March 12: Christ the First True Human Being
♫ Music:
Tuesday, March 12
Christ the First True Human Being
Scripture: John 1:14-18
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
Poetry:
Mama’s Promise
by Marilyn Nelson
I have no answer to the blank inequity
of a four-year-old dying of cancer.
I saw her on t.v. and wept
with my mouth full of meatloaf.
I constantly flash on disasters now;
red lights shout Warning. Danger.
everywhere I look.
I buckle him in, but what if a car
with a grille like a sharkbite
roared up out of the road?
I feed him square meals
but what if the fist of his heart
should simply fall open?
I carried him safely
as long as I could,
but now he's a runaway
on the dangerous highway.
Warning. Danger.
I've started to pray.
But the dangerous highway
curves through blue evenings
when I hold his yielding hand
and snip his miniscule nails
with my vicious-looking scissors.
I carry him around
like an egg in a spoon,
and I remember a porcelain fawn,
a best friend's trust,
my broken faith in myself.
It's not my grace that keeps me erect
as the sidewalk clatters downhill
under my rollerskate wheels.
Sometimes I lie awake
troubled by this thought:
It's not so simple to give a child birth;
you also have to give it death,
the jealous fairy's christening gift.
I've always pictured my own death
as a closed door,
a black room,
a breathless leap from the mountain top
with time to throw out my arms, lift my head,
and see, in the instant my heart stops,
a whole galaxy of blue.
I imagined I'd forget,
in the cessation of feeling,
while the guilt of my lifetime floated away
like a nylon nightgown,
and that I'd fall into clean, fresh forgiveness.
Ah, but the death I've given away
is more mine than the one I've kept:
from my hand the poisoned apple,
from my bow the mistletoe dart.
Then I think of Mama,
her bountiful breasts.
When I was a child, I really swear,
Mama's kisses could heal.
I remember her promise,
and whisper it over my sweet son's sleep:
When you float to the bottom, child,
like a mote down a sunbeam,
you'll see me from a trillion miles away:
my eyes looking up to you,
my arms outstretched for you like night.
CHRIST THE FIRST TRUE HUMAN BEING
We move our meditation today from the cosmic Christ to the immanent Immanuel, from the powerful God to the Jesus who came close. This Lenten season, it’s not only important to remember the passion and resurrection of our King, but that the Word became flesh in the first place.
And we desperately need this in our digital age. I realize you’re accessing this devotional through the Internet, meditating on paintings that are actually pixels, and streaming music in mp3 format. There are many benefits to computers in our globalized world (like these devotionals!), but we must remember what we’re sacrificing for ease and efficiency through technology.
We’ve traded genuine human relationship for a semblance of connection online. We’ve given up deeper levels of concentration for the off-chance that we receive an emergency text message. We’ve swapped our sanity for anxiety, self-control for addiction, and even our physical health for chronic illness. And we do this because we can’t live in the awkward, liminal spaces of real-life situations. We can’t persevere through the discomfort, and so we choose curated Instagram pics over fleshly reality.
We’ve completely lost our ability to delay gratification, and we’ve become junkies for the cortisol and dopamine highs in our brains. Neuroscience research reveals that we now live more in our sympathetic nervous systems (fight or flight area), which is helpful when we’re walking down a dark alley, but spending most of our time there translates to higher levels of stress and anxiety, diminished mental performance, and physical illness. More and more social science studies are being released that demonstrate (not suggest!) the overuse of technology causes (not correlates to!) depression and poor mental health.
The unnerving part is that marketers will readily admit that they are purposefully trying to addict us to our devices by capitalizing on our innate curiosities and fear of missing out. Marketers sell us the illusion that we are more in control and happy through technology, while simultaneously enslaving us to our distractions and making us more miserable. They prey on us because we don’t know how to pray.
I want to highlight one word from our passage today: fullness. Jesus’ fullness – as seen in his full display of God’s glory, and his full display of grace and truth – was that he became flesh. Jesus’ fullness is that God allowed himself to be bound by bone and blood and breath, that vocal cords contained the Word.
