Clearing Out the Gentile Court: A Story

Underneath the heralding of marketeers, the bleating and lowing of sacrificial animals, and the babble of banter in thirty native tongues, I could almost hear the sound—a haunting of the air—of music over the Gentile Court.

Is that a tambourine? Or coins settling on a scale? I hear a lament, a woman crying out. No, she squeals with laughter. I hear a bass murmur of another crowd through the walls, more unified, barely audible. I focus on it, but it escapes me. A camel grunts, loaded with goods. Where is the peace, the majesty, and the beauty I was promised in His presence?

The merchants and money-changers, some of them fresh from the temple, obscure the walls and pillars of God’s house with their heaped up crates and baskets—their shade tents and well-stocked tables. In a language everyone can understand, they pitch their wares. In mock service to the pious, they drown out every pious sound.

What is Art?

I imagine Pilate asked Jesus, “What is Truth?” with the same tone of hopeless resignation that many people ask, “What is Art?” It seems like, as with discussions of truth, we all know more or less what’s standing right in front of us even when we aren’t willing or able to articulate it clearly.

Nonetheless, whenever there are disagreements about art, you can be sure at least one peanut in the gallery will torpedo the discussion with “unanswerable” questions. Usually, these questions and definitions serve to close discussion rather than open it. I have no intention of doing that here.

Scorsese, Endo, Silence, and Me: “These Poor Signs of Faith”

Silence image

On his way to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum to get inspiration for his next novel, Shusaku Endo was diverted to the smaller, almost hidden, Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum nearby. There he first saw the fumi-e (“trampling pictures”)—brazen images of Jesus hanging on the cross or of Mary with her iconic cucumber (perhaps Eastern-styled as a lotus), representing purity even in the midst of swampy filth.

The unswervingly Buddhist 17th-century Shogunate commissioned these brazen images specifically to be desecrated as a public sign of apostasy, and Japanese peasants would step (or trample “if you prefer a more florid reading”) on the fumi-e as proof that they posed no threat to the order and solidarity of Buddhist Japan.

Are Sermons Enough to Preach the Whole Counsel of God? (Part 2 of 2)

Ezekiel valley of the dry bones header

In Part 1 of this two-parter (you can read it here), I talked about how the overwhelming majority of the pages in the Bible are devoted to showing the truth through narrative and poetry, over against telling the truth in expository teaching. There are two questions that arise from this—is it possible that God endorses different kinds of preachers and preaching than what we have become accustomed to in the contemporary church? And if so, what does that mean for the importance of the arts in, for, and from the church?

How Will They Hear Without a Preacher?

What does it mean to preach? Our first thought when we hear “preacher” is of someone behind a pulpit explaining some biblical truth. But is that the only way to preach? Again, going back to the Bible, it becomes clear that the biblical prophets and preachers employed a variety of methods in a variety of venues to deliver God’s message. Some of these methods seem quite unorthodox to the contemporary Christian: marrying a prostitute (Hosea 1:2), preaching naked (Isaiah 20:2), naming children (Isa. 7:3; 8:1–3), building a 450 ft. boat (Gen. 6:13ff; 2 Pet. 2:5), eating bread cooked over dung (Ezek. 4:12f), and various other acts of sacramental symbolism and prophetic theater.

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