Currently Pondering: Frame, Rouault, Medium & Message
So, I’m thinking through what I’ve learned from my teacher and now friend and colleague John Frame about worship. About obedience to Scripture, when Scripture calls for wisdom. About beauty that’s measured by neighborliness.
Also I’m pondering what the French Catholic artist Georges Rouault has taught me about God’s wedding of medium and message. About a Christ who came bearing the likeness of angry prostitutes, sorrowful clowns, proud kings, imperious judges, self-feeding shepherds.
“Then in the fullness of time,
out of your great love for the world,
you sent your only Son to be one of us,
to redeem us and heal our brokenness.”• From the Great Thanksgiving (Book of Common Worship).
My favorite story about John occurred just as many of us were packing up our things one evening as his class, Pastoral and Social Ethics, concluded. We had spent the majority of our time discussing (or was it arguing) about what the 4th commandment on the Sabbath and what it allowed, restricted, etc… A little bent out of shape I pressed deeper, with about half of the class still milling around, “John (he let us call him by his first name), what do you do on the Sabbath?” I remember having a slightly accusatory tone in my voice. He laughed that little awkward laugh of his and said something like this…, “Well, Linc my family and I go to worship, of course. And then we come home and enjoy a meal together. And we’ve just moved to Orlando so we haven’t started this yet, and my wife was the one responsible for this idea when we lived in California, but during the afternoon I used to teach the bible to the homeless men who were living with us.” “WTF!!!” As you might imagine the entire class, or what was left of them, stopped whatever it was they were doing and just stood there at a stand still. He went on to explain, very humbly I might add, that his wife had set up some kind of partnership with a nearby homeless shelter where, after a few of the men there had gone through the initial detox and were ready to re-enter society, the Frame family would take a few in at a time, long enough for them to get back on their feet, find a job, an apartment, etc… They lived with the Frame and on Sunday afternoons he would hang out with them teaching them the Scriptures. After finally pulling my jaw up off the floor, I said something like, “why didn’t you just tell us that? We could have just moved on to commandment number 5.” I’ll never forget that night.
Comment by Linc Ashby — June 23, 2009 @ 10:11 pm
John Frame being John Frame. Disarmingly, guilelessly just trying to obey. Oh, and with Mary as maybe even more disarmingly and guilelessly obedient. Thx, Link. RK
Comment by Administrator — June 24, 2009 @ 7:54 am
thanks so much for turning me onto the work of Rouault!
(also, what a great comment by Linc.)
Comment by Brian Prentiss — June 29, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
Book idea, perhaps? I mean Dyrness’ book is phenomenal (and thanks so much for pointing me to it), but much more could probably be said…
Comment by Greg — June 29, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
Ok, wow Linc. Great story. And we bicker about whether or not it is okay to watch NFL football…
Comment by Steve Jeantet — July 3, 2009 @ 10:03 am
I love it when an artist truly expresses his understanding through his brush as does Rouault. You can see it in every stroke. Music does the same for me. Last Spring my students performed a new arrangement of James Agee’s poem “Sure On This Shining Night” by Morten Lauridsen. (Same guy who wrote the beautiful O Mangum Mysterium.) I studied the text quite a bit and then listened to Barber’s, Stroope’s, and Lauridsen’s. Lauridsen’s won hands down in capturing the beauty of the Heavens and the wonder it can evoke. Pretty sweet. VT
Comment by Vicki — August 20, 2009 @ 8:06 pm