April 10: “I Am the Resurrection & the Life”
♫ Music:
Day 53 - Saturday, April 10
Title: “I AM THE RESURRECTION & THE LIFE”
Scripture: John 11: 21-27
Martha then said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”
Poetry:
Resurrection
by Sister Maris Stella
from the deep sea wrack
from the green light under the sea
from the coral caves men will come back
on mountain tops where
dropped from the air
or hurled
against the world
their bones grow cold
among the old
rock-frost above the tree-line
they will rise up with the divine
breath breathed into them again
as on the first of men
Adam, newly conceived of clay
on the sixth day
God breathed even somewhere Adam will rise
opening again his eyes
on the world to find
nothing much changed but of a mind
that he was blind before
Abel, first-slain
having lain
longer in earth than any other man
and Eve with the look of the new Eve
upon her but still Eve
they will rise up having known
the terrible trumpets blown
would cry: this is the doom
this is the crack of doom
who will record the innumerable horde
in hope to see
what publican will mount into a tree
what wind what weather what bird
will shout unheard
against the sound
of whole tribes and families growing up out of the ground
what earth does every spring
is only a hint of the thing
I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
If I am honest, most of the time I live with the Resurrection as a comforting, if distant, abstraction. Jesus rose from the dead a long time ago, and all will rise at the great and terrible day of the Lord. And despite laying hold of these truths by faith, I seem to live in a world where miracles are scarce, and loss accumulates day after day. It is exactly this disposition that Jesus lovingly confronts in his interaction with Martha before the tomb of Lazarus:
“Your brother will rise again.”
Martha responds by pushing this declarative statement into the vagueness of future hope:
“I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Perhaps this move makes the emotional stakes manageable for Martha. After all, her brother is rotting in a hole a few feet away. Real hope can feel dangerous to the broken heart. Jesus then, once again, gathers all the theological and doctrinal abstractions in which we might find some meager solace and locates them physically and unequivocally in Himself.
“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Did anyone, at any time, say anything more important that this? The very nature of the cosmos is shifting before Martha’s eyes. The meaning of these words is so monumental that is easy to forget that Jesus was speaking them to a close, hurting friend. I sometimes like to imagine Him whispering them to Martha with tears in His eyes. Jesus gathered up her grief, her doubt, her good doctrine, and filled them full of meaning, redirecting her longing and hope toward Himself.
As Jesus stood there speaking these words, with a body just like mine and yours in every way that matters, the resurrection ceased to be a pleasant, comforting, graveside story. The Resurrection was standing there before her in marvelous, ignominious flesh. It is not only realities of the spirit that exceed our imagination, it is also the realities of the incarnation, and its import for all bodies everywhere. Martha’s only response—because no mind can hold the Resurrection—was to simply confess faith in Jesus as Messiah. He will bring to pass what she, and I, cannot comprehend. We cannot comprehend it, not because it is too far from us, but because it is too close, too real.
Both Sister Maris Stella and Lynn Aldrich help us to meditate on the simultaneous vastness and immanence of the Resurrection in their works today. Aldrich quotes the most famous painting of the Resurrection, the spectacular panel from Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. Aldrich transmutes Grünewald’s image of supernatural glory to the stuff of a tacky suburban interior. From the ugly carpet and its modernist grid the uncontainable figure of Christ erupts, leaving an empty silhouette of rubber floor padding for us to contemplate. The Resurrection can and will happen anywhere and everywhere. Wherever you are as you read this, celebrate that reality today.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus,
You are the Resurrection and the Life.
We believe that only you have the power to reverse death.
Bring us face to face with the reality of your flesh and blood again and again
As you fill everything with meaning.
Amen
Jonathan Puls
Chair of the Art Department
Associate Professor of Art History and Painting
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.
__________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for joining us for the 2021 Lenten Season. We hope that in some small measure our devotional project brought you comfort during these uncertain and challenging times.
We will be returning with our annual 2021 Advent Project on Sunday November 28, 2021.
Thank you again for your generous financial support of this project.
— With gratitude, The CCCA
If you have subscribed to the Lent and Advent Projects this past year, you will automatically be sent the 2021 Advent Project.
To access archived Advent and Lent Project devotions - click here.
About the Artwork #1:
Grid Buster
Lynn Aldrich
1989
Carpet, carpet padding, framed picture of the Isenheim Altarpiece, electric light, surge protectors, electric cord, Gregorian chant with vacuum cleaner, sound interruptions on auto-rewind. 17 x 10’ carpet, 10.5 x 5’ figure
Collection of the artist
The Grid Buster installation by artist Lynn Aldrich features the silhouette of the resurrected Christ figure from the famous Isenheim Altarpiece. References to the Grünewald Isenheim Resurrection, a small reproduction of it which hangs next to Aldrich installation, are incorporated within Aldrich’s work. Fashioned from plaid carpet material, the Christ figure erupts from the carpet onto the wall, leaving behind an outline of Jesus on the floor. The glory and explosive power of the Isenheim risen Christ is evidenced in Aldrich’s work by a series of electrical surge protectors mounted on the wall next to the silhouette and are meant to symbolically “shield” against the tremendous supernatural resurrection power flowing from the figure. Jesus’ humanity is reflected by the mundane plaid carpet from which he is fashioned. As an everyday commodity that connects him directly to the earthly realm and represents the sinful patterns and ways of our lives, it recalls that, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24, NIV). In addition, during the installation a Gregorian chant alternates periodically with the sound of a vacuum cleaner which serves as a reminder that though we may try in vain to “clean up our act,” we need the divine intervention and sacrifice of our Lord and Savior to reconcile us to a holy God. Upon leaving the installation of Grid Buster, one is handed a detail of the artwork with a line from Hebrews 10:1–“Only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things.”
