Chunho Ahn, courtesy the artist’s estate and Kukje Gallery.
Before the fruit is ripened by the sun, Before the petals or the leaves uncoil, Before the first fine silken root is spun, A seed is dropped and buried in the soil.
Before the Easter alleluias ring, Before the massive rock is rolled aside, Before the fear of death has lost its sting, A just and loving man is crucified.
Before we gain the grace that comes through loss, Before we live by more than bread and breath, Before we lift in joy an empty cross, We face with Christ the seed’s renewing death.
Olivewood crucifix, South Africa, 1978. Source: Christliche Kunst in Afrika, p. 263
LISTEN: “Indodana” (Son), traditional isiXhosa song from South Africa | Arr. Michael Barrett and Ralf Schmitt, adapt. André van der Merwe, 2014 | Performed by the Stellenbosch University Choir, 2014
You took your own son
Who lived among us [wailing]
(Repeat)
The Son of God
Was crucified [wailing]
(Repeat)
Oh Father! Father, Father Jehovah!
Father! [wailing]
(Repeat)
[source]
This song so well captures the mood of mourning that characterizes Good Friday, when the Son of God was slain. “Hololo” and “helele” are wordless expressions of grief. So is the “Zjem zjem zja” sung by the basses, like heaving sobs, on the title word in verse 2. One soprano who performed this piece said that singing the “Oh’s” above the melody felt like singing tears.
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
—Matthew 26:36–46 NIV, emphasis added
LOOK: Agony in the Garden by Fra Angelico [HT: John Skillen]
Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1387–1455), Agony in the Garden, ca. 1450. Fresco, 177 × 147 cm. Cell 34, Convent of San Marco, Florence.
This fresco is from one of the forty-four cells in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence whose walls Fra Angelico and his assistants painted with religious scenes in the mid-fifteenth century. The friars who lived at San Marco—of which the artist, whose nickname means “Angelic Brother,” was one—used these paintings for private meditation.
Here we see Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane pleading with God the Father to let the cup of suffering, held out by an angel, pass him by. As he prays in agony, his disciples James, John, and Peter nod off just a stone’s throw away. Jesus had asked them to stay awake and pray with him, but their tiredness gets the better of them. In their friend’s hour of deepest need, they fail him.
By contrast—and this is unique!—Mary and Martha, two sisters from Bethany who are also followers of Jesus, are awake and alert under an open loggia, diligently praying and studying God’s word. Perhaps Mary points, in the book in her lap, to the passage of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, recognizing Christ in it, or to the book of Exodus, where the Israelites celebrate their first Passover by smearing the blood of a lamb over their doors. Perhaps Martha prays that the Father would grant Jesus discernment of his will and the strength to follow through with it—that he would sustain him all the way to the cross and beyond.
While the male disciples on the other side of the wall fall asleep, heads in hands, the women watch and wait through the night, exemplars of faithfulness. They trust the prophecies and keep vigil, supporting their Lord in his suffering.
LISTEN: “Stay with Me” by Jacques Berthier, 1984 | Performed by the Taizé Community Choir on Songs of Taizé: O Lord, Hear My Prayer & My Soul Is at Rest, 1999
Stay with me Remain here with me Watch and pray Watch and pray
The words from this Taizé chant come from Jesus’s words in Matthew 26:38, 41 (cf. Mark 14:34, 38). He and his disciples have just finished the Passover Seder, and with full bellies, three of them follow Jesus up to an olive grove, which was perhaps a favorite prayer spot. But they neglect his instruction to stay awake and pray with him.
How can we remain with Christ this Maundy Thursday?
To “keep vigil” this night is to be fully present to Christ’s suffering and spiritually awake to his will and way.
Julia Stankova (Bulgarian, 1954–), Portrait of Judas, 2004. Tempera, gouache, watercolor, and lacquer technique on wood, 45 × 60 cm.
