sculpture

Sculpture in Worship

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At times a piece of visual art opens possibilities for creating sermons or reflections on Scripture readings in worship. Sculpture is an art form that can lend itself to such proclamation or contemplation.

That art can enrich worship is freely acknowledged. To understand why art can enrich worship calls for a variety of approaches. Mine will be that of a sculptor who has dealt primarily with the story of Christ and his disciples. For over forty years my vocation has been the work of an ordained Presbyterian minister. Wood sculpture, on the other hand, I regard as an accomplishment. It is quite natural that I should have had a lifelong interest in how the church might use both sculpture and painting in worship. I find it encouraging that in so many churches the visual arts are now being explored with appreciation so that the title of this article could be reproduced with many helpful variations by a growing number of people who are knowledgeable in art.

Why Talk About It at All?

There are several common warnings for those contemplating the use of visual arts in worship. Do not show art as a mere illustration of something else. It should not be a handy prop to embellish an otherwise bald and probably unconvincing tale. It is commonplace in art criticism that the sculpture or painting should stand on its own merit without attempts to enhance its impression by talking about it. If it has a life and vitality of its own, any explaining would seem to be worse than irrelevant. This is the reason that artists, as a rule, do not give critical accounts of their own work. They are silent about their method of composition. We seldom get a peep into their technical workshop where, of necessity, they must withdraw into an inner environment. How beauty is conjured out of technique is their own secret. Epstein in his autobiography tells of a reception given in London for Rodin. Not being used to making speeches, Rodin responded very simply with few words. Another sculptor, named Tweed, got up and began a long discourse, commencing, “If Rodin could express himself … ” (Sir Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography. [New York: Vista Books, 1955], 220). That must have approached the record for the most impertinent speech ever made.

Granted verbosity is an enemy of art. It is my considered judgment that some talk is not only helpful but absolutely necessary if the fullest use is to be made of art in worship. The best thing, of course, is to persuade the artist to share some of his or her basic feelings about the meaning of the creation—not easy to arrange, but wonderfully rewarding when it can be worked out.

Failing to have both original art and a willing artist, congregations should consider the wide range of excellent color slides of good art. Often some patient searching can turn up just the comment by the artist that will help them understand his or her spirit’s absorption in what was made. An example of what can be found in Andrew Revai’s book The Coventry Tapestry (London: The Pallas Gallery, 1964), based on conversations which Revai had with Graham Sutherland, the creator of that great tapestry. They were talking about Sutherland’s sensitivity to the events in the gospels, which deal with suffering and cruelty. The artist answered that having lived through the epoch of Buchenwald and the twentieth century’s violence and cruelty, it would be unnatural not to be touched by these events. And then he added surprisingly, “It is true to say, however, that I believe it to be much more difficult to invent a valid equivalent for tenderness” (Revai, The Coventry Tapestry, p. 82). What a moment for a worship leader, using the background of the artist’s words, to focus a slide of the head of Christ in glory in Sutherland’s tapestry. Perhaps there will be people present who have had the privilege of worshiping in Basil Spence’s rebuilt cathedral who cannot forget the spell evoked by the great central image.

Helpful interpreters of art will often surface. Sometimes they may even be found in the pulpit. Let me give another effective example in this area of worship. One of the most gifted preachers of our time was the late Austin Farrer. In a book of his sermons entitled The End of Man (London: SPCK, 1973) there is one with the title “Epstein’s Lazarus.” It was preached in New College Chapel, Oxford, where Epstein’s sculpture stands so that it will be passed as people come and go from the chapel. Farrer was moved to preach on this theme after reading an eloquent poem on the Epstein sculpture by A. L. Rowse. The resulting sermon is a model of how a meditation on a work of art can bring home the claims of God.

A Leopard-Skin Coat and Emmaus: An Example of Sculpture in Worship

It is time that I discuss the use I have made of my own sculpture in worship. In a way, it all began when I had my first piece of sculpture displayed in a really good museum. The occasion was the 1960 North Carolina Annual Exhibit at the State Art Museum in Raleigh. My accepted piece was a carving of The Walk to Emmaus with the two disciples and the Stranger who joined them, done in the likeness of Appalachian mountain people with whom I feel at home. Passing through the museum one day I found a stylishly dressed lady in a leopard-skin coat standing by my sculpture. She was obviously puzzled by the title, for she said to her companion, “Emmaus? Emmaus? It must be a place in Austria.” As usual, when I should have used the opportunity to say something meaningful, the oracle was dumb and space not. So they drifted away, and my little Emmaus figures were left alone in a large gallery filled with abstract and studio art. I suppose I did not deliberately start to wonder how the truth of Emmaus could be made central to people who drop into our museums. That conviction has its source in a gospel deeper and far more lasting than any approach through aesthetics. But something was stirring in me about one way to make a meditation on the life of Christ a more meaningful thing for some people in the church’s worship.

