December 10: Names of Jesus I
♫ Music:
WEEK TWO - INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEK
December 10 - December 16
Would it still be Christmas without hearing (or singing along to!) Handel’s Messiah, especially the famous chorus “For unto us a child is born”? Yes, it would still be Christmas but it would not, perhaps, carry the same weight without the inclusion of this significant cultural observance. It is probably a safe assumption that most Christians know this chorus and, hopefully, know that it is a direct quotation of Isaiah 9:6, a passage that is not without a long and, at times, difficult interpretive history. Despite this history, the text packs a significant amount of punch. What it lacks in length it makes up for in depth. From the perspective of the incarnation of Jesus Christ it is both descriptive of the coming Messiah and doxological in its celebration of his long-awaited coming. Handel made it beautiful to sing, the prophet Isaiah under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration made it theologically profound. This week we consider this profundity.
Day 8 - Sunday, December 10
Title: Names of Jesus I
Scripture: Isaiah 9:6a
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given”
Poetry:
One for All Newborns
By Thylias Moss
They kick and flail like crabs on their backs.
Parents outside the nursery window do not believe
they might raise assassins or thieves, at the very worst.
a poet or obscure jazz Musician whose politics
spill loudly from his horn.
Everything about it was wonderful, the method
of conception, the gestation, the womb opening
in perfect analogy to the mind's expansion.
Then the dark succession of constricting years,
mother competing with daughter for beauty and losing,
varicose veins and hot-water bottles, joy boiled away,
the arrival of knowledge that eyes are birds with clipped wings,
the sun at a 30° angle and unable to go higher, parents
who cannot push anymore, who stay by the window
looking for signs of spring
and the less familiar gait of grown progeny.
I am now at the age where I must begin to pay
for the way I treated my mother. My daughter is just like me.
The long trip home is further delayed, my presence
keeps the plane on the ground. If I get off, it will fly.
The propeller is a cross spinning like a buzz saw
about to cut through me. I am haunted and my mother is not dead.
The miracle was not birth but that I lived despite my crimes.
I treated God badly also; he is another parent
watching his kids through a window, eager to be proud
of his creation, looking for signs of spring.
BORN IN HUMILITY: UNTO US, A CHILD
It was after midnight. We had gone to the hospital because my wife knew it was time. And there, under bleak fluorescent lights, we waited. Nurses, a doctor, another doctor, green draped my wife’s lower portions, and they handed me a gown. Then he came — our son, the first of what would be three children. I remember the cry. It wasn’t loud, but had a pitch that pierced the air. It was a wordless statement. He had arrived.
The doctor asked if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord, and I did, in a kind of fog. Such a tiny person this was — slick, gooey, reddish, eyes pressed shut and hunched like a little wrestler.
They took him away to do what medical people do with newborns and I took a seat. Later it would hit me how wondrous all this was. Life had come from a life, from our lives. And this new person would be someone we would get to know. He would surprise us. We would surprise him. And he would get to know us, learning what it means to be joined to others in family.
Isaiah’s description of the Messiah’s coming has about it this wonder. A child is born. The Creator of all things, the One who was, and is, and is to come, took on human flesh and emerged from a woman’s womb in that wondrous way babies come into the world. Before any child is born, there is long anticipation through weeks, months — a counting of days. That waiting, as with anything in life, has a way of magnifying the eventual moment. Mary’s waiting was filled with joy and dread. For this was unlike any pregnancy in the history of the world. The Holy Spirit had come upon her; the Most High had overshadowed her. This child was no ordinary baby. Yet it was a baby — helpless, needy, vulnerable, tender. Who would believe the story of what appeared to be an unwed mother? Who indeed.
And this was a son, a little boy. He would grow to be a man but would begin with that childish exploration of what it means to be one. Scripture says he grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and those around Him. And His Mother and Joseph, no doubt had much to do with that. He was first-born. In Jewish tradition, that isn’t so much about birth order as it was about prominence and expectation of responsibility, and of dedication to God.
The scene in Bondone’s artwork about this birth captures the wonder in heavenly places at God’s majestic humility in this coming, this arrival. There is about it both darkness and light, wonder and prayerful peace, a quiet pondering in the moment.
The gentle touches of piano and strings in today’s music draw us upward, lifting our souls to God in a joy that swells our souls. We cannot but worship. For He is, and He came for us.
Prayer:
Thank you God for sending the Messiah
to us in a way we understand: as a baby
in the arms of a waiting mother. Thank you
for experiencing in every way what we
know as people born into community.
You knew us before You came, but You
can now serve as our High Priest in
ways that sympathize with our weakness.
We worship this Savior of the world
who came to us first as a child.
