Illuminating the Gospels with the Tears of Christ

I became co-leader of Duke Divinity School's New Creation Arts Group about a year ago. At the time, I knew very little about theology and the arts, even though I've been doing music most of my life and have dabbled in other art forms. I abandoned visual art at a young age when I realized my sister was the true visual talent in the family. When I learned that contemporary artist, speaker and writer Makoto Fujimura was coming to Duke to visit, I was excited by proxy because other artists I knew were excited, but I had no idea what to expect.

The two events I attended during Fujimura's visit on April 1 proved to be profoundly formative and have spurred me on in my desire to explore the connections among the arts, theology, community and healing. The first event was a brown bag lunch discussion co-sponsored by New Creation and Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. The focus of this session was Fujimura's experience of 9/11 as an artist whose home and studio were scant blocks from ground zero. He spoke of some pretty incredible experiences of art and healing in the wake of the tragedy, and made some points about the deep scarring that has occurred nationwide since then—but that's something I'll blog about separately.

The real treat was the public lecture Fujimura gave that night, on the Four Holy Gospels project he was commissioned to work on to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. It is a unique work in several ways—this is the first time literally in hundreds of years that a single artist has been commissioned to illuminate the Bible, and this is the only abstract/contemporary illumination of the Bible. The St. John's Bible, which I love, borders on the abstract but is definitely representative, whereas Fujimura's artwork consists of illuminations but not illustrations.

Fujimura told us that for this project, he wanted to select a verse to be a sort of theme/guide for him as he prayed and worked his way through it. Almost jokingly, he said that since it was such a huge project, he chose the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). I was blown away by his explanation of how this verse framed the project and how it informs his entire understanding of the place of the arts in the church.

All of Fujimura's paints are water-based, so he imagined himself literally painting with Christ's tears. Fujimura has studied the Japanese painting form called Nihonga extensively, using minerals and gold to create stunning works of art. In the water used to paint, Fujimura saw Christ's tears as the base of each piece, infused in every illumination. And, to paraphrase Fujimura, the tears of Christ still flow today.

At one point, it seemed as if Fujimura were delivering a deeply thoughtful, profoundly imaginative yet incredibly humble sermon on John 11. He reflected at length on the question of why Jesus wept. Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead—he had just told Martha, "Your brother will rise again" (John 11:23). Why did he not respond similarly to Mary, who had echoed the very words with which Martha first approached Jesus in John 11:21—"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Jesus could have reassured Mary just as he had Martha, or at the very least could have gotten on with the raising of their brother.

But he didn't. Instead, Jesus stopped and wept. Jesus wasted time weeping out of love for his friends. This, Fujimura said, is why we need the arts: because Jesus wept. Tears are useless. Tears are wasteful, especially for the one who comes to wipe every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4). The arts do not have a utilitarian function, which is precisely why they are so neglected in today's society, especially in the church. But Jesus wept, and so we are called to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), to invest time and care in those things that are useless in the eyes of the world but which give us a glimpse of God's eternity, those things that show us beauty and give us a foretaste of the kingdom.