Jesus did not forgo the call to embodiment for the comforts of his heavenly throne. Jesus did not forsake the call to his body because he did not want to face human frailty and weakness. Jesus did not forget the call to become flesh because he was afraid of the awkward, uncomfortable moments of human existence. Jesus’ fullness is that he embraced the body, and that he was fully present in it.
What would it be like for us to embrace our bodies as well? How can we spend more time in our parasympathetic nervous systems (rest and digest area), away from digital distractions? How can we be fully present in the awkward, uncomfortable parts of our day instead of escaping to social media?
Take some time today to remember that we are analog bodies in a digital world. Place your feet fully on the ground, relax your body, and practice some deep breathing. Slowly, feel the air going into your nostrils, filling your lungs, and then out of your mouth. Pay attention to what you’re thinking and feeling. Do this a few times while closing your eyes, and practice a breath prayer like the one suggested below. Intentionally practice this a few times today – not only to pay attention to our bodies, but to what God might be doing in and around us.
Prayer:
(Breathe in and pray): My soul finds rest…
(Breathe out and pray): …in You alone.
-Modified from Psalm 62
(As you exercise breath prayers throughout the day, feel free to use any short Scripture that you want to meditate on today.)
Mike Ahn
Assistant Dean of Chapels & Worship
Host of The Biola Hour
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork #1:
Louis Nursing Her Child, 1898
Mary Cassatt
Pastel on tan wove paper
72 x 53cm
Rau pour le Tiers Monde Foundation
Zürich, Switzerland
Mary Cassatt is widely acclaimed for her intimate scenes of mothers and children. During her lifetime, she created an expansive body of work that illustrates her commitment to representing the experiences of women. Although associated with the ideals of domesticity and maternity, Cassatt never married or had children. She believed that single life proved more conducive to her artistic career. However, she remained close to her family, frequently using them as subjects for her paintings. Louis Nursing Her Child shows the intimacy between mother and child, bonding in the physical act of nursing. In both palette and composition, it is very similar to Elisabetta Sirani’s Virgin and Child.
About the Artist #1:
Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American painter and printmaker. Though she was born in Pennsylvania, she lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended many of the Impressionists. She often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, she moved to France to study art. Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, Cassatt studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded art teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique. By the 1890s Cassatt had moved back to America and became a role model for young American artists. Although Cassatt did not explicitly make political statements about women's rights in her work, her artistic portrayal of women was consistently done with dignity and the implication of a deeper, meaningful inner life.
About the Artwork #2:
Virgin and Child, 1663
Elisabetta Sirani
Oil on canvas
27.5 x 34 in.
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Washington, D.C.
Elisabetta Sirani’s skill is apparent in her portrayal of the Virgin’s white sleeve, thickly painted to emphasize its rough, homespun texture and the blue-patterned headscarf and gold tassel at the corner of the pillow on which the Christ child rests. This touch of gold and the floral garland hint at the heavenly nature of Mary and the Child, but Sirani portrays Mary not as a remote Queen of Heaven, but as a flesh and blood, young mother with a very real baby. Sirani's painting Virgin and Child, now in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, was selected for the United States Postal Service Christmas Holiday Stamp series in October 1994.
About the Artist #2:
Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) was an Italian Baroque painter and printmaker who died very young. She was the most famous female artist in early Bologna and established an academy for other female artists. Her art training came from her father, a painter of the School of Bologna. Throughout his biography of Sirani, historian Malvasia praises the originality of her compositions, her style of drawing, her fast manner of working, and her professionalism. Sirani produced over 200 paintings, 15 etchings, and hundreds of drawings, making her an extremely prolific artist. Her works cover a number of subjects, including historical and Biblical narratives, often featuring women, allegories, and portraits. She was also the first female artist to specialize in historical painting, very different from other female painters of the time who usually only painted still lifes. Around 1660 she began focusing extensively on small-scale devotional images, particularly themes involving the Virgin and Child and Holy Family, which were very popular with private collectors.