In this painting by Julia Stankova, Judas presses in for his infamous kiss, identifying Jesus to his captors. Stankova portrays the moment as one of double woe, leading to the death of both Jesus and Judas. To heighten the emotional impact, she tightly crops the composition, eliminating all other figures besides the two. Jesus closes his eyes to receive with grace what has been a long time coming. Judas keeps his open. With one arm, he embraces his former friend; with the other, he holds a branch that’s ornamented, forebodingly, with his own dangling corpse. The Bulgarian inscription names the painting: Portrait of Judas.
LISTEN: “Gallows of My Desire” by Kris MacQueen, on Good Morning. Happy Easter. 3 (2014)
Tonight we ate together Bread and the wine cooked rare You looked so disappointed When I took off down the stairs We took the road together But I just exited right I’ll see you in a little while And again on the other side
Refrain: I stood above you Like a conqueror And you stood beside me like a friend I kissed you goodbye At the gates of hell But you’ve always called my bluff Yeah, you know my every tell
Tonight I’m taking matters Into my guilty hands Just sold the Prince of Peace out For a little stretch of land There’s nothing like the yoke Of the innocent when they die It came upon me like a stone When I saw the deed was mine [Refrain]
Now I’m swinging in the gallows Of my own desire My spirit is departing to God knows where Is there a grace sufficient To receive this broken soul? You bled out for the whole wide world How ’bout your very own? [Refrain]
But I always knew I’d bow to you in the end
Kris MacQueen is a singer-songwriter and former pastor from Kitchener, Ontario. Since 2019 he has been recording music with his wife, Liv, under the name The MacQueens. It is their voices on “Gallows.” This song was released in 2014 on a little six-song compilation album of Passion-Easter-Pentecost music put out by Morning and Night Music, which is no longer available. I asked MacQueen if he’d be willing to post his contribution online so that you all can enjoy it, and he obliged!
The song is in the voice of Judas, who is feeling the full weight of his betrayal—the innocent Christ’s death a yoke or a millstone around his neck. Many Christian interpreters think that Judas gave Jesus up to the authorities as a way to force his hand; impatient with Jesus’s not seizing power from Rome, Israel’s political oppressors, he thought that an arrest would be just the inciting event Jesus needed to finally unleash the forces of heaven against the empire, obtaining vindication and freedom for God’s people. Judas, according to this theory, was genuinely shocked and horrified when Jesus submitted to the capture and then the death sentence.
By asserting his own plans and desires counter to God’s, Judas effectively builds his own death trap, as the guilt over the consequences of his betrayal leads him to suicide. But before tying that noose, maybe, we can only hope, he sought redemption for his wrongdoing. His return of the blood money seems to indicate as much. He was clearly remorseful. MacQueen’s Judas prays from the gallows, pleading the blood of Jesus. If Jesus’s blood can save even the most odious of sinners, he reasons, then surely it avails for me. But he’s not so sure; he poses it as a question, a challenge, even.
The final line of the song suggests that in the end, perhaps Judas was finally able to see the rightness of Jesus’s way and was able to bow not to the king he imagined or wanted him to be, but to the king he was—the Prince of Peace, the servant-Christ, the sacrificial Lamb.
PRINT SUITE: Via Dolorosa by William Frank: Commissioned by SSM Saint Louis University Hospital for their chapel, this set of Stations of the Cross prints by William Frank combines depictions of Christ’s passion with diagnostic X-ray imaging of patients from the hospital’s archives. “The human body, and the community, act as the landscape,” he told me. A bullet in the spine, a kidney stone, a wrist fracture, a tumor, tuberculosis of the bones—Jesus’s suffering unfolds against the backdrop of these specific, tangible forms of suffering. But the rainbow color scheme transforms the stark black-and-white medical images into something a little less scary, suggesting hope and promise—maybe healing, maybe not, but at the very least, divine accompaniment along the path of sorrow.
William Frank (American, 1984–), Via Dolorosa (installation detail), 2020. Etching, archival inkjet, chin collé, with embossment, suite of fourteen prints, overall 4 × 16 ft. SSM Saint Louis University Hospital Chapel, St. Louis, Missouri. Photo: Lisa Johnston, courtesy of the artist.
