Arcade, Main Chapel, Marianist Retreat and Conference Center, Eureka, Missouri. The chapel was designed by Br. Mel Meyer, SM. Photo: Kelly Kruse.
Behold the natural light filtered through the stained glass windows of this Marianist chapel in Eureka, Missouri, bathing the walls and flat arches in color.
LISTEN: “Come, My Way” | Words by George Herbert, 1633 | Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1911; arr. Edward A. David, 2013 | Performed by Fr. Austin Dominic Litke, OP; Fr. Bob Koopman, OSB; and Leah Sedlacek of Blackfriar Music, 2013
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: such a way as gives us breath, such a truth as ends all strife, such a life as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength: such a light as shows a feast, such a feast as mends in length, such a strength as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: such a joy as none can move, such a love as none can part, such a heart as joys in love.
This phenomenal poem, “The Call,” is from The Temple by George Herbert (1633), a posthumously published collection of all his English-language poems. The famous British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) set it to music in 1911, along with three of Herbert’s other religious poems (“Easter,” split into two parts, “Love [III],” and “Antiphon [I]”) for his composition Five Mystical Songs. Williams’s setting can be found in dozens of hymnals, usually under the title “Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life.”
In 2013, the media division of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph—one of four Dominican provinces in the United States, extending from New England to Virginia to Ohio—produced a music video featuring a new arrangement of the hymn by Edward A. David, who has a bachelor of music degree in classical piano performance from New York University. (He later went on to earn a master’s and doctorate in theology at Oxford and is now an ethicist.)
The project was inspired by Pope Francis’s call during the World Youth Day festivities in Rio de Janeiro in July 2013 to “take to the streets” in sharing the gospel. Scenes were filmed throughout New York City: at Brooklyn Bridge, Our Lady of Good Counsel Roman Catholic Church, Grand Central Station, Columbus Circle, and on the Staten Island ferry.
The filmmakers are graduates of NYU’s film school: A. Joshua Vargas, John S. Fisher, and Michael Crommett.
The singer in the video is Father Austin Litke, who at the time served as chaplain of NYU’s Catholic Center. He is currently an adjunct instructor at The Saint Paul Seminary and a visiting professor of Catholic studies at the University of St. Thomas.
For an acoustic performance by Ryan Flanigan, an Anglican church music director and the founder of Liturgical Folk, see here:
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.Blackfriar Music’s and Ryan Flanigan’s recordings of “Come, My Way” are not on Spotify.
Namdoo Kim (Korean, 1985–), Golden Binoculars, 2013. Glass, ceramic, mixed media, each figure 42 × 20 × 20 in. Installation at the 2018 SOFA Chicago art fair (now Intersect Chicago).
Watchman, tell us of the night, what its signs of promise are. Traveler, o’er yon mountain’s height, see that glory-beaming star. Watchman, does its beauteous ray aught of joy or hope foretell? Traveler, yes; it brings the day, promised day of Israel.
Watchman, tell us of the night; higher yet that star ascends. Traveler, blessedness and light, peace and truth its course portends. Watchman, will its beams alone gild the spot that gave them birth? Traveler, ages are its own; see, it bursts o’er all the earth.
Watchman, tell us of the night, for the morning seems to dawn. Traveler, darkness takes it flight; doubt and terror are withdrawn. Watchman, let thy wanderings cease; hie thee to thy quiet home. Traveler, lo! the Prince of Peace, lo! the Son of God is come!
Unfolding in alternating couplets, this nineteenth-century hymn from England presents a dialogue between a traveler and a watchman—that is, someone stationed at a vantage to look out for coming invasions or things out of the ordinary. The traveler asks the watchman what he sees and what its meaning is; the watchman responds that he sees a glorious star ascending up over the mountains, portending blessing and peace not just for the land of its rising but for all peoples. A beneficent invasion!
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.
So it is to be. Amen.
—Revelation 1:5b–7
LOOK: The Last Judgment by Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck (Netherlandish, ca. 1390–1441), The Last Judgment, ca. 1436–38. Oil on canvas, transferred from wood, 22 1/4 × 7 2/3 in. (56.5 × 19.7 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
What is your reaction to this image? Terror? Awe? Gratitude? Disgust? Intrigue? Indifference?
