December 24: This is My Covenant
♫ Music:
WEEK FOUR- INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEK
December 24 - December 30
The word “Christmas” comes from the phrase “Christ Mass,” the solemn liturgical rite developed to appropriately celebrate the incarnation of God in the flesh. The more ancient name is In natali Domini – On the birth of the Lord. The older name reminds us that what we are celebrating is not just the birth of Jesus Christ, the now human Son of God born to Mary; but that we are observing the birth of the Lord of the universe. That the immensity of the Godhead finds its way into the intimacy of the infant child is a mystery that is only understood in part as we gaze in the mirror dimly. What we are witnessing is the miracle of the Lord God himself condescending to take on the form of a mere human being so that mere human beings can become like God. We are seeing the redemptive plan of the Trinity begin to unfurl. “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate deity!” Hail him indeed!
Day 22 - Sunday, December 24
Christmas Eve
Title: This is My Covenant
Scripture: Isaiah 59:15b-21
The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render repayment. So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of the Lord drives. “And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord. “And as for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children's offspring,” says the Lord, “from this time forth and forevermore.”
Poetry:
from the Litany for Atlanta
By W.E.B. DuBois
Behold the maimed and broken thing; dear God, it
was an humble black man who toiled and sweat to save
a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: Work
and Rise. He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but some
one told how some one said another did - one whom he
had never seen nor known. Yet for that man’s crime this
man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to
shame, his children, to poverty and evil.
Hear us, O Heavenly Father!
Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O
God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent
blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts, for
vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of bloodcrazed brutes
who do such deeds high on Thine altar, Jehovah Jireh,
and burn it in hell forever and forever!
Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!
Bewildered we are, and passion-tost, mad with the
madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered
people; straining the armposts of Thy Throne, we
raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the
bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead
mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ;
What meanth this? Tell us the Plan; give us the Sign!
Keep not Thou silence, O God!
THIS IS MY COVENANT
Christmas Eve is here and yet, some of us have found that we feel more heartache than celebration. We are right on the cusp of celebrating the end of Israel's waiting and at the back of our minds, a drained and broken voice balks at the celebratory spirit and hisses, "when will my waiting, even our waiting, finally end?" Today's pieces confront our imaginations with the costs and rewards of patience, and give evidence that prolonged, painful waiting is the unifying experience of all God's people. The following meditations on those pieces acknowledge our present heartache; they also offer up the Lord's own consolations to the faithful who are, historically and in the present, waiting in prolonged suffering.
Both Krammes and Botticelli make conspicuous the same inanimate object in their annunciation scenes: Mary's desk (and/or bookstand). Why? Because immediately following Mary's fiat, she sings the Magnificat, a song of praise richly steeped with words from the psalms and the prophets. It suggests that Mary was a student; that Mary had been attentive to and formed by centuries of God's words, passed down through generations of the faithful, who waited, longed, and died for the coming of the Lord. She inherited the conviction of generations who were not afraid of the pain of deep longing, and made it her own. It through this way of waiting -- of joining the centuries of faithful in accepting the cost of patience -- that she was made ready to receive the Lord in exultation in the very moment He arrived.
Du Bois’ Litany confronts our imaginations with the realities of just how difficult, heart-rending, and costly faithful patience is. He reminds that we are not through with waiting for the Lord’s justice to be complete. Litany was written in response to the violent deaths of black men and women during the riots of 1906 in Atlanta, Georgia. It laments horrors enacted upon the innocent, all done in the name of justice, by those who were truly guilty. As it is written in the in the genre of litany, the form suggests these events will be repeated and lamented again and again.
Du Bois will not let us forget that the costs of patience have not changed since Isaiah prophesied; even while we wait, we are vulnerable to injustice, we lack the unconditional love that heals us from our faults and wounds, and under these conditions, we find it so tempting to become fainthearted. Nevertheless, the Lord has given us this consolation: “My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children's offspring,” says the Lord, “from this time forth and forevermore.”