Amen
Michael Longinow
Professor of Journalism
Biola University
About the Artwork #1:
Nativity (2 views), 2006
Brian T. Kershisnik
Oil on canvas
17 x 7‘
Utah Museum of Fine Art
Kershisnik’s monumental Nativity painting features the Holy Family surrounded by numerous angels in various stages of wonder, witnessing the birth of Jesus. The heavenly host of angelic figures crowding the space takes on an ethereal, otherworldly quality from their apparent weightlessness and their juxtaposition with other figures and elements in the work. But this is also a nativity deeply grounded in the humanity of Jesus. Kershisnik says of this work, “Part of what I’m doing in this painting is kind of marveling at His coming down into our dirt. And to our sweat and blood. He came here, He came to where we are. And so it seemed appropriate to paint a mother who is sweaty…and flushed and tired. And a little baby who has blood smeared on him and is hungry.” To emphasize this worldly aspect further, Kershisnik paints an overwhelmed Joseph seated in the midst of all the activity, feeling the weight of responsibility for a new life and the profound reality of Jesus’s birth.
About the Artist #1:
Brian T. Kershisnik (b.1962) is an American painter living in Utah. He has a national base of collectors and exhibitions, and his works are featured in collections around the world. Kershisnik's work deals mainly with the human figure as a symbolic archetype. His favorite themes deal with family life, personal relationships and religious themes as they intersect family and personal relationships.
About the Artwork #2:
Nativity, c. 1306-1311
Giotto di Bondone
Fresco
Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis
Assisi, Italy
From 1306 to 1311 Giotto was in Assisi, Italy, where he painted frescoes in the transept area of the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis. In this nativity painting, the upper portion shows the stable/cave where Mary holds her newborn Son. Giotto used a deep lapis blue hue for the night sky with luminous colors as contrast; halos in gilt and modeled stucco provide stirring flashes of golden light. Twelve semi-embodied angels with faces and hands clasped in prayer form a heavenly choir around the Mother and Child. This painting not only expresses the divine nature of the nativity, but it also portrays this event as one that is earthly as well. In the lower part of the painting where the colors grow paler upon entering the realm of humanity, shepherds and sheep draw us to where the baby Jesus appears again and is attended to by midwives.
About the Artist #2:
Giotto di Bondone (c. 1270-1337), known as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence, Italy, during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the "Gothic or Proto-Renaissance" period. He is often appreciated for his innovations in painting as he imbued his figures with personality by giving expression to their faces and postures, as is clearly evident from his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel) in Padua. The Italian poet Dante proclaimed Giotto greater than Cimabue, the Italian artist considered the most important until then and most likely Giotto’s teacher. Besides his pivotal contribution to the development of a new realistic visual language, Giotto might have been also responsible for the reintroduction of true fresco technique to Western art. The technological development allowed the creation of more-durable murals with unprecedented colours and brilliance.
About the Music:
“Spiegel im Spiegel” from the album The Very Best of Arvo Pärt
About the Composer:
Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt, an Orthodox Christian, has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. Since 2013, Pärt has had the distinction of being the most performed contemporary composer in the world. Although the recipient of numerous awards and honors from nations around the globe, the humble maestro strives to keep out of the limelight, endeavoring to give God credit for his many accomplishments. The newly established International Arvo Pärt Centre, located in the Estonian village of Laulasmaa, includes a research institute, an education and music centre, a museum, a publishing facility, and an archive of Pärt's works.
About the Performers:
Violinist Tasmin Little (b. 1965) was born, raised, and studied in London, England. She has an award-winning solo, chamber, and recording career. In “Spiegel im Spiegel,” she performs with British pianist Martin Roscoe (b.1952), a widely-recorded soloist, recitalist, and chamber collaborator.
About the Poet:
Thylias Moss (b. 1954) is an American poet, writer, experimental filmmaker, sound artist, and playwright of multi-racial heritage, who has published a number of poetry collections, children's books, and essays. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, an NEA grant, and the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize for poetry. As a child Moss experienced several traumatizing events that caused her to withdraw from social interaction, and as a consequence, she did not speak openly until her college years. It was during this time she gave her attention to writing poetry. Moss is now Professor of English and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her current work has become more experimental and combines different genres, multiple fields of study, and computer technology.
About the Devotional Writer:
Michael Longinow is the former chair of Biola's Department of Journalism and the advisor of Biola’s The Chimes student newspaper. Longinow attended Wheaton College, earning a BA in Political Science, and completed a PhD at the University of Kentucky. He has not only been an educator but has worked as a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. Longinow is a frequent workshop presenter and panelist at national conventions, has written chapters for five books dealing with journalism, media and religion, and the popular culture of American evangelicalism. Longinow resides in Riverside, California, with his wife Robin and their three children, Ben, Matt and Sarah.