I’m often repulsed by how the Last Judgment was interpreted by medieval and Renaissance artists, with graphic displays of torture intending to compel people to righteous living through fear. To be sure, the subject has made for some truly remarkable paintings, full of fantastical grotesqueries and masterfully executed—like this one—but I worry that the scare tactics such paintings use are not helpful and are even harmful.
Nonetheless, the Last Judgment is an unavoidable topic in scripture. The Bible refers several times to God as judge and describes a final accounting of sin upon Christ’s return, resulting in reward for the righteous and punishment for the unrighteous. It’s also in our creeds: “He [Jesus Christ] will come again to judge the living and the dead” (see 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5). Those who seek to be faithful to scripture must reckon with the idea of the Last Judgment. Advent, which is penitential in character, has historically been a period for the church to do that. As the Episcopal priest and author Fleming Rutledge points out in her published collection of Advent sermons, judgment is one of the four traditional themes of the season—the other three being death, heaven, and hell.
The early Northern Renaissance master Jan van Eyck’s Last Judgment from ca. 1436–38 is one of history’s most famous and most gruesome. “The diabolical inventions of Bosch and Brueghel,” writes art historian Bryson Burroughs, “are children’s boggy lands compared to the horrors of the hell [van Eyck] has imagined.”
The midground portrays the resurrection of the dead, who rise up out of their graves on land or at sea to be judged by Christ. One of the inscriptions on the frame is Revelation 20:13: “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.”
In the center Saint Michael the Archangel, dressed in his jewel-studded armor and with sword unsheathed, stands atop the giant batlike wings of Death personified, which are inscribed with the words CHAOS MAGNVM (“great chaos”) and UMBRA MORTIS (“shadow of death”). Death is a skeletal figure who excretes the damned through his bowels into hell’s dark slime, where bestial demons tear at, choke, devour, crush, and impale them. One man’s legs are being ripped apart at the anus.
Even kings and clergymen are part of the tragic death-heap—see the bishop’s miter, the cardinal’s galero, the royal crown. Not all who say, “Lord, Lord,” will enter heaven (Matt. 7:21); even the most outwardly pious will have their sins exposed on the last day, and those who prove to be hypocrites, who have harmed others and shamed God without repentance, will be thrown into the pit.
Shooting down like arrows into this pit is the double inscription ITE VOS MALEDICTI IN IGNEM ETERNAM (“Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire”), taken from Matthew 25:41. And Deuteronomy 32:23–24, a warning from God via Moses to the people of God in their disobedience, is one of the inscriptions on the frame:
I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
Perhaps your chest is tightening right now, your stomach churning. How does this picture cohere with the God of love and mercy?
Look up.
See Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, coming in glory. See his glowing stigmata, beacons of love and mercy. He is dressed in a long, red, open mantle and is barefoot, revealing all five wounds. All around him, angels bear the instruments of his passion: the cross, the three nails, the crown of thorns, the lance, the sponge-tipped reed. See him flanked by all the ranks of the redeemed, including, on a larger scale, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, the first two witnesses of Jesus’s divinity.
VENITE BENEDICTI PATRIS MEI, read the inscriptions fanning out from Christ’s elbows: “Come, ye blessed of my Father” (Matt. 25:34). This good word is taken from Jesus’s parable of the sheep and the goats, in which he teaches that those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the immigrant, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned will be honored by God on the last day.
Another benediction is inscribed on the picture’s frame:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:3–4 NRSV)
Van Eyck’s Last Judgment does not stand alone. For centuries it has been configured as a diptych (two-paneled artwork) with a Crucifixion on the left and is thus intended to be read in light of God’s supreme act of vulnerable love and self-giving:
Jan van Eyck (Netherlandish, ca. 1390–1441), The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment (with recently conserved frame), ca. 1436–38. Oil on canvas, transferred from wood, each panel 22 1/4 × 7 2/3 in. (56.5 × 19.7 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Originally these two paintings very likely served as the wings of a triptych with a painted or sculpted centerpiece, or as the doors to a tabernacle or reliquary shrine. In 2019 the Metropolitan Museum of Art had the frames restored from their modern brass color to their original red.
So, what are we to make of this image today? Is there value in meditating on it?
