Acts 4.5-12: By What Name?

"By what power or by what name did you do this?" (Acts 4:7) That's what Peter and his fellow prisoners were asked. By what name? And Peter was not afraid to give an answer:

...if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Good answer, Peter. Of course Peter had to tack on a few more things that might have made his reception a little more awkward. He continued, "...whom YOU (emphasis mine) crucified, whom God raised from the dead." That Peter...going all in most of the time.

The important thing, though, is that Peter announced that anything being done by them was being done in the name of Jesus Christ. That name thing is important. Remember that Moses asked for God's name when he was being recruited to lead God's people out of slavery. If you can associate a person or activity with a name you can automatically know more about them. 

It's certainly true of art. An artist's signature is one of the ways to identify which paintings were done by which artists. That task is made more difficult when artists like Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) didn't have a consistent signature. 

Shown here are three of the dozens of different signatures the artist used on his drawings, prints, and paintings. His signature changed throughout his career. Sometimes he used initials, but sometimes his whole name. One of the ways that experts authenticate a "real" Rembrandt is by the artist's signature. Did the artist put his name on his work? Can we safely say that this particular print or drawing or painting show what a "real" Rembrandt looks like? There are plenty of people in the world who would be happy to trick someone into believing that a fake Rembrandt is actually a real one. One of the ways they try to do that is to add a signature - the name of Rembrandt. Experts work hard to be able to tell a real signature/name from a fake one.

In the same way, can the world look at those of us who identify ourselves with the name of Christ and call us examples of what someone like that should do and be ? If someone asks us, "By what name do you do these things, live your life, move through the world?" And we reply, "We live and move in the name of Jesus Christ." Would they believe us? Would they say that the name of Jesus looks "right" on us? 

Mark 15: Darkness Came Over the Whole Land

Mark's account of the crucifixion records that darkness covered the land from noon until 3:00 p.m. on the day Jesus was crucified (Mark 15:33). The Tenebrae service echoes that darkness through the extinguishing of candles through the service. Rembrandt van Rijn has, through his habit of reworking printing plates, given us a visual image for that darkening.

Most people know Rembrandt as a painter, but he was equally known in his own time as a printmaker, working more than 300 prints during his lifetime. He was inspired by those who came before him, including Albrecht Durer, and owned a collection of other artists' prints. He did not often use the same subjects in his prints that he used for paintings, perhaps acknowledging that some subjects were more suitable for linear, drawing-like prints than for his painterly brushwork.

Prints, unlike paintings, produce multiple works of art. From a single plate a dozen, or a hundred, prints might be pulled. Value is retained by producing a limited number of prints (with each print numbered) and then scoring the plate (taking a tool and creating a big scratch across it) so that no other prints can be pulled from that plate. This insures a limited number of prints are available.

Rembrandt did not often do that.

Rather, he would go back in and rework a plate, adding, scraping away, repolishing, redrawing, offering a distinctly different vision of the same essential subject. He did this with a print called "The Three Crosses" from 1653.

Shown here are states iii and iv. State iii has dramatic lighting with all three figures on crosses clearly visible. Shadows lurk at the corners of the image while dozens of figures mill about. Two figures are shown walking toward the right corner of the composition, away from the scene. At the center is Christ on the cross, the placard above his head.

When the plate began to wear down, the artist polished off much of the composition. He kept the three figures on the cross but made significant changes. The light in state iv is even more dramatic than state iii. The thief on Christ's left (on the right of the composition as we look at it) is almost completely obscured in shadow, while we can still see highlights on the thief on Christ's right.




Additionally, the figure on horseback, the centurion who acknowledges that Jesus truly was God's son, is emphasized by the dark shadow behind him that offers contrast to the light figure of soldier and horse.

Both offer dramatic interpretations of the darkness over the land, but the two states together seem to capture the scene in a way that neither does alone. Often paintings seem to imagine the crucifixion as happening in isolation. Rembrandt's two versions look almost like stills from a film, showing us crowds that ebbed and flowed, showing us changing textures of light, implying the murmur of voices and the smell of people and animals. Rembrandt's changes bring to us the suffocating sense of a life almost extinguished. Rembrandt reminds us this is no staged tableau.

Both prints in the collection of the British Museum, London: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/r/rembrandt,_the_three_crosses.aspx

Food&Faith Matters looks at the traditional Good Friday food, hot cross buns. Click on the link below.