This is the Lord's consolation to the faithful; that is, with the Lord’s words dwelling in us richly, we lack nothing we need to endure this long wait. Today, on Christmas Eve, we are invited to rededicate patterns of prayer which renew our longings, and which refresh our zeal to join in the labor of the Spirit and Son for the Father. This is the hard-won, heart-felt, hell-fleeing work of waiting.
Prayer:
Lord, teach us to wait like your faithful servants. When our days are full of freedom and space, guard us from sowing hope in temporal things, which have no permanence and make us hollow. When our days are full of strife and pain, guard us from despairing of your love. Teach us to wait like Simeon, who lived only to see the Son of God. Teach us to wait like Anna, who made her home in the house of the Lord. Teach us, the church, to say with one voice, ‘mine eyes will see the salvation of the Lord.”
Amen.
Jessamy Delling
Administrative Assistant to the Director
Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University
About the Artwork #1:
The Annunciation, 1485-92
Sandro Botticelli
Tempera and gold on wood panel
19.1 x 31.4 cm
Robert Lehman Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City, New York
One of the most celebrated paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this depiction of The Annunciation unfolds in an architectural interior rendered with one-point perspective to create the illusion of depth. A row of pillars divides the Angel Gabriel from the intimate bedchamber of the Virgin Mary, who kneels in humility as she receives his divine message. The panel was almost certainly commissioned as a private devotional image and not as part of a larger work. While the identity of the patron is not known, the painting was in the famed Barberini Collection in Rome, Italy, during the seventeenth century.
About the Artist #1:
Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) was an Early Renaissance Italian painter who belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of the statesman and ruler of the Florentine Republic, Lorenzo de’ Medici. Botticelli painted a wide range of religious subjects and a number of portraits. He and his workshop were especially known for their Madonna and Child works, many in the round “tondo” shape. His most well known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera, both housed in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy. By the 1490s when a new generation of painters embraced the High Renaissance style, Botticelli returned in some ways to the delicate and linear grace of a Gothic tradition. He has been described as “an outsider in the mainstream of Italian painting”, having a limited interest in many of the developments most associated with Renaissance painting, such as the realistic depiction of human anatomy, perspective, and landscape.
About the Artwork #2:
Womb Song
Barry Krammes
Mixed Media Assemblage
5 x 4’
Private Collection
Barry Krammes’ contemporary large-scale assemblage Womb Song echoes the idea of partition between the Angel Gabriel and Mary, through which the Angel penetrates as he announces the entry of God into the world through her womb. The two spaces balance on tree roots, which are perhaps a reference to the promise of salvation from the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11).
About the Artist #2:
Barry Krammes (b. 1951) received his BFA in printmaking and drawing from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and his MFA in two-dimensional studies from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Since 1983, he has been employed at Biola University in La Mirada, California, where he served as the Art Chair for 15 years. Krammes is an assemblage artist whose work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions, regionally and nationally. His work can be found in various private collections throughout the United States and Canada. He has taught assemblage seminars at Image Journal’s annual Glen Summer Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Krammes has served as the Visual Arts Coordinator for the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute in Cambridge, England, and has been the Program Coordinator for both Biola University’s annual arts symposium and the Center for Christianity Culture and the Arts for several years. He has also been the editor of CIVA: Seen Journal for Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA), a national arts organization.
About the Music:
“Cloak” from the album The Magic Place
About the Composer/Performer:
Julianna Barwick is an American musician who composes using electronic loops. Barwick has said that her music is influenced by her participation in church choirs while growing up in Louisiana. She composes with a variety of equipment to create electronic loops built around her vocalizing. In December 2017, Barwick will be joining Sigur Ros for the festival Norður og Niður, a six-day event of performances and art installations, in Reykjavík, Iceland.
About the Poet:
William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois (1868–1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, author, writer, and editor. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, is considered a seminal work in African-American literature. A prolific author, he wrote one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology and he published three autobiographies. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.
About the Devotional Writer:
Jessamy Delling is an alumna of Biola University and the Torrey Honors Institute. While administration is her job, Jessamy considers writing her vocation. She is very involved at Redeemer Church, La Mirada, CA, where she plans and prays for ways to serve in Christ’s kingdom as a writer.