I’ve presented it here, so I think it’s definitely worth knowing about. It’s a stunning art object that gives us a glimpse into the religious imagination of late medieval Christians. But I would also advise caution, especially to those who have been traumatized by hell teachings in the past. While Christians are called to cultivate a holy fear of God, a soberness around the weight of our sin and the power of God’s justice, this fear is not supposed to be the kind of fear that induces anxiety or paralyzes. That kind of fear will never lead us to love God.
We are never meant to think on hell apart from the grace Christ extends to us with his pierced and outstretched hands, which plead our case before God. Van Eyck holds both together in this painting, but the more visually immersive bottom half seems to indulge some pretty sick fantasies that could well generate an unhealthy fear of God if one were to stay stuck there, not to mention create the false impression that God is monstrously vindictive.
There is debate within Christianity, and has been since the patristic era, whether Jesus’s justice is merely punitive or ultimately restorative—that is, whether hell is a place of eternal conscious torment or a place where one is purged of evil and that will in the end be emptied. (There is biblical support for both views, which I won’t get into here.) There is also disagreement as to whether the Bible’s language about hell, such as its being a place of “fire” and “brimstone” (sulfur) (e.g., Rev. 21:8), is meant to be taken literally or figuratively.
Whatever the duration, physical nature, and ultimate purpose of hell, I want to emphasize that biblical passages about the Last Judgment ought not drive us to despair; they should drive us into the arms of Christ, who receives into his presence all those who trust in his merits and turn from their wickedness. The wounds that Christ so prominently displays in van Eyck’s painting are tokens of divine forgiveness as well as a model of the kind of selfless love we are to follow, a love vulnerable enough to receive injury but never to inflict it. Those who tumble into the depths of the underworld to be ravaged by externalizations of their own destructive evils have rejected the call to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with [their] God” (Mic. 6:8). Many of them are ones who on earth bore much power but used it to abuse others or were neglectful.
For more on the characterization of Jesus as judge in the art and theology of the Middle Ages (whose influence was felt in the Renaissance and later eras), see chapter 2, “The Judge,” of Jesus through Medieval Eyes by Grace Hamman. “The promise of answering unanswered evil, acknowledging the recognized and unrecognized wrongs of the mortal world—everlasting justice and compassion—is ultimately what Christ the Judge signifies. It’s a promise, a prophecy, and a call for action now,” Hamman writes (28). She discusses how neighborliness and fear of God are twinned: “Am I seeing the immortal being, the image of God, Jesus himself, in every person I encounter?” medieval imagery prompted viewers to ask (37). “Jesus the Judge reminds us of our divine community and invites a fear that guides us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. . . . Fear of Jesus the Judge becomes a gift for our practice of justice, in the radiant light of his justice. Such a fear softens flinty hearts” (21, 36). In the chapter Hamman does also acknowledge the complications and misuses of fear in the medieval church and its legacy today.
I urge you to consider the van Eyck diptych in light of the retuned hymn below as you meditate on Christ’s return and his role as judge.
LISTEN: “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending” | Words by Charles Wesley, 1758 | Music by Thomas Vito Aiuto, 2012 | Performed by the Welcome Wagon on Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, 2012
Lo! he comes with clouds descending, once for favored sinners slain; thousand, thousand saints attending swell the triumph of his train.
Ev’ry eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty; those who set at naught and sold him, pierced, and nailed him to the tree, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see.
Ev’ry island, sea, and mountain, heav’n and earth, shall flee away; all who hate him must, confounded, hear the trump proclaim the day: Come to judgment, come to judgment! Come to judgment, come away! Alleluia, alleluia! God appears on earth to reign.
The dear tokens of his passion Still his dazzling body bears, Cause of endless exultation To his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture, with what rapture Gaze we on those glorious scars! Alleluia, alleluia! God appears on earth to reign.
Yea, amen! Let all adore thee, high on thine eternal throne; Savior, take the pow’r and glory, claim the kingdom for thine own. O come quickly, O come quickly; everlasting God, come down. O come quickly, O come quickly; everlasting God, come down. O come quickly, O come quickly; everlasting God, come down.
I’m struck by the bright, celebratory, homey tone of the new tune Rev. Vito Aiuto gave this old Wesley hymn about Christ’s second coming. One might expect, with its verses about judgment, to have a dark or foreboding tone. But for those who are in Christ, his return, and even the day of judgment, will be an occasion of rejoicing!