When I began the sketches for my Walk on Good Friday, 1960, I was moved with the thought that Rembrandt had dealt with the Emmaus theme eighteen times and that Evelyn Underhill had written to a friend who was visiting Palestine, “ … wonder if you went to Emmaus; that is one of the bits I should most like to do” (Margaret Cropper, Life of Evelyn Underhill [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958], 189). Obviously, this Easter story in Luke’s Gospel had stirred great souls down through the church’s ages. Shortly after this exhibit, when our church sanctuary burned, I began work on a relief sculpture after Rembrandt’s 1648 Louvre painting of The Supper at Emmaus to be placed in the rebuilt church over the baptismal font so that the carving and the font might be a visible reminder of the two sacraments.

In 1968, I found just the piece of crotch walnut I wanted to do my own interpretation of the supper at Emmaus. It was a massive block 14[inches] x 18[inches] x 26[inches], really too heavy for one person to lift. I modeled a bare table with only the broken bread and a traveler’s canteen. One of the chairs was an old-fashioned three-corner design seen in old mountain cabins. In the months of working on the sculpture, I thought often of the words of a Nobel Prize-winning French novelist, Fran$LCois Mauriac:

“It seems to me there is one page of the Gospel for each one of us.… For my part I have walked all my life with the two tired travelers who entered Emmaus in the evening—Christ was dead, they had lost everything.… Who among us is not familiar with the inn at Emmaus? Who has not walked on this road in the evening when all seemed lost? … We followed a road and Someone walked at our side. We were alone and yet we were not alone.” (Francois Mauriac, The Son of Man [New York: Collier Books, 1961], 48-49)

That winter and spring of carving gave me the opportunity to do what I hoped the finished sculpture would help others to do. It was to meditate on a gospel scene by what Evelyn Underhill called, in a wonderfully apt phrase, “chewing the evangelical cud.”

When day is spent He turns
Stone into bread.
One table gesture burns,
And hearts are fed.

Show and Tell Within Limits

Over the years I have been able to carve nearly thirty pieces depicting the life of Christ and his disciples. Their use in worship has been varied. Sometimes, placed in a sanctuary, two or three of them were used as the basis for the sermon. For instance, two from the opening chapters of John’s gospel, John Pointing to Christ and Jesus at the Well, were central in a sermon on “Beginnings in John’s Gospel.” Both sculptures stood out as quite ordinary scenes—a man pointing two friends to a greater friend, and a thirsty man asking for a drink. Yet in each narrative, there are mysterious words, “The Lamb of God” and “living water.” Together they make good examples of the two stances from which C. H. Dodd believed the narratives in the gospels should be approached—matter-of-factness and mystery. For me, at least, this must be a controlling impression in any worthy art that deals with Christian themes.

Most often my work has been displayed with various gatherings in churches that wanted to explore the use of visual art in worship. The range of settings has been pretty wide. The one common denominator has been the inevitable row of banquet tables that, even with long experience, bring on a suppressed shudder. (Do no churches have adequate stands for displaying sculpture?) But that is all part of the job, and again and again, there has been the joy of helping to create an atmosphere in which people could worship the Lord who moves among us with the secret of His power.

Involved in presenting art to congregations, one is tempted to overvalue the very thing one loves. I have to remember the sardonic things Isaiah had to say about those who carve images out of wood. A needed corrective comes from the wise words of Dr. Johnson, who expressed his distrust of religious poetry in his Life of Waller:

Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer is already in a higher state than poetry can confer. (Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, vol. 1 [London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1925])

It is queer that anyone could think that pigments on a brush or a chisel chipping on wood might speak to us about God and our destiny. Byron dismissed sculpture and painting as “those two most artificial of the arts.” In his penetrating, “wicked” way, he described Michelangelo’s marvelous sculptures in the Medici Chapel as “fine frippery of great slabs of expensive stones to commemorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses” (Leslie A. Marchand, Byron: A Portrait [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970], 265). There are more pressing uncertainties when one faces up to the priorities of discipleship in such a day as we face in the 1980s. Auden wrote in 1948,

The present state of the world is so miserable and degraded that if anyone were to say to the poet: “For God’s sake, stop humming and put the kettle on or fetch bandages. The patient is dying,” I do not know how he could justifiably refuse. (Charles D. Abbot, ed., Poets at Work [New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1948])

