In my vocation as an artist who often works in churches and related settings, I often encounter the perception that the creative life is a luxury—that it’s what we do if we have time for it and money for it and the gift for it. Creativity and the arts are often considered tangential to the life of the church and the body of Christ rather than being part of its lifeblood.
I began to experience this perception and prejudice in a keen way when I moved from my position as a pastor in a congregation to become the artist-in-residence at a retreat center owned by the Catholic Diocese of Orlando. During my first few years there, many folks—most often my clergy colleagues—would ask me, “So, Jan, are you still on that sabbatical?” Some thought I was taking a break from my ministry rather than moving deeper into it—that my move was more of a vacation than a vocation.
It’s been more than a dozen years since I moved into this form of ministry. I no longer receive the sabbatical question, but I still encounter lots of assumptions and biases about the church and the creative life—as well as wonderful opportunities to work with people who are exploring the connections between art and faith. Along the way, I have found a good traveling companion in Mark’s story of the woman who anoints Jesus—an extravagant act that others thought wasteful but that Jesus welcomed. This woman helped inspire today’s reflection.
In 2009, Krista Tippett featured the work of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library on her Speaking of Faith radio show (now called On Being). In conjunction with the program, titled “Preserving Words and Worlds,” the Speaking of Faith blog provided a link to a short video about the making of The Saint John’s Bible. I was struck by a comment that a blog reader left in response, stating that “the money would be far better spent feeding the hungry and homeless around the world” and that the Benedictines are “being selfish without realizing it.”
The comment illuminates a tension that has pervaded much of Christianity for centuries. We in the church often talk about art and justice as two options that we have to choose between, rather than being aspects of one action: our response to a God of grace and creativity who has placed us in a world that is both broken and beautiful.
We often forget that both the Christian tradition and the Bible itself developed and survived largely because people across the centuries transmitted the sacred stories in a variety of creative forms, not just in written texts but also in other media including drama, music, and liturgy. The stunning array of visual art fashioned over the centuries not only helped proclaim the gospel to those who could not read it (as well as those who could) but also became a gift in return to God: an extravagant offering, a gift that takes us where words alone cannot go, and an act of praise in response to the God who has lavished love, grace, and care upon us.
The fact that we live in the twenty-first century, when hunger, homelessness, and a host of other injustices continue to inflict deep suffering around the world does not diminish—and is not separate from—our need for beauty and the sustenance and hope it provides. I think of the story in which, as Jesus sits at table, a woman comes and anoints him with outrageously expensive oil. Mark tells us that some at the table were angry and said, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” Jesus, however, receives her lavish act with grace and gratitude. “Let her alone,” he tells those who scold the woman; “why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (Mark 14:3-9).
In saying that we would always have the poor with us, Jesus was not suggesting that we neglect to work to end poverty. Rather, he recognized that lavish acts of generosity, grace, and beauty, such as the woman offered to him, must be part of our response to him and to the world. It’s not just that art should come alongside our work for justice, but that they are part of the same impulse toward hope, healing, and wholeness. Jesus knew that choosing justice at the expense of beauty is just another form of poverty.
As an ordained minister as well as an artist and writer, I understand my call and my vocation to involve feeding people in both body and soul. One kind of feeding cannot long do without the other. I could not work for justice in this world without the creative acts that others have offered across the centuries and in our present time, not only because I could not live without their sustaining hope and beauty but also because they remind me that God desires us to give lavishly, generously, wantonly from the depths of who we are and who God has created us to be. Such extravagant acts can seem wasteful. By his response to the anointing woman, however, Jesus proclaims that such gestures of grace bring healing to the body of Christ and to the whole world.
Blessing
May we offer
bread and beauty
from the same hand.
Adapted from In the Sanctuary of Women © Jan L. Richardson.