Note that “dreadful” here is used in the archaic sense of inspiring awe or reverence.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
LOOK: Look forward to the coming of God by Stanley Fung
Stanley Fung (馮君藍) (Chinese, 1961–), 期待上帝 (Look forward to the coming of God), 2002. Digital print on Hahnemühle fine art paper, 100 × 67.5 cm. [for sale]
LISTEN: “Keep Your Lamps,” African American spiritual | Performed by Cantus on That Eternal Day (2010)
Keep your lamps trimmed and a-burnin’ Keep your lamps trimmed and a-burnin’ Keep your lamps trimmed and a-burnin’ For this ol’ world is almost gone
Brothers, don’t get weary . . . This ol’ world is almost gone
Sisters, don’t stop prayin’ . . . This ol’ world is almost gone
Christian, your journey soon will be over . . . The time is drawing nigh
Keep your lamps trimmed and a-burnin’ . . . The time is drawing nigh
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
At the 2021 Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference in Austin, Texas, I got to experience local artist John Patrick Cobb’s Ikon Chapel, a traveling, custom-built wooden structure housing twenty of Cobb’s egg tempera paintings depicting his friends, family, and neighbors as saints and prophets in our modern world. The young and the elderly, farmers, water well drillers, artists, teachers, nurses, Holy Cross brothers, custodians, the unhoused, people with disability or mental illness—these are among those he honors in paint and gold leaf.
Ikon Chapel (detail) by John Patrick Cobb, as installed at the “Transcend” CIVA biennial conference, November 4–6, 2021, St. David’s Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.John Patrick Cobb (American, 1954–), Baptism by Water, 1999. Egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, 36 × 77 in. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
Baptism by Water is, along with its companion piece, Baptism by Fire, the largest painting in the series, at over six feet long. It is a lakeside scene portraying John the Baptist—the long-haired, bleach-blonde guy at the far right—calling folks to repentance. Several men climb down the rocky shoreline to enter the cleansing waters and be raised to new life. The models are all associated in real life with water—surfers, plumbers, fishermen. And this is a local setting: Hippie Hollow on Lake Travis in Central Texas, a famous nude swimming hole.
Jesus, says Cobb, is the young man with the black hair and black trunks. Cobb deliberately made him indistinguishable from the others to emphasize his full humanity. He looks beyond John the Baptist, perhaps mentally preparing for the solitary forty-day fast in the desert he’s about to embark on.
In the wall text in the Ikon Chapel, Cobb describes the seated, shirted man in the foreground as reminiscent of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1–20):
The figure in the near ground, clothed, was a man who lived in the nook of the sea wall in Galveston and slept in the nearby graveyard at 61st Street. On the worst winter days I would bring him a coffee, and finally asked him one day if I could include him in my painting. He would sometimes drink himself into a frenzy and yell and scream at the cars in horrific anger. His leg had been broken and had healed in a precarious angle. I felt as though if there were anyone who deserved the peace and the Holy Spirit, it would be him.
At the bottom right, one of the figures twists away, rejecting John’s call. The model’s name is Jonah, so Cobb wanted to use him as a Jonah figure, resisting (at least initially) the divine plan.
In the background Adam and Eve are skinny-dipping.
Detail, John the BaptistDetail, Jesus (left)Detail with Eve and Adam in backgroundDetail of a local unhoused man with a leg impairment and alcoholism, for whom the artist wishes God’s peace
I was fortunate enough to get to know Cobb a bit over lunch one day while I was in Austin, and then later at an outdoor gathering he and his wife, Tina, hosted on their property. At the time, he was preparing for an extended trip to Italy to restore some Renaissance frescoes in a village chapel.
To learn more about this remarkable body of work, see the book Chapel Ikons: Biblical Meditations on Living the Spiritual Life in the Modern World (Treaty Oak, 2020), which reproduces all twenty-five paintings in full color with detailed commentaries by William Y. Penn Jr. The postscript says that Cobb and Penn are looking for a permanent institutional home with resources to preserve the chapel ikons for public viewing and study and that if interested, you should contact wpenn@me.com.
