April 19: The Entombment of Christ
♫ Music:
Day 46 - Saturday, April 19
Holy Saturday
Title: The Entombment of Christ
Scripture: Luke 23:50–56 (NKJV)
Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near. And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.
Poetry & Poet:
“Repairwork”
by Dennis Hinrichsen
(Shroud of Turin)
They must have bled as they sang,
the needles so quick through
the linen, the frayed mesh,
the silvers must have stung them.
Pinpricks they must have stemmed
with their tongues, unembarrassed,
these brides of Christ-
like sewing patches of sunlight
to water--the ghost in the cloth
laid double across their laps.
These are the hips of Christ,
knees raw bone inking the linen;
this, the stain of a coin
that graced His eye, the image
as yet unpatterned, available only--
should they dare to look--
in random angles, stitches.
Terrible gash at a medial rib.
Imprint: sole of His foot,
the other merely heel, curve of
a branch at its one end blackened,
released to ash-their
fingers as furious as sparks
in the medieval dusk
repairing a fire . . . They must have
wept as they bled as they sang.
THE LIFELESS CHRIST ENTOMBED
When I first encountered today’s artwork—Stretched Christ—I shuddered at the claustrophobic way Jesus was enclosed into this antiqued tomb of a coffee table. I quickly realized, of course, that my startled response was issued from the fear of being enclosed alive in a small space, while here Christ is very much not alive. Phobia aside, it prompted me to consider our tendency to fixate on the resurrected living Christ, and I wondered: How often do we reflect on Jesus’ occupied tomb, when his lifeless body laid in repose?
It can be tempting to skip over Holy Saturday. Perhaps we are traumatized and exhausted from our Good Friday reflections on the violence our Lord suffered on the cross. Eager to get to the happy part, we can spend our Saturday energies anticipating Sunday, when all is put right by the resurrection.
But the Scriptures don’t let us move too quickly to the empty tomb. Those who tended to Jesus’ burial are faithful to God despite this lethal turn of events. Joseph boldly obtains Jesus’ body from Pilate, determined to honor him with a proper burial in Joseph’s very own tomb. He wraps Jesus in a linen cloth while the women observe, planning their return to anoint Jesus with the customary spices. But why must they wait? Because Luke tells us, it’s nearly Sabbath. These devout souls won’t miss observing this commandment, even if their hearts are broken.
I wonder if the timing of the Sabbath meets the disciples at a significant moment of utter exhaustion. Grief must hover among them while they walk through the funerary paces of tucking Jesus’ body into the tomb. When Sabbath arrives, their anguish finally has space to breathe, as they spend that day of rest without their beloved Jesus.
Today’s artwork and poetry invite us to linger on that Sabbath day. Stretched Christ joins Triple Christ and Rose with Christ in photographic display, re-presenting the seventeenth-century painting by Philippe de Champaigne entitled The Dead Christ. The Starn twins’ collage-technique presents the wounded, crucified Jesus with reverberating sorrow. Poet Hinrichsen’s poem “Repairwork”—to hear him tell it—imagines a circle of nuns repairing the Shroud of Turin. This ancient relic, believed to represent the cloth with which Joseph wrapped Jesus, bears the imprints of the bloodied Christ. Here “these brides of Christ” mend it “like sewing patches of sunlight to water—the ghost in the cloth laid double across their laps.” Perhaps pricking their fingers as they worked, “[t]hey must have wept as they bled as they sang.”
Soon we will celebrate the empty tomb—Sunday is coming. But for today, let’s resolve to rest in the aftermath of Jesus’ wounds. As we commemorate the lifeless Christ entombed, may His suffering extend empathy to you in yours. This life still doles out many griefs, after all. We still contend with death, innocent suffering, chaos, and uncertainty.
At the end of the day, when we have wiped our tears, may we remember that hope dances on the faint horizon of tomorrow: Jesus has overcome the world.
Prayer:
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
––Book of Common Prayer
Dr. Jeannine Hanger
Associate Professor
Talbot School of Theology
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 Art #1:
Stretched Christ from the Christ Series
Mike and Doug Starn
1985–1986
Collaged gelatin silver prints with pressure-sensitive tape, glass, and painted wood
114.3 × 360.7 × 71.1 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, New York
Stretched Christ is a photographic work by Mike and Doug Starn, whose conceptual photographic practice incorporates a variety of deconstructive techniques such as décollage, appropriation and reinterpretation of art historical work, and novel framing devices. Based on the painting The Dead Christ (1654) by French baroque artist Philippe de Champaigne, Stretched Christ consists of three different series of photographic prints of the de Champaigne painting interleaved to create a coherent but elongated figure. The photographic prints have been heavily manipulated through tearing, sepia toning, bleaching, and scratching, and then reassembled with glue, staples, and Scotch tape. At an impressive twelve feet long, the work is displayed in a shallow “coffin” structure and exhibited horizontally suspended on legs. Here the brutality of the crucifixion painted by de Champaigne becomes more contemplative in the hands of the Starns.
