Zephaniah 3.14-20: Reassembled

Sing, O Zion! Shout, O Israel! Rejoice, O Jerusalem! It's all good news from the prophet Zephaniah (3:14-20). God has removed all judgments, turned away the enemies, taken away disaster, gathered the lame and outcast, and dealt with all oppressors. Perfect. Everything is perfect, will be perfect. Just as it was before. The people have been restored to the land, and the land has been restored for the people. Their fortunes will be restored before their eyes.

But does it come back together exactly as it was before? I wonder sometimes if in reassembling, things don't fit in exactly the same way that they did before. God may be able to see people as justified and therefore no different than they had been before. But what happened to the people who were being gathered again because they had been "away from home"? Did they see things the same way as those who had been at home all along? Were they exactly the same people as they were when they left? Would they fit back in exactly as they had before?

In some ways, early Cubism was asking those same questions. Could you look at an object (or person) from multiple viewpoints and reassemble those views into one 2-dimensional work of art? In that early phase, sometimes gathered under the title of Analytical Cubism, artists dissected people and things, looking at them from above and below, from front and back, fragmenting the whole into individual glimpses. All of those glimpses were then put into one work of art. A wine bottle was painted looking down into the bottle, looking up through the bottle and looking at the side of the bottle as it sat on a table. A person's face was shown in profile and full-front at the same time.

Could Picasso paint a realistic face? Sure. See his self-portrait below left. But sometimes it's the elements that have been fragmented and reassembled that tell the story most fully. His portrait of Dora Maar below right was painted in June of 1941. Because of his notoriety, Picasso was one of the few "degenerate" artists who were allowed to live (reasonably) unbothered during the Nazi occupation of Paris. What would it say for Picasso to have lived in the midst of such a human nightmare and paint a lovely portrait of a woman sitting in a chair wearing a hat?

Pablo Picasso. (Left) Self-Portrait. 1896. Musee Picasso, Paris.

(Right) Woman Wearing a Hat, 9 June 1941. Musee Picasso, Paris.

Surely her face, which looks both left and right as if anticipating (fearing?) a knock on the door, and her hands clenched almost claw-like on the arm of a chair better tell the story of the life she and Picasso lived in Paris at this time - a life that was punctuated on more than one occasion by visits from the Gestapo and by the loss of friends whose lives were taken by the occupying army. What she has seen, what she has said, how she lives, all of this has been changed by the circumstances in which she is living. The pieces of her are still there, but they don't look like they did at the beginning of the war.

The prophet Zephaniah calls on Israel to sing and shout and rejoice and exult because the Lord was in her midst. Rejoice, Israel - land and people, politically and religiously - because you have been reassembled. During Advent, Christians look forward to the day that is to come - a day when God is again Emmanuel, with us, in our midst - when creation is put back together, the broken places healed, the rough places a plain. But what will we look like on that day?

There are plenty of people who discount Picasso's work - all Cubist work, in fact - because it "doesn't look realistic." But it's important to remember that Picasso - the creator of the piece - knew what he wanted to say and show. And he knew how to reassemble the elements to make the statement he wanted. Our task isn't to tell the creator what to do (or not do). Instead it is to try to understand what the creator is saying as the pieces are reassembled.

For additional thoughts on reassembling pieces into a whole, click here.
For thoughts on Luke 3:7-18, click here.
For thoughts on maps of Jerusalem and the presence of God, see Art&Faith Matters' Facebook page here.

Luke 3.1-6: Build a Road

The language is that of road-building, though Luke left that part out when quoting the prophet. In the gospel reading for Advent 2C (Luke 3:1-6), Luke says: ...as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” The "original" is: A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ (Isaiah 40:3-5)

Building roads today may be perceived as easier because of the technological and engineering advances. But, then, along with the engineering advances, the expectations have also risen. Today it isn't enough to carve out a passable track over the natural ridge configuration of a mountain; instead, the mountain must be dynamited out of the way and a more level roadbed laid.

To be sure, the point of the prophetic passage is that the people understand that God is about to (re)enter their lives and a way must be made for that. In the case of Jesus, God will make the way with the incarnation. But the metaphor is that of a road. And roads, whether by God or by humans, must still be built.

A part of the backbreaking process of 19th-century road construction is captured by Gustave Courbet in his work The Stonebreakers. Courbet, a French artist, established Realism as an anti-academic approach to art in the middle of the 19th century. The picture, treated harshly by many contemporary critics, shows two figures engaged in clearing stones from roadbeds and then breaking them into smaller pieces. The stones were turned into gravel for paving material and other uses.

Gustave Courbet. The Stonebreakers. 1849. Destroyed 1945. Previously Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, Germany.

The two figures are anonymous. We would not be able to recognize either of the two workers should we see them again, but they seem by turns too young and too old to be doing this demanding work. The artist saw the two workers at their task as he was riding in his carriage into the countryside to paint a landscape and was struck by their suitability as a painting subject. He invited them to his studio the following day and began the painting.

Realism refused to idealize any subject, so there is no golden glow of daylight or oneness with nature. There is only work. Pull, swing, chop, load, carry, dump, start over.

Philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a friend of Courbet's, wrote of this painting: “Our industrial civilization which everyday invents marvelous machines to labour – to sow, spin, in short to execute all sorts of jobs, is yet incapable of liberating the human being from the grossest, the most repugnant and painful of tasks – the lamentable lot of the poor.”

Though civilization may not have been able to liberate the poor from their "lamentable lot", the coming of Christ was to accomplish just that. And these two workers, one too young, one too old, disregarded by society, certainly among "the least of these", would have been right at home in Luke's gospel with its babies born to women who were too old and too young, with its working shepherds who were unlikely attendees at the manger, with its "blessed are the poor."

Prepare the way of the Lord.


Heeeeere's Malachi! Click on the Facebook link to find out which of these figures is Malachi and what he is doing in this altarpiece.

For other thoughts on Malachi 3:1-4, click here.