John 9.1-41: Spit and Mud

It may come as no surprise that there are few (perhaps none...I've never seen one) paintings that show Jesus spitting to make mud (John 9:1-41). It's hard to depict, and it's actually a little yucky. So images of the healing of the man born blind more often show Jesus pointing toward the pool of Siloam or the man jumping about after being cured. Those are definitely the more artistic choice.

And yet there's something really earthy about Jesus using his spit to make mud that heals. As children, my siblings and I came to refer to spit as the "universal solvent." Need to get a scuff off your church shoes? Spit will do that. Mom needs to get that smudge off your face? Spit. Need to see what that cool rock looks like when it isn't dusty? Yep...spit. Universal solvent.

In the gospel lesson, Jesus uses his saliva to make mud which he places on the blind man's eyes. Why, exactly, Jesus used this method is unknown. Perhaps because this event happened on the Sabbath, Jesus was re-interpreting the rule against working on the Sabbath (as making clay was "work" and therefore forbidden on the Sabbath). Or maybe Jesus was reminding us that, as we said on Ash Wednesday, we are made from dust and to dust we shall return. Or maybe it's that spit was/is just so very human.

Jimmy Lee Sudduth. Walking Figures. 1985. Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL.

Alabama artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth used mud as paint. Because of the volume of paintings that he created, he wouldn't have used spit for all of them, but he was known to make a little mud to smear across a canvas with his finger in the way that another artist would use a brush. Sudduth's most characteristic mud was what he called "sweet mud." The mud was bound with soft drinks or sugar. Sudduth once claimed he could get more than thirty colors from the dirt and clay around him. Mud can do remarkable things.

Jesus was able to do extraordinary things with ordinary materials...even spit and mud. Jesus' action also stands as a stark contrast to those who spit on Jesus while he was being held after his arrest. In Matthew's gospel, the guards spit on Jesus and some slapped him and taunted him saying, "Prophesy to us..who is it who struck you?" (Matthew 26:67) Which might lead us to believe that Jesus was blindfolded or in some other way unable to see who it was that was doing the spitting and slapping. You have to wonder if he thought of the day when he brought together the elements of spit and blindness with very different results. How like Jesus to use the commonest of things as instruments to create and uplift rather than as instruments of destruction and harm.

For additional thoughts on I Samuel 16 and John 9, click here.
For additional thoughts on I Samuel 16, click here.

Issues of Seeing and Recognizing

This is a week where two of the lectionary texts (I Samuel 16;1-13 and John 9:1-41, Lent 4A) give us the opportunity to consider issues of seeing and recognizing. In the Hebrew scripture reading, we learn that God sees us differently than we see ourselves or others. In the gospel reading, a man doesn't see at all and then does see, while his family and religious officials are blind throughout the text.

When we look at another person, who do we see? Do we see people only in familiar ways - looking only at surface appearances? Do we see people in new ways - seeing potential rather than current circumstances? Are we able to see the things in front of us and recognize them for who and what they are? Or are we blind despite the fact that we can see?

Artist Chuck Close has made his reputation painting faces in large format. His own face is among his most frequent subjects. His earliest works are photographically real. The faces are recognizable -- so photographically real that the individuals would be recognizable by strangers, even, As his work develops, though, the faces begin to dissolve and fragment. The practice of gridding, often used by artists to keep proportion correct when enlarging, comes to the front of the portrait's appearance and becomes, even more than the subject's facial features, the driving force of the portrait's structure..

All works by Chuck Close in the collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. (Top left) Big Self-Portrait, 1967. (Bottom left) Self Portrait, 1995. (Top right) Self Portrait, 2000. (Bottom right) Self Portrait, 2002. http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artists/chuck-close

Close's portraits and this week's texts invite us to ask questions:

• How much of recognition is about physical appearance? 
• Just because we recognize someone's physical appearance, do we really see them?
• How can less focus on physical appearance tell us about the person at whom we are looking?
• How often do we let structures of the world direct how we see the world and people in the world?
• Is there a "grid" or structure that God superimposes on us in order to see us as God sees?
• How much of our understanding of God is rooted in the flesh? Do we need to see to believe?
• Do you see the face of God in the face of every human being?

Chuck Close's portraiture helps us ask questions about seeing and recognizing. That it is Close whose work helps with those questions is even more interesting when you know that the artist has prosopagnosia, more commonly known as face blindness. The artist can see the elements of faces - eyes, noses, mouths - but cannot put them together in a way that leaves any impression on his memory. You could meet someone with prosopagnosia one day, and the next day they would not recognize you. Sometimes a person with prosopagnosia does not even recognize her or his own face.

Surely we are not blind, are we? But how much do we really see?

This week on Art&Faith Matters on Facebook...how we see color differently. Click here.

Mark 10.46-52: Bartimaeus...the Entertainer?

Jesus heals blind men in more than one gospel and more than one story in Christian scripture. For Proper 25B/Ordinary 30B/Pentecost 22 the story is that of Bartimaeus, a blind beggar outside Jericho who gains Jesus' attention in order to be healed and then follows Jesus on the way (Mark 10:46-52).

The author of the text tells us that Bartimaeus sits by the roadside, but that is as far as the details go. Italian artist Domenico Fiasella (called Il Sarzano) has given Bartimaeus a sort of occupation that would have been familiar in his own time. Now in the collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the painting called "Christ Healing the Blind" shows Jesus in the familiar red and blue tunic and cloak, laying his hand over the eyes of the blind man. From his fingertips comes...nothing. But we have faith that the man's sight will be restored.

Domenico Fiasella. Christ Healing the Blind. Oil on canvas. 1615. Sarasota, FL: John and Mable

 Ringling Museum of Art. http://ringlingdocents.org/fiasella1.htm

What is especially interesting is that Fiasella has made Bartimaeus a violinist, hanging the fiddle from the belt of his tunic. In Fiasella's day many blind persons had to beg for a living and having the ability to play a musical instrument like a violin or guitar might have made a significant difference in their ability to sustain life.

The theme of the blind musician is a reasonably common theme in art. John Singer Sargent, Georges de la Tour and Ben Shahn among other artists, have explored this theme in their paintings. The theme may have some root in the legend of St. Cecelia, patron saint of musicians. The name Cecilia may come from the Latin caecus (meaning blind), so Cecilia is also patron saint of the blind. There is no evidence that she herself was blind, but the confluence of words and names and meanings has sorted itself out along these lines.

Blindness has traditionally been the occasion to talk about spiritual insight (or its lack), heavenly reward/earthly punishment, the ability of divine healing to override the things of earth and the salvation of humans and humanity. Sight, light and salvation are often associated with these stories. The addition of music to the composition is an interesting one. Oftentimes we think of musicians being "lost in their music" - so caught up in the moment that they lose awareness of the world around them. This might be doubly true of blind musicians. But here the blind man is not so caught up in his music that he has missed Christ walking by. The violin that surely has made music in the past may make music in the future, but in this moment it hangs otherwise unattended at the man's waist. This blind man, whether he is Bartimaeus or another, is not distracted by his own activity or any other need. He is rather intently focused on Christ who can and will change his world.

For thoughts on Job 42.1-6, 10-17, click here.