Refrain: A voice cries out in the desert Come prepare the way of the Lord God is coming, make straight for him a highway Come prepare the way of the Lord
Every valley shall be exalted Every mountain shall be made low Then shall the Word of God be known All the earth shall proclaim The glory of the Lord [Refrain]
Go upon the highest mountain Zion, herald of good news Lift your voice, cry out with all your soul Jerusalem, proclaim Glad tidings in the Lord [Refrain]
Have no fear, O cities of Judah Here is your God See, the Lord is coming now with power Our God is here The mighty and the strong [Refrain]
Like a shepherd, he feeds his flock He gathers the lambs See, he carries them gently in his arms So tenderly With a mother’s love [Refrain]
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here. “A Voice Cries Out” is not on Spotify.
Show us the way home Wayfarers all, Lord Hold us in mercy Through this dark night
O God, we wait on you O God, we wait on you
Gather us in Mender of everything Bright mourning dove Rise over all of us
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
LOOK: the heavens wept with me by Caitlin Connolly
Caitlin Connolly (American, 1986–), the heavens wept with me, 2018. Oil on canvas.
LISTEN: “A Dream / On Another’s Sorrow”| Words by William Blake, from Songs of Innocence, 1789, adapt. | Music by David Benjamin Blower, on Innocence & Experience, 2022
Once a dream did weave a shade O’er my Angel-guarded bed, That an Emmet lost its way Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled, ’wildered, and forlorn, Dark, benighted, travel-worn, Over many a tangled spray, All heart-broke I heard her say:
“O my children! do they cry? Do they hear their father sigh? Now they look abroad to see: Now return and weep for me.”
Pitying, I dropped a tear; But I saw a glow-worm near, Who replied: “What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night?
“I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round: Follow now the beetle’s hum; Little wanderer, hie thee home.”
*
Can I see another’s woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another’s grief, And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow’s share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
And can They who smile on all Hear the wren with sorrows small, Hear the small bird’s grief and care, Hear the woes that infants bear,
And not sit beside the nest, Pouring pity in their breast; And not sit the cradle near, Weeping tear on infant’s tear;
And not sit both night and day, Wiping all our tears away? O no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
They do give Their joy to all; They become an infant small; They become a one of woe; They do feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, And thy Maker is not by; Think not thou canst weep a tear, And thy Maker is not near.
The lyrics of this song comprise two poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence: “A Dream” and “On Another’s Sorrow.”
In “A Dream,” the poetic speaker dreams about a lost ant (an emmet) who is trying to find her way back to her children and husband. The speaker is moved by the ant’s distress and weeps for her. But then a glowworm (“the watchman of the night,” as he’s lit like a lantern) graciously intervenes, telling the ant to listen to the sound of the beetle walking and to follow that sound home while he lights the way.
“Told from a trusting, childlike perspective, the poem”—a fable—“suggests that those who ask for help will get it: the world is a naturally compassionate place, and guidance and protection are always at hand, even in difficult times.” (LitCharts)
Aren’t we all “little wanderers”? Many of us troubled, bewildered, lonely, and worn by our seeking and striving?
There is empathy for us not only from fellow travelers but also from the Divine.
“On Another’s Sorrow” is about how God lovingly enters into our woes through the Incarnation. He becomes a participant in the project of being human, experiencing firsthand the many trials, hurts, and vulnerabilities that come with the territory.
In the first three stanzas, the speaker expresses how keenly he feels the sorrows of others. In the fourth stanza, he reflects on how God does the same—only God is perfectly present to all, weeping with those who weep, sighing with those who sigh. Having “become an infant small,” the Creator has demonstrated solidarity with his creation. It is a comfort to know that God is so intimately acquainted with the griefs that afflict us and is keen to companion us through them.
In his creative visioning, British singer-songwriter David Benjamin Blower brought together Blake’s “A Dream” and “On Another’s Sorrow” with a single, spare musical setting, linking the two poems with an instrumental interlude but keeping the same tune throughout. The first poem is about the feeling of weariness or lostness; the second, grief. Both have to do with compassion—we owe it to one another and often receive it from others, and it is always available to us in Christ, who is God brought near.