https://alastair27mancoll.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-starn-brothers.html
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philippe_de_Champaigne_-_The_Dead_Christ_-_WGA4706.jpg
https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/2321/1/Lanzl_Doug_and_Mike_Starn_2013.pdf https://jeanwainwright.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Hot-Shoe-Mar-April-2000-HSi-107-Mike-and-Doug-Starn.pdf
About the Art #2:
Triple Christ from the Christ Series
Mike and Doug Starn
1987
250 ft. long, and ranges from 9 to 14 ft. in height
Toned and bleached silver gelatin photographic prints with
Scotch tape and pins in handmade frame
Installed at the South Ferry Subway Terminal
Manhattan, New York
The Starn Brothers’ photographic collage entitled Triple Christ again uses French baroque artist Philippe de Champaigne’s painting The Dead Christ (1654) as its source material. Employing the manipulation methods of the photographic prints used for Stretched Christ, the artists treat the multiple images of the original painting in three different ways. The three Christs that form the composition are made up of vertical photographic strips of irregular lengths.
About the Art #3:
Rose with Christ from the Christ Series
Mike and Doug Starn
1982–1986
Toned silver photographic prints and Scotch tape
167.6 x 264.2 cm
Rubell Museum
Miami, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
Once again, the Starn's use baroque artist Philippe de Champaigne’s painting The Dead Christ (1654) as their source material. Focusing solely on a close-up of the wound on Jesus's side, Rose with Christ has an additional element of a red rose positioned next to His wound. In Christian iconography, the rose holds a deep symbolic meaning, representing divine love, martyrdom, purity, and the beauty of faith. A red rose particularly represents Christ’s sacrificial love and the blood He shed on the cross.
https://christianpure.com/learn/roses-symbolism-bible/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-10-21-ca-4390-story.html
About the Artists #1, #2, & #3:
Doug and Mike Starn (b. 1961) are collaborative American artists and identical twins. Working across photography, printmaking, and sculptural installations, their work poses questions about existence and its central primacy in our lives. Their photo-based mixed-media works include unconventional materials such as Plexiglas, wood, nails, and transparency film, allowing them to reinterpret images from art history, and incorporating them into their own aesthetic. The Starn brothers’ work explores themes of interconnection and interdependence. They have been primarily working conceptually with photography for the past two and a half decades and are recognized for their penetrating conceptualization of light. They continue defying categorization, effectively combining traditionally separate disciplines such as photography, sculpture, and architecture. Using the collage techniques, they cut, tinted, creased, tore, and have assembled their imagery to build up surfaces with layered materials. The brothers studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before moving to New York City in the 1980s. Today, the Starns' works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, among others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_and_Mike_Starn
http://www.dmstarn.com/
https://www.artnet.com/artists/doug-and-mike-starn/
About the Music: “Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka, Op. 66: IV. Adagio Cantabile” from the soundtrack to the film A Hidden Life
“Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka, Op. 66: IV. Adagio Cantabile” is a requiem for piano and thirteen instruments by Polish composer Henryk Górecki. Written in 1993, it is one of the last compositions for ensemble by the composer. This selection is the last of the four parts that comprise the requiem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleines_Requiem_f%C3%BCr_eine_Polka
Lyrics: Instrumental
About the Composer:
Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (1933–2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According to critic Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki. He became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and influenced by Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the 1981 choral hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka, and his requiem Good Night. Górecki was largely unknown outside Poland until the late 1980s. In 1992, fifteen years after it was composed, a recording of his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs with soprano Dawn Upshaw and conductor David Zinman, released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust, became a worldwide commercial and critical success. Commenting on its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music...somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
About the Performers: I Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of Flanders and Rudolf Werthen, conductor
I Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of Flanders is one of the best-known specialty orchestras of the world, particularly well-known for its championing of recent music.
Rudolf Werthen is a Belgian violinist, conductor, and teacher. He is founder and artistic director of the orchestra I Fiamminghi and was chief conductor of the symphonic orchestra of the Flemish Opera in 1989. He has taught at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent since 1975.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Werthen
About the Poetry:
Dennis Hinrichsen earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Currently, he teaches technical writing, creative writing, and nonfiction writing at Lansing Community College in Lansing, Michigan. His previously published works include The Rain That Falls This Far and The Attraction of Heavenly Bodies. From 2017 to 2019, he served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing area.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Cage_of_Water.html?id=lNFlAAAAMAAJ&source=kp_author_description
https://dennishinrichsen.com/bio/
About the Devotion Writer:
Dr. Jeannine Hanger
Associate Professor
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
Jeannine Hanger is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Biola University, teaching classes on NT history and literature, the Gospel of John, beginning Greek, biblical interpretation and spiritual formation. Her research interests focus on the Gospels and sensory aspects of texts. She lives in Torrance, CA, with her husband Garrick, a pastor at Coastline Covenant Church, and with their three young adult children. Some of Jeannine’s favorite things include long runs, strong coffee, rainy days, and good books.