Luke 16.1-13: Mammon

You cannot serve God and wealth. That's how the gospel reading for Proper 20C/Ordinary 25C (Luke 16:1-13) concludes in the NRSV. The KJV has another word at the end: mammon. We might infer what (or who) that is, but medieval Christians did not need to infer. Mammon was written about, painted and otherwise brought to life to show exactly how opposite and how unsuitable for worship was mammon.

The word itself is probably Aramaic, related to the Hebrew term 'aman (to trust). The figure of Mammon was described with almost gleeful disgust by Edmund Spenser in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene (his cave is near the mouth of the underworld...that's pretty clear). Mammon is a devil living in Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

(Left) Evelyn de Morgan. The Worship of Mammon. 1909. Compton, Guildford, Surrey, England: The DeMorgan Foundation. http://www.demorgan.org.uk/worship-mammon (Right) George Frederick Watts. Mammon. 1884-1885. London: Tate Gallery.http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-mammon-n01630/text-summary .

The figure of Mammon, above, is one of two figures in the painting. Against a deepening blue sky, a woman grasps the knee of the figure of Mammon, gazing up in adoration. Mammon holds a bag presumably filled with money, in his right hand, but the woman doesn't even spare a glance at the bag. She doesn't appear to be worshiping money as much as worshiping Mammon himself. Or perhaps it is that Mammon holds the bag out of reach of the woman and she never realizes that happiness (satisfaction?) is always out of reach if Mammon is the object of worship.

Watts' Mammon bears at least a passing resemblance to Jabba the Hutt. He sits on his throne with a nude young woman to his right and a young man under his feet. His throne, upholstered in red features two skulls as finials. His crown features gold coins and donkey ears, references to Midas in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Most know Midas from his "touch" that turned everything, including his daughter, into gold. Through Ovid's pen, we hear that Apollo gave Midas the donkey ears as a symbol of his stupidity because he preferred the music of Pan's pipes to Apollo's lyre.

You cannot serve God and Mammon, Jesus said. Neither of these two figures is appealing enough to make the thought of serving Mammon tempting.

For thoughts on Jeremiah 8.18-9.1, click here.

Luke 15.1-10: Woman's Ten Coins

One of Jesus' parables about lost things, the gospel reading for Proper 19C/Ordinary 24C (Luke 15:1-10) takes us into the world of women. In the second of the three parables, we find a woman who has lost a coin (between a shepherd who has lost a sheep and a father who has lost a son). For many depictions of the story the title could just as easily be "The Sweeping Woman". In those superficial illustrations the woman stands - or sometimes bends over for a closer look - as she works with her broom hoping to uncover the coin in the dirt floor. There is very little interpretation, though the illustration is fine, if repetitive.

Our assumption is that the woman is poor and that is why even a single coin is so important. We can imagine that she carefully tends her little hoard of coins, counting them often to double check that they are still where she left them, keeping them safe in a bag or other container in a safe place in her home. Her home is usually shown as simple and dominated by earthtones with baked brick walls and dirt floors. The woman's clothing is a plain tunic of fairly coarse material. Eugene Burnand's image (left) is typical in those details. Burnand has chosen not to show the sweeping woman but rather the woman who has had a successful search. She stands on the balcony of her home, and in her left hand she holds the long-sought coin, sharing her joy with friends and neighbors. We can imagine that what happens next is that the woman takes the coin back inside her house and carefully places it in its container with the other nine coins, tucked safely away.

But perhaps there is another way to consider this coin and this woman. What if the coins aren't kept tucked away? What if the coins are on display almost every day of this woman's life? In William Holman Hunt's painting "Bride of Bethlehem", the woman's coins are on display across her forehead and in her jewelry. This practice, where jewelry serves as the woman's "bank account" is common in Palestine, Turkey, Armenia and other areas in the Middle East. In some cases "coin" refers to flat disks of coin-sized silver rather than actual money coins. The pure silver could be exchanged for its value in money. Though there are also examples where actual coins are drilled and used on headdresses and jewelry. An Arab proverb says "Bracelets are for the difficult times." Presumably because one can sell them.