These are troubling doubts, but they have not kept me from spending time on carving. Maybe I have been turning over plates of those wonderful wood carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider done nearly five hundred years ago dealing with the same gospel stories, and suddenly I want to do another sculpture. After all, life without worship is hard put to sustain meaning. So I turn again to Evelyn Underhill. She is writing to the poet Margaret Cropper:

How wonderful that you are doing a Passion Play and let me think of it. Seems to me making such things as this does count for people like you.… It is given to stimulate other people’s sense of God, and so adds to the total prayer energy, which is the ultimate job. I always console myself like that when I find myself spending time having happy notions for addresses instead of attending to Him in a more obvious way. P’raps it is part of the price we have to pay for our particular vocation. (Cropper, Life of Evelyn Underhill, 170)

A Biblical Philosophy of the Visual Arts in Worship

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As worship arts, the visual arts include architecture, sculpture, painting, mosaic, and the crafting of artifacts. These arts create durable objects that may be seen and handled. Although of lesser importance in the biblical perspective than some other art forms, the visual arts may serve as effective windows into the holy.

Static Nature of the Visual Arts

With the exception of architecture and its associated furnishings, the visual arts are given lesser importance in biblical worship than are other art forms. The reason for this may be found in the character of Yahweh. The Bible associates his name with a Hebrew phrase meaning “I will be who I will be,” and makes clear that he is known by his people through their experience with him in the ongoing events of redemptive history. In other words, Yahweh is not known statically, as a reality to be grasped only at one moment of time; no static image can represent him. Rather, he represents himself dynamically, as one known through his actions and deeds of deliverance.

The visual arts tend to have a static character; that is, objects of visual art may exist in their entirety at one moment. Moreover, they do not require the participation of a community in order to exist; a temple or a painting does not cease to be when no one is looking at it. On the other hand, literature (especially in its oral stage), music, and liturgy are dynamic arts. They must be presented over a period of time, and they require the participation of the community in order to exist. These dynamic arts can more adequately reflect the character of God as he has revealed himself within the biblical tradition, in the context of his covenant, and of the unfolding of his historical purposes. Further, though all the fine arts tend to be the creations of gifted individuals, the need for individual design and execution is greater for a material object than for a work of music, literature, or drama, which can be modified by those who recite or perform it. The visual arts, however much they may assume traditional forms and may be intended to express the identity and faith of the artist’s community, are still prone to be personal expressions, stand-alone creations representing the work of an individual.

Nevertheless, since worship depends on symbolism, the visual arts play a role in the worship of the covenant people. The fashioning of effective symbols requires the skilled hand of the artisan. There is the ever-present danger that the symbol can be misunderstood—the dilemma of Jeroboam, whose bull images of Yahweh’s throne (1 Kings 12:28) were too easily taken for Baalistic motifs. Ancient Israel always faced, and often yielded to, the temptation to compromise the historical faith of Yahwehism by combining it with the cyclical, mythological rites of popular fertility cults, with their associated idolatry. Also, it is an easy step to magnify the symbol over the reality it represents. The indispensable function of symbols as windows into the holy, however, requires that the biblical worshiper employ them, taking the risks involved and trusting in the integrity of the covenant faith and its precepts to protect him or her from apostasy.

Architecture: The Temple

The great visual symbol of biblical worship is the temple. Both the Solomonic and the Herodian temples were architectural monuments, neither of them destined to survive the centuries (although the foundation stones of the temple enclosure remain as the Qotel Hamma‘‡ravi, or Western Wall, in Jerusalem). The temple of Herod was still under construction during the time of Jesus’ ministry and was completed only a few years before its destruction by the armies of Rome in a.d. 70, as Jesus had predicted (Mark 13:1–2). The decorative motifs of Solomon’s temple, of which we have a good biblical description, disclose the link between the created order and human artifice. On a larger scale, the temple was really an architectural microcosm of the whole of creation, of “heaven and earth.” In it, the worshiper encountered God enthroned in the heavens (Ps. 123:1), establishing the earth (Ps. 96:10) and preserving its creatures (Ps. 36:6–7), defeating the enemies of his people (Ps. 76:2–3), and blessing the land as the source of the river of life (Ps. 46:4; Ezek. 47:9).