This year, the Catholic Health Association of the United States created a set of video reflections around Frank’s Stations, one for each piece, which you can find at https://www.chausa.org/prayers/lent-reflections. They also shot a video conversation with the artist:
NEW SONG: “Spooling” by Rev. Matt Simpkins: Diagnosed with stage 4 skin cancer, the Rev. Matt Simpkins [previously] of Lexden in Colchester, an Anglican vicar and a rock musician, said the only way he could calm his nerves enough to get through his next MRI scan was by writing a song from inside the machine. He composed some words and harmonies in his head to the “groovy,” sonorous beeps of the scanner, recording the song afterward using sampling, thus turning a typically threatening, antiseptic medical sound into a party vibe. He was interviewed on the BBC about it last month:
And here’s the bizarre music video, with special effects!
“I’m in a difficult situation with stage 4 cancer, but again, you’ve got a choice, and this song is a good example of that—how you can take something up into song and live,” he says. He hopes the song will minister to those who are undergoing cancer treatment or facing a possible diagnosis—that it is a small oasis, a source of silly laughter, comfort, and strength, for those in dire health.
ART COMMENTARY: The Apostle Judas by Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin: As part of the Visual Commentary on Scripture project, Dr. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin has selected three artworks that in some way interpret Matthew 26:20–25 (and parallel passages), when at the Last Supper Jesus announces that someone there will betray him. Rather than featuring the more common portrayals of Judas as malevolent, halo-less, and/or segregated from the group at the far end of the table, Dengerink Chaplin has chosen works that show him integrated and indistinct, one of twelve betrayers, whose treachery, she boldly proposes, we might construe as “a happy fault.”
Chris Ofili (British, 1968–), The Upper Room, 1999–2002. Oil paint, acrylic paint, glitter, graphite, pen, elephant dung, polyester resin, and map pins on 13 canvases, each 183.2 × 122.8 cm, except head canvas, 244.2 × 183 cm. Installation at Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Collection of Tate, London.
Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italian, d. 1318), The Last Supper, from the Maestà Altarpiece, 1308–11. Tempera and gold on panel, 50 × 53 cm. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena, Italy.
Chris Ofili (British, 1968–), Iscariot Blues, 2006. Oil and charcoal on linen, 281 × 194.9 cm. Photo courtesy of Victoria Miro and David Zwirner.
With the Duccio panel, she points out something I’ve often contemplated as well: that Jesus feeds Judas with the element he calls his body, keeps communion with him, and is there not a preemptive forgiveness implicit in that act?
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SONG: “In the Night” by Andrew Peterson: At a Laity Lodge retreat in 2015, Andrew Peterson of Nashville performed one of the songs from his album Counting Stars (2010) with fellow musicians Buddy Greene, Jeff Taylor, and Andy Gullahorn. “In the Night” rehearses “dark night” stories from scripture: Israel wrestles with God, is enslaved by Egypt, is pressed in by Syria; a prodigal son must resort to eating pig slop; the Son of Man is beaten and killed. But in each of these stories, deliverance comes. Hence the refrain: “In the night, my hope lives on.”
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VISUAL MEDITATION: On TheHoly Women at the Tomb by George Minne, commentary by Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker: Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, the creator of ArtWay, writes about a nineteenth-century bronze sculpture by the Belgian artist George Minne, which shows the three women who went to Jesus’s tomb on Easter morning in an attitude of grief—bent backs, bowed heads—drawing on the gothic pleurants, or weepers, of late medieval tombs. The women are “totally enwrapped in mourning their beloved,” Hengelaar-Rookmaaker writes. “This is in fact the very last moment of the passion, the last moment of suffering past the Pietà and the burial of Christ. It will only be a minute before their hoods will come off and the news of the resurrection will enter their numbed minds.”
George Minne (Belgian, 1866–1941), Les saintes femmes au tombeau (The Holy Women at the Tomb), 1896. Bronze, 44.5 × 62 × 20.5 cm. Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium.