About the Artist #1:
Lynn Aldrich is a Los Angeles artist who employs meticulous craftsmanship to transform common consumer materials into artworks that reflect what she views as the “excess, spectacle and artificiality” of Los Angeles culture. Often filled with humor and playfulness, many pieces have an undeniable subtext of ecological concern, accompanied by a spiritual longing. Her sculptures usually mimic phenomena in nature through artificial means: water and waves, flora and fauna, skies and galaxies are all rendered in plastic, vinyl, fake fur, or foam. This visual and conceptual tension between the natural and synthetic reminds us of the precarious condition of the human-made world and our own temporality. Aldrich received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; a B.A. in Fine Art from California State University, Northridge; and an M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Aldrich has exhibited widely and internationally. She received the J. Paul Getty Individual Artist Fellowship (2000), a United States Artists Project Award (2013), and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2014). Her work is included in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Neiman Marcus, Inc., Dallas, TX; Neuberger Berman, Inc., New York, NY; and the New York Public Library.
https://www.edwardcella.com/artist/Lynn_Aldrich/biography/
https://lynnaldrich.com/home.html
About the Artwork #2:
Isenheim Altarpiece
Matthias Grünewald
1512–1515
Oil on limewood
683.3 × 1651 cm
Unterlinden Museum at Colmar
Alsace, France
The Isenheim Altarpiece is an altarpiece painted Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. Regarded as a masterpiece of the Northern Renaissance, Grünewald's complex altarpiece consists a main section with two sets of wings, displaying three different configurations of nine painted panels. Begun around 1512, this altarpiece was commissioned by a monastic hospital run by the order of Saint Anthony in Isenheim, where the hermit monks cared for those suffering from the debilitating skin disease, known as Saint Anthony’s Fire. The piece’s image of the crucified Christ with his plague-type sores was meant to show patients that Jesus understood and shared their afflictions. When opened, the altarpiece’s outer panels displayed the Annunciation, the Angelic Concert, the Madonna and Child, and the Resurrection. In contrast to the horrific details of the Crucifixion on the exterior panel, the resurrection panel celebrates Christ’s triumph over suffering and death as a radiant, resurrected Christ bathed in vividly glowing orange, red and yellow body halos emerges from the tomb and ascends triumphantly to Heavens.
https://www.musee-unterlinden.com/en/oeuvres/isenheim-altarpiece-outer-wings-opened/
https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/Civilization/id/840/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece
About the Artist #2:
Matthias Grünewald is widely acclaimed as the greatest German Renaissance artist, whose religious paintings and drawings are known for their visionary expressiveness of intense color and agitated line. His most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece, a polyptych that decorated the hospital chapel of the Isenheim Monastery near Colmar, Alsace, now in France. In the central panel, the crucified body of Christ is pitted with black sores that would have resembled those of the plague victims who visited the monastery in hope of a cure. Although only ten or so paintings survive, Grünewald’s art has had a lasting influence, inspiring artists from Albrecht Dürer to Jasper Johns, who traced the Isenheim Altarpiece onto his own work.
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/matthias-grunewald-isenheim-altarpiece
About the Music:
“The Resurrection and the Life” from the album 99
Lyrics:
When it seems like you have lost everything
Take a look up, take a look up, brother
When it seems like you have lost everything
Take a look up, take a look up, sister
When every single breath you take is full of pain
When all hope seems to be out of sight
Lift up your eyes to the One that death couldn’t hold
He will raise you up, he will raise you up
He’s reaching out for you, the Resurrection and the Life
About the Lyricists/Composers/Performers:
Benjamin Kousholt and Rune Hauge Ringsmose
Danish musicians Benjamin Kousholt and Rune Hauge Ringsmose form the band White Flag Harmonies. Together they create a vast soundscape with calm acoustic and electronic sounds, which at the same time leaves room for intimacy and presence. The music of White Flag Harmonies explores the space between ambient music and singer/songwriter pop.
https://spanra.com/white-flag-harmonies/
About the Poet:
Sister Maris Stella (1899–1987) was born Alice Gustava Smith in Alton, Iowa. She graduated from Derham Hall High School in 1918. Two years later, she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph and took the name Sister Maris Stella. Smith received her undergraduate degree from the College of St. Catherine, with majors in English and music. Shortly after receiving her degree, she became a faculty member of the college. She earned her master’s degree in English at the University of Oxford. After returning from Europe, she resumed her teaching role in the English Department at St. Catherine’s. She became a popular creative writing teacher as well as a poet-in-residence.
https://revolsen.com/2020/04/06/resurrection-in-the-time-of-pandemic/
About the Devotion Author:
Jonathan Puls
Chair of the Art Department
Associate Professor of Art History and Painting
Biola University
Jonathan Puls (M.F.A., M.A.) is a painter, writer, and family man. He teaches drawing, painting, and art history courses in Biola’s Department of Art and currently serves as its Chair. Jonathan enjoys encouraging artists of all ages and kinds, and he tries to take all seriousness seriously. Puls also loves supporting creative work in all the arts at Biola and in the larger community. He, his wife, and his two daughters are constantly engaged in various visual art, music, and theater projects.