Kendall's Notebook, Page 54Title: Sacred Space
Date: July 23, 2006
Text: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a
By: Kendall Brown
One word in the Bible can be as charged with meaning as dynamite! Consider the word, “Bayith,” which appears 14 times in today’s lesson about David. There are at least four ways to translate this word, and when we use only one of those words much is (lost in the translation.
Bayith means - house – palace - temple and even – dynasty. Translators have to pick and choose and the choice makes quite a difference in the reading. It is quite safe to say that all four meanings are at work in this picture and that some part of the meaning of each of those words is in the story of David’ desire to build a house or a palace or a temple or even a dynasty for God in Jerusalem. It would be incredibly cumbersome to use all four of those words every time we came to Bayith. So the translators choose one, but we shouldn’t forget the others.
Just to make things real confusing, let’s add another word to the pot. It is a word the meaning of which can be found in all the other four words to some degree. My translation – as if you don’t have enough – is place. David wanted a place for God in Jerusalem. God had another idea and instructed Nathan the prophet to go and give David a wrap across his knuckles. How could David possibly build a house or a temple or a dynasty for God, the one who created David and gave David all those things.
This Gods’space or holy place stuff, that is front and center today, is real important stuff. What is holy space or place? Is it a place to impress people, nations and rulers of nations as David intended for Jerusalem? God was probably a little worried that if David, who had some tendency to think that the world revolved around him, would completely lose sight of God if allowed to live in the city of David’s dreams. There is evidence that David did seem to think of himself as God’s gift to women; and men with that mindset do need to have their feet put back on earth occasionally. God waited for Solomon who was known to be wiser than his father and didn’t seem to have quite so many problems with a swollen cranium. With Solomon, the Bayith business really got rolling.
But what is holy place if not a space to impress others. The song “We Are Standing on Holy Ground” with its Biblical roots in the story of Moses before the burning bush points us to a starting place. That story, which has fascinated children for eons, is a story about the holiest of all holy ground. There are other holy places in the scriptures – Bethel, Mt. Sinai, Golgotha, Jacobs well, and Gethsemane. But the burning bush spot remains the daddy of all.
What makes these places holy? First and foremost, in all storiesinvolving Holy Ground, God is the one who does the choosing. If our lives are indeed a journey with God, God draws the map and picks the stops. Perhaps, that was one of the big problems that God had with David. God does the site location work for holy places, David in choosing Jerusalem was a lieutenant who thought he was a general.
Holy places are places of epiphany. Epiphany is a moment when God breaks through. On the human side Epiphany is a huge AHA experience where suddenly the divine breaks in, our eyes are opened and we see all in a whole new light, the light of God. We sang last Sunday “We are marching in the light of God” David marched into Jerusalem and the light went out for a bit as it always does when our egos get in the way. Moses had an epiphany at the Burning Bush.
Epiphanies change people. Because of them one can no longer live as if there is no sacred or holy in the here and now that transforms us, remolds us and makes us new. In the NT, Paul had an epiphany moment on the Damascus Road. Because of it, he was so transformed that he changed his name from Saul to Paul. Epiphanies are those times when the invisible becomes visible, the inaudible becomes audible and the intangible becomes tangible. They are AHA experiences.
Holy ground deserves an approach appropriate for holy ground. This sanctuary can be holy ground. I say can be – it isn’t automatic. It’s just space – bricks, mortar and glass to create a worship space. What makes it holy is God’s presence and what makes it holy for us is how we approach it. For all too many the only known approach is with respect. Take off your hat, clean up your language and in general be quite. That doesn’t cut it folks. All the respect in the world will not unleash the holiness that is here awaiting you. When Moses took off his shows, bowed to the ground, covered his face and closed his eyes, he was doing much more than paying his respect. We pay our respect to dead people. There wasn’t anything dead about God for Moses. What Moses was doing was opening his heart that God might enter. As Moses covered his head, his ears, his eyes, he was opening his inner ear and eye to know what God was saying to him. Without that openness of spirit, heart and mind the burning bush would have become a cube of ice and we wouldn’t know the story today.
In today’s lesson there was an Epiphany figure, Nathan, the prophet. He was the one who did not loose touch with and sight of the spirit in his worldly life. He was close to the other side. He opened the other side to King David by bringing David into a space – his conversation with Nathan – where David would receive an AHA experience opening his eyes to the spirit side of life. The greatest epiphany moment in David’s life was when Nathan told David, “You are the man” and David eyes were opened and he saw his own wrongdoing in having Uriah, his faithful general killed, so that David could have Uriah’s wife Bathsheba for his own.