In “On Another’s Sorrow,” Blower changed the pronouns for God in the fourth and seventh stanzas from “He/His” to “They/Their,” since God is neither male nor female. He also omitted the final stanza in Blake’s original:
O! He gives to us His joy That our grief He may destroy: Till our grief is fled and gone, He doth sit by us and moan.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
Lisa Walcott (American, 1983–), Other One to Drop, 2022. Rubber shoe, thread, motor, wood, ziptie, 3 1/2 × 8 × 2 in. (shoe).
“Waiting for the other shoe to drop” is an American idiom that means to wait for a seemingly inevitable event. According to Dictionary.com, the expression originated in early twentieth-century New York City tenements and refers to when you’d hear your upstairs neighbor kick off their shoe—you knew the second shoe would likewise be smacking the floor any second.
Midwest-based multidisciplinary artist Lisa Walcott plays upon this expression, as well as the fidgety habit of foot tapping, in her kinetic sculpture Other One to Drop. The piece consists of a loafer connected to a ceiling-mounted mechanism that at regular intervals raises the toe up off the ground by a barely visible thread and then lowers it back down, mimicking the body language of one who is waiting. But the piece also requires the viewers themselves to practice waiting, as the inactivity between movements creates a sense of imminence, and the shoe-drop will be missed if you turn away. Here’s a video of the piece in motion:
The tapping of the shoe conjures ideas of waiting and patience. The repetitive movement is consistent, but the slow pace adds anticipation and may even require some patience as the shoe hovers, finally taps, and repeats. The repetition of movement represents “promise” within the work. Even when the expectation has been demonstrated clearly and consistently, waiting requires patience and anticipation requires trust.
Since its founding at Pentecost, the church has waited for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. The first shoe was God made flesh in Bethlehem. The second shoe will be God’s return, in flesh, at the end of time. Christians are an Advent people, living in this liminal space between the already and not-yet. The liturgical calendar, in its wisdom, assigns us some four weeks each year to lean into that tension, exercising our hope muscles as we wait for Christ to come to us once again.
Walcott is an assistant professor of art at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Her work “translates elements of daily life, embodies moods, and animates daydreams,” she says. Everyday objects such as brooms, drawers, tablecloths, drying racks, and fly swatters often find their way into her sculptures and installations. Explore more at https://lisawalcott.com/.
This wistful instrumental work was composed by Eric Marshall [previously], the lead singer of and songwriter for the ambient alt-rock band Young Oceans. Young Oceans grew out of Marshall’s collaborations with fellow musicians at Trinity Grace Church in Brooklyn, where he served as a worship leader from 2009 to 2018.
The title of this piece, “Though for Now We’re Waiting,” is a dependent clause that anticipates a second clause to complete the sentence. How would you complete it? The last thirty seconds provide a space for pause, for sitting quietly and attentively with the weight of your desire and God’s promise.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
In these last days [God] has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.
—Hebrews 1:2–3
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
—Jesus’s first public teaching in Nazareth (see Luke 4:16–21), quoting from Isaiah 61
LOOK: Niño Jesus santo
Niño Jesus, Puerto Rico, 18th century. Carved and painted wood and metal, 13 3/8 × 5 1/2 × 4 3/8 in. (34 × 14 × 11.2 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
“Devotional figures of the infant Jesus became popular in Puerto Rico during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” writes Yvonne Marie Lange in her 1975 PhD dissertation, Santos: The Household Wooden Saints of Puerto Rico. “An unknown craftsman carved this small figure in the act of benediction, or blessing, with an orb in his left hand to symbolize God’s dominion over the earth.” (He’s got the whole world in his hands!) This is a baby Salvator Mundi, “savior of the world.” He is naked to emphasize his full humanity. The three flame-like shapes around his head create a cross and represent the light of God emanating from him.
Just as Isaiah The prophet has foretold A sprout from Jesse’s root Into a tree shall grow This sprout shall bloom Into a mighty tree of life Its fruit will feed us And its source will be our light
The Spirit of the Lord Will come to dwell with us A righteous judge A mighty counselor And by the word Of his everlasting power The baby in the manger Upholds the universe The baby in the manger Upholds the universe
For in him all the fullness Of God was pleased to dwell And through him To reconcile all things to himself Have you ever seen A wolf and a lamb lie down together? Can there ever be peace like this Between enemies? Can there ever be peace like this Between enemies? Would God dare to descend To come live with his enemies?
