2 Thessalonians 3.6-13: The Story Sounds Familiar

And now...a few words about your behavior. Specifically those of you who aren't contributing members of the community. You didn't learn that from us. We were busy and working when we were with you. We could have expected you to provide us with room and board, so we didn't have to do work ourselves, but that wasn't the lesson we wanted you to see and learn. But we hear that some of you there... That's a paraphrase of 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13. And a problem that crops up in almost every community.

Remember what we said: Whoever doesn't work, doesn't eat. Everyone needs to be contributing to the health and survival of the community, not expecting to live off the work of others.

Jerry Pinkney. The Grasshopper and the Ants. NY: Little Brown, 2015.

It reminds me of Aesop's fable about the grasshopper (in the original it is a cicada) and the ants. Boiled down, the story focuses on a grasshopper who, in late autumn, stops to talk to a group of ants who are drying grain that they had gathered and stored in the summer. The grasshopper was hungry. He had been so busy making music during the summer that he didn't think about taking time to put food by. The ants refuse his request, suggesting that he can dance the winter away.

Even the writer of Proverbs (6:6-9) spotlights the industriousness of the ant:

Go to the ant, you lazybones;

consider its ways, and be wise.

Without having any chief

or officer or ruler,

it prepares its food in summer,

and gathers its sustenance in harvest.

How long will you lie there, O lazybones?

When will you rise from your sleep?

If you don't work, you don't eat. There is a time to work and a time to play. Of course, the ants might have shown a little grace. 

For thoughts on wolves and lambs (Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 21:5-19), see Art&Faith Matters on Facebook. 
For thoughts on Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 21:5-19, click here.

Joel 2.23-32: Olive Oil and Grasshoppers

I will repay you, God says through the prophet Joel. I will repay you for the crops destroyed by the locusts or eaten by the grasshopper (Joel 2:23-32). Instead of bare fields eaten by insects, there will be vats of wine and olive oil. There will be plenty to eat, and God's spirit will be poured out on all people.

Vincent Van Gogh. Olive Trees.  1889. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Kansas City, MO. 

Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Olive Trees" shows olive trees in full leaf against a brilliant blue sky. The coolness of the painting is further enhanced by the blue shadows cast by the trees. The ground is a greenish-gray mixed with white. This is a time of plenty. This is the time of repayment. But what about the grasshoppers? How are they "repaid" for the destruction they left in their wake?