Where do we find epiphanies in our lives? Where is holy ground? How can our ears become attuned to God’s song? How can our eyes see the scenes of spirit work among us? Can it even happen? Are we talking about something here unavailable to us everyday folk? I don’t think that way. It is all in the approach.
I began this morning with a reflection about art and will end that way, for art is all about epiphany. Good art opens up another world to us. Good art, makes visible the invisible, audible the inaudible and tangible the intangible.
Few artist have been as sensitive to what I have just been saying than Wassily Kandinsky. He is known as the father of abstract art and for him art was all about making the invisible visible. For him painting was the creation of a scene that not only would bring the invisible into our visible world, but would also provide an avenue by which we could cross from our material world into the spiritual world.
Here is one of his early abstract paintings entitled Composition #7. (On screen: Kandinsky: Composition 7) Now some of you are probably convinced that I am totally committed to completely confusing you.
Many pass by abstract art saying things like , “That is nonsense” or “Any Child could do that.” Well if any child could do it, why haven’t you done it and made a few million in the process? When it comes to nonsense I would have to agree. Because we have learned to live and relate to our surroundings through our senses, sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, we have become accustomed to interpreting our world through our senses in thousands of automatic ways. So when we see a door we assume usually correctly that it is a door – and we give no thought to how our senses are automatically putting together all the data that lets us know that is a door.
The challenge of abstract art is that you cannot approach the art through the usual and all too accustomed avenue of the 5 senses. Yes, in that way, it is nonsense.
What is required is that the art be approached with the inner eye. Abstract art is like music. Instead of using notes, the artist uses color. Instead of using harmony, the artist uses shapes and forms. And so forth. We know that when music plays we hear more than just the physical with our outer ears. Music kicks in our inner ear and we are touched by the inaudible – which become audible through the music – emotions, feelings, memories, spirit, a sense of holiness. If one learns how to open the inner eye to see as well as the inner ear to hear, then one sees. The epiphanies are there. The spiritual is as close as a wink – a wink of the inner eye.
I have a little exercise by which I aid my inner eye to appreciate a painting like this. It starts by imaging this picture as a space into which you can actually step. This doesn’t work with all abstract art – but it works for me here. As you step into the picture and start looking around what does it feel like? What does it remind you of? Where do you think you are? In this picture there seems to be a little pathway (like the yellow brick road down here in the corner that draws you into the picture. On another viewing that road might disappear and another entry might appear, giving a whole new meaning to the picture – and that is what abstract art is all about.
Walk with me into the picture via that little pathway right there. The picture is full of color, they are happy colors, and it is full of shapes, nothing is particularly threatening, there is something inviting in it. It feels like when I was a child and walked into party space prepared by an adult with streamers, balloons, playful objects of all kind, lots of noise and a bit of nonsense quality. But children love it. They start to run around and use their imaginations with the balloons streamers and other party shapes. A child has no problem walking into this picture because it is like walking into a party space a playful space.
The artist would not argue that he was in touch with his inner child and his own playfulness when he painted this picture. And as we enter into the artist’s playfulness (and remember our playfulness last week in worship and how much so many enjoyed it) as we enter we start seeing with the inner eye, and that which is intangible becomes tangible. Another world, the world of spirit starts to open up for us. Here the spirit is that of the inner child and inner playfulness. You can go on and on with that and think about inner freedom, flexibility, and imagination - all things of the spirit to which this picture leads us.
A child could have fun with this space. The artist is letting the child inside of him flow out onto the canvass and inviting us into that space and he is saying to us what Jesus says, “You must become like a child in order to enter into my dominion.” The artist is also doing something here to which we are all called.
He is sharing something inside himself with others. Isn’t that just exactly what we are called to do with others. And when we share spirit with others and the spirit side breaks through, we are becoming fully hospitable. He is inviting others/us into that space. He is being incredibly hospitable. He is making the invisible visible. There is no difference between this picture and a concerto or symphony by Brahms, Beethoven or Bach. The painter is doing here with paint what the composer does with notes of music. Both through their media are putting us in touch with another dimension of reality the spiritual. We need imagination and creativity to enter that reality.
Not form or an order of worship. Not routine of a certain way and certain words that we call prayer. As revealed in this picture the artist has shunned all the usual and accustomed forms for seeing. He is calling to see with the inner eye. As Jesus said those who have eyes to see will see.
We are not around abstract art every day for which some of you are probably saying thank the Lord. We live in a very material world, so much so that we often spend most of our days living in darkness and not walking in the light of the spirit at all. The spiritual is as close as a wink of the inner eye. Those who have eyes to see will see the wondrous spirit sights that are there awaiting your pleasure.