The Spirit of the Lord Will come to dwell with us Put on flesh Make peace for us with God And by the word Of his everlasting power The baby in the manger Upholds the universe The baby in the manger Upholds the universe
Then I saw heaven open And behold A white horse with its rider Righteousness his clothes With eyes that burn like fire And a crown atop his head Robes dipped in blood That he himself willingly shed Yet I had no doubt I still recognized his face Son of God, Son of Man Glorious grace
King of kings and Lord of lords Messiah, Christ, the Word of God King of kings and Lord of lords Messiah, Christ, the Word of God King of kings and Lord of lords Messiah, Christ, the Word of God King of Kings and Lord of lords Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
The Spirit of the Lord Has come to dwell with us Behold, the Lamb of God Makes all things new And by the word Of his everlasting power The baby in the manger Upholds the universe The baby in the manger Upholds the universe And he shall reign Forever and ever
Katie Ribera is involved in the music ministry of Trinity Church Seattle, which is led by Luke Morton, pastor of worship arts. Ribera wrote this song for her congregation, and it was recorded live from one of their worship services, released under the artist name Trinity Songworks. Listen to more from Trinity Songworks on the church’s website and their SoundCloud page, or on the albums Live Archive 2018–2021 and Let the Little Children Come.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
Frank Wesley (Indian, 1923–2002), The Promise of Peace, 1994. Watercolor, 50 × 30 cm.
Frank Wesley (1923–2002) [previously] is one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated Indian Christian artists. His watercolor The Promise of Peace appears on the cover of the March 1996 issue of Image: Christ and Art in Asia, the monthly magazine of the Asian Christian Art Association, which is where I sourced it from. Painted in warm brown earth tones and based on Isaiah 11:1–9, it shows an Indianized Jesus ushering in the peaceable kingdom of God. The ACAA provides the following commentary:
Christ is the shoot rising from the stump, and the Spirit of the Lord’s presence is shown in the white egg/flame/pearl in the upraised right hand and in the white heart shape centred on Jesus’ brow. A faint halo encircles his head, while a second halo sweeps from the right hand down to the left hand, under which the needy of the land shelter. The little child living at peace with many different animals is visible in the bottom right-hand corner, and the child playing unharmed with the viper is seated at the foot of Jesus. On the left-hand side of the painting a wide variety of creatures are playing happily together. The bracelet on Jesus’s left upper arm carries the symbol for Peter while that on the right upper arm signifies Paul. The symbols of the four gospel writers can be seen in the necklet.
LISTEN: “O Lord, May Your Kingdom Come” | Words by Greg Scheer, based on Isaiah 11:6–9, 2014 | Music by Eric Sarwar, based on the Raga Mishra Shivranjani, 2014 | Led by Eric Sarwar at the Calvin Symposium on Worship, 2019
Refrain: اے خدا تیری بادشاہی آئ (Transliteration: Aey Khuda, teri badshahi, aey) O Lord, may your kingdom come
Where the wolf and lamb Shall lie down as kin And a child shall lead them [Refrain]
Where the cow shall graze And its calves will play With the cubs of the lion [Refrain]
Where the babe in arms Shall fear no harm From the snake or the adder [Refrain]
May your kingdom come May your will be done On earth as in heaven [Refrain]
Born and raised in Pakistan, Rev. Dr. Eric Sarwar is a musician, global missiologist, and the pastor of Artesia City Church in Southern California, made up of Indian and Pakistani immigrants. He is also the founding president of the Tehillim School of Church Music and Worship in Karachi, which fosters the academic study of the ethnomusicology, missiology, and tradition of Christian worship in communities across Pakistan and the overseas diaspora. He plays the harmonium and is fluent in English, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu. He is the author of Psalms, Islam, and Shalom: A Common Heritage of Divine Songs for Muslim-Christian Friendship (Fortress Press, 2023) and is a frequent organizer of zabur (psalm) festivals.
In the video above, extracted from a Vespers service, Sarwar leads attendees of the 2019 Calvin Symposium on Worship in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in an anthem he wrote with Greg Scheer, joined on stage by other musicians from the symposium. The refrain is in Urdu and English.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here. “O Lord, May Your Kingdom Come” is not on Spotify.
Art & Theology 