About the Music:
“Sleep My Child” from the album Water Night
Lyrics:
When you dream of Paradise,
and the paradise it brings,
Remember: O, your heart is full of wings.
Remember to listen for the lark, and sleep.
You’ll awaken tomorrow and spread your wings,
And you’ll grow, come to know all the shadows
and joy that it brings,
When your heart aches,
my heart aches and this is the song it sings:
Ah! Ah! In your dreams you’re not alone,
Though mother’s child has flown,
And if the night that follows should be dark
Just listen for the lark, and sleep my child.
I can see in your eyes that the day is long,
And the pain and the rain and the wind
make you feel that you’re wrong,
Out of sorrow tomorrow will bring you a brighter song:
Ah! Ah! In your dreams you’re not alone,
Though mother’s child has flown,
And if the night that follows should be dark
Just listen for the lark, and sleep my child.
Sleep my child.
Sleep my child
And dream.
About the Composer:
Grammy-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) is one of the most popular musicians of his generation, known for his choral, orchestral, and wind ensemble music. He is also known for his "Virtual Choir" projects, bringing individual voices from around the globe together to create online choirs. His concert music has been performed throughout the world by millions of amateur and professional musicians alike, while his groundbreaking “Virtual Choirs” have united singers from over 110 different countries. A graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, Whitacre was recently appointed Artist-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, having completed a five-year term as Composer-in-Residence at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University, UK. Whitacre's music has been described as "softly spoken, deeply harmonic and tuneful, but making use of unusual rhythms and sound balancing to create highly textured music.”
About the Lyricist:
David Noroña (b. 1972) has over 20 years of experience as an award-winning actor, writer, director, and producer, as well as has numerous theatre, film, and television credits. He is currently head of the Studio Division at Bethel Media, and co-created/directed Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, a musical by composer-librettist Eric Whitacre. His greatest achievement is his marriage to Lisa Noroña, with whom he has four children: Zion, Night, Isaiah, and Talita. When asked what his favorite verse of Scripture is, David responds, “I love the intimacy and trust revealed in ‘But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart’ (Luke 2:19). It speaks to me as an artist -- having this quiet place of pondering.”
About the Performers:
Eric Whitacre Singers have established themselves as one of the finest ensembles of our day. Drawing-in audiences with a wide spectrum of age, interests and backgrounds, the choir performs music from Renaissance to contemporary pieces, including Lauridsen, Britten, and the work of their founder and conductor, Eric Whitacre. They received exceptional and unanimous praise from critics and won a GRAMMY award for Best Choral Performance for their debut album, Light & Gold on Decca/Universal. Regularly recording in London’s Abbey Road and Air Studios, the choir features on Whitacre’s own label, UNQUIET, and on the soundtracks of numerous Hollywood movies.
About the Poet:
Marilyn Nelson (b. 1946), a three-time finalist for the National Book Award, is one of America’s most celebrated poets. She is the author or translator of seventeen poetry books for adults and children, five chapbooks, and in 2014 she published a memoir entitled How I Discovered Poetry—a series of 50 poems about growing up in a 1950’s military family. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She earned a B.A. from the University of California-Davis, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her poetry collections include The Homeplace and The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems. Her honors include two NEA Fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship.
About the Devotional Writer:
Mike Ahn
Assistant Dean of Chapels & Worship
Host of The Biola Hour, Spiritual Development
Biola University
Mike Ahn oversees chapel programs, worship teams, Torrey Conference, The Biola Hour podcast, and serves on the pastoral care team. He is a graduate of Haverford College (B.A., History, '01) and Talbot School of Theology’s Institute for Spiritual Formation (M.Div., Spiritual Formation, ’09), and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Educational Studies (also at Talbot). If he could, he would have two In-N-Out cheeseburgers with chopped chilis, animal style fries, and a Pamplemousse LaCroix for every meal.