What if the ten coins are ornaments on the headdress of the woman in Jesus' parable? Certainly they would still be important, especially if she has only ten on her headdress - unlike the woman in Hunt's painting - but these coins would be part of her life, not just a stash that is hidden away. Perhaps she takes off the headdress at night and discovers broken threads or an open wire jump ring and an empty place where there should be a coin. And then she begins her search for the coin - remembering where the errands and tasks of her day have taken her and retracing her steps - perhaps even sweeping the floor - until the coin is found.

Imaging the ten coins as part of a headdress doesn't change the point of the parable - that the woman would look for a single coin, even if she had others. But it might change the way we imagine the woman and her life.

You can read a veritable inventory of women's jewelry in Isaiah 3:18-20ff.
Top: Eugene Burnand. The Lost Coin. Drawing. Illustration for "Les Paraboles", published in 1908. http://www.eugene-burnand.com/Parables/Parables.htm
Bottom: William Holman Hunt. The Bride of Bethlehem. 1884. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

For thoughts on lost sheep, click here.

This week on Art&Faith Matters' Facebook page...Could the coin pictured here have been one of the ten coins mentioned in the parable? 

Jeremiah 18.1-11: The Potter

Jeremiah's visit to the potter's house is a favorite scripture passage of artists, and not just clay artists. This is one of the few times when the visual arts play a major role in a scripture passage. This story, recorded in Jeremiah 18:1-11, is the reading from Hebrew scripture on Proper 18C/Ordinary 23C. The point of the visit is to give a (literally) hands on demonstration of how the nation of Israel - the clay - is in the hand of and ultimately at the mercy of the potter (God).

Jeremiah's point is broad and talks generically about the relationship between potter and clay, artist and material. In the text there seem to be two extremes: a perfect pot or one that was ruined, destroyed and remade. The potter makes the decision about the acceptability of the pot's form, and the potter decides when the pot is no longer acceptable and must be destroyed.

It matters who the potter is.

Left: George E. Ohr. Vase. c. 1900. NY: Cooper-Hewitt Museum. https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/51685221/

Right: George E. Ohr. Vase. Late 1890s - Early 1900s. Biloxi, MS: Ohr-O'Keeffe Museum. http://georgeohr.org/

Though Jeremiah's potter demands perfection, I don't know that perfection is required by our God. I would suggest that Jeremiah's God...our God...may share an aesthetic point of view with George Ohr...though the moustache style probably isn't shared. Ohr was a native and resident of Biloxi, Mississippi, and when he stopped making pottery at the age of 52, in 1909, he claimed he had not sold a pot in 25 years.

George E. Ohr. Pitcher. 1893-1906. NY: Cooper-Hewitt Museum. https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18618529/

Ohr's personality set him apart from the general population, and his art set him apart from the art world. His critics said that his work lacked proportion, grace and dignity. He threw pots and vessels with wafer-thin clay walls that he then twisted, pushed, pulled, pinched and crumpled. The crumpling was not in preparation for re-forming the clay into a "perfect" pot, it was to create a unique form. "No two forms alike," the potter bragged. He also claimed that he brooded over each pot "with the same tenderness a mortal child awakens in its parents."

Many consider Ohr to be America's first art potter. Perhaps it was because of his skill at the wheel in throwing such delicate vessels. Perhaps it was due to his skill at manipulating such thin clay. Maybe it was his unique forms and glazes. Some claim that it is the clay Ohr used, much of which he dug himself from the banks of the Tchoutacabouffa River, that enabled him to create his unique pieces. Whatever it was, Ohr saw beauty in the crumpled, the folded, the imperfect. In his eyes those forms became "art" where others saw only oddness and irregularity and difference. That sounds like grace to me.

The clay matters. The potter matters. Because the potter determines what forms are acceptable and what forms will be reshaped. Do you know your potter?

For thoughts on Luke 14:25-33, click here.