Israel’s theologians understood, of course, that the sanctuary, however magnificent as a work of art, was inadequate as a bearer of the sacred (1 Kings 8:27; cf. Isa. 66:1). Moses did not invent the design of the tabernacle but was told by Yahweh to make it according to the pattern he would reveal (Exod. 25:9); in the New Testament, we encounter the concept of the heavenly sanctuary, of which the earthly one is but a copy (Heb. 8–9; cf. 2 Cor. 5:1; Rev. 11:19). No holy place of human construction may contain the presence of the holy; in Jesus’ words to the woman of Samaria, “neither on this mountain [Gerizim] nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21) may people worship the Father in the authenticity of spiritual worship. Nevertheless, the Israelite temple, as a work of art and beauty, is the background for the New Testament symbolism of the worshiping church, the New Jerusalem, the tabernacle in which God dwells among his people (Rev. 21:1–3).

Artistic Craftsmanship

To execute a work of art requires craftsmanship; in the biblical perspective, craftsmanship itself is an art form, employing the skills of the artisan in the creation of useful objects. A corollary of the dynamic conception of Yahweh as Creator of a coherent universe and the doer of “mighty works” in his historic deeds of deliverance is the ability to find beauty in that which is utilitarian, that which functions properly and accomplishes useful work, as well as in that which is decorative. This is especially true of the implements of worship. Only this can account for the prominence given to the skilled craftsmen Bezalel and Oholiab in the instructions for the creation of the tabernacle (Exod. 31:1–11). When viewed with an eye to visual appeal, the artifacts of the Mosaic sanctuary are mostly functional rather than “beautiful” in the aesthetic sense. They are described in terms of how they are to fit together for assembly, disassembly, and transport during the travels of the people; this is their “beauty.”

Scripture places a high value on skillful work: “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men” (Prov. 22:29). Such was true of Huram-abi (also called Hiram), the chief craftsman of Solomon’s temple. He was sent to Solomon by Hiram, the king of Tyre, who furnished the materials for the sanctuary, and though Phoenician he was half Israelite (2 Chron. 2:13–14). The application of training and skill to the worship arts is also seen, for example, in the work of David’s musician Asaph and his associates (1 Chron. 25:1–7). The apostle Paul gave voice to the foundational biblical philosophy of artistic craftsmanship when he placed it within a wider context: “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17).

Painting, Sculpture, and Mosaic

Painting as an art form was practiced in ancient cultures, though most of what has survived for the appreciation of the modern student has been limited to decorated pottery or frescoes on the walls of tombs. The sculpture and statuary of Hellenistic civilization are well known and played a major role in the recovery of the principles of classical art during the Renaissance. Sculpture in stone was an important art in Semitic cultures of the ancient Near East, as attested by the numerous cultic images, palace bas-reliefs, commemorative obelisks, and the like that have come to light through archaeological research. Mosaic, or inlaid multicolored tile, came into use at a later period than these other arts, beginning with Hellenistic floor designs and becoming increasingly important until well into the Christian era.

The Bible does not discuss these visual arts, except to condemn and ridicule the sculpted images of the polytheistic religions (Ps. 115:4–8; Isa. 44:12–19; 46:1–2; cf. Acts 17:16; 19:23–26). In the centuries following the New Testament period, Christian theologians held a negative view of the visual arts, rejecting them as sensual and unspiritual. Here, as with so much else, the post-apostolic church departed from the biblical perspective, influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, which created an unscriptural dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. Paul had decried such asceticism, calling it “hollow and deceptive philosophy” (Col. 2:8) and asking, “Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch?’ ” (Col. 2:20–21 RSV).

Despite the strictures of theologians, the visual arts flourished in the early church; the ordinary worshiper at this period had a more sure instinct than the theologian for what was biblical. The walls of the Roman catacombs, or burial chambers, are adorned with scenes and characters from the Bible, including events in the ministry of Jesus, and with Christian symbolism. The same is true of sculpture on early Christian sarcophagi or stone coffins. A favorite theme, for example, was that of Jonah and the great fish, a symbol of the Resurrection (Matt. 12:40); it appears on the tomb alleged to have been Peter’s, in Rome. The loaves and fish of Christ’s feeding of the multitude (John 6:1–14) occur, in fresco, as a symbol of the Eucharist. Furthermore, the catacomb paintings provide a pictorial record of the early church, depicting men and women with arms lifted in prayer. As the church emerged from its subversive status and began to erect buildings for worship, the art of mosaic took up many of the same themes. The pointillistic, two-dimensional technique of mosaic gives it a special quality as a vehicle for the expression of the numinous. It was to reach its peak of development centuries later in the majestic Christos Pantokratōr (“Christ, Ruler of All”) mosaics above the apses of many basilicas in the Mediterranean world; in them, we view an awesome, powerful, living Christ, his right hand raised in the gesture of blessing, in his left the gospel book.