This composition by Minne also exists in granite, wood, and plaster versions.
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NEW PLAYLIST: April 2023 (Art & Theology): Includes an excerpt from the psychedelic rock–style Mass in F Minor by the Electric Prunes, “The Outlaw” by Jesus Movement icon Larry Norman, a chuckle-inducing bluegrass song first recorded in 1926 by Gid Tanner and Faith Norris and covered here by the Local Honeys, a choral setting of Psalm 128 (“Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways . . .”) by the Italian Jewish Renaissance composer Salomone Rossi, Whitney Houston’s rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and a short Kiowa Apache church song that translates to “Son of our Father will set up a cedar tree / Now he is calling to us / He’s going to heal our minds / That’s why he is calling to us.”
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
—Matthew 25:6 KJV
In the Orthodox Church, observances of Holy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (which in that tradition take place next week) focus on the end times, “remind[ing] us of the eschatological meaning of Pascha,” says Alexander Schmemann.
The Gospel reading for the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Holy Tuesday is Matthew 24:36–26:2, which covers the need for watchfulness, the parable of the ten bridesmaids, the parable of the talents, and the Last Judgment. These passages constitute the latter half of Jesus’s Olivet Discourse, or Little Apocalypse, which, according to the chronology of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus preached the Tuesday before his death.
So, informed by the Matthew 25:1–13 reading, today I’ve selected a papercut by Chinese artist Fan Pu and a Black gospel song from the southern US that both engage with Jesus’s call to keep our metaphoric oil lamps burning in expectation of the return of the Bridegroom, who died and rose for love of us, and who has gone to build us a home.
LOOK: Ten Bridesmaids by Fan Pu
Fan Pu (Chinese, 1948–), Ten Bridesmaids, 2001. Papercut. Collection of the Asian Christian Art Association.
(Note: This artwork has changed since the original publication of this post. I learned that the previous artist did not want her work featured or her name mentioned on the website.)
LISTEN: “The Bridegroom’s Coming,” traditional gospel song | Recorded August 6, 1940, by Mitchell’s Christian Singers, on Mitchell’s Christian Singers, vol. 3 (1938–1940) (released 1996)
I couldn’t find lyrics for this song online, so I transcribed them myself the best I could. I’m not positive about the second line in the refrain, and I couldn’t make out the second half of the last line of verse 2.
Refrain: And behold (and behold), lo, the Bridegroom’s coming Lift up (lift up), I heard the voices cryin’ out loud And be ready (and be ready) when the Bridegroom’s coming To meet him in the air
Ever seen such a man as this? Jesus was sent, he came down to die Jesus was sent, he came down to die Came to save my soul from the burning fire [Refrain ×2]
Ever seen such a man as this? Jesus was sent, he came down to die Jesus was sent, he came down to die I want to meet . . . (?) [Refrain ×2]
Mitchell’s Christian Singers [previously] were an influential early gospel group from Kinston, North Carolina.
The Kentucky Jubilee Four recorded an earlier version of this song for OKeh in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1927.
Laura Makabresku (Polish, 1987–), Intimacy of the Heart (7), 2020Laura Makabresku (Polish, 1987–), Intimacy of the Heart (8), 2020
LISTEN: “Mary” by the Brothers of Abriem Harp, on Last Days (2015) [reviewed here]
Mary, my dear, come over here Tell me, is it true what they say? Mary, my dear, let go of your fear And bring your gift to me, I pray Let your heart rest with mine I don’t have much time So break your fragrance free, my dear
Let your tears fall on me Brush your hair on my feet Let your alabaster tears fall on me Fall on me
Overflow, overflow And go where you go Let this fragrance fill the air with love divine Love divine
Fill the air, fill the air Let your heart beat with mine Let this fragrance fill the air with love divine Love divine
Mary, my dear, bring yourself near Let your heart beat with mine, my dear
Laura Makabresku (Polish, 1987–), Intimacy of the Heart (10), 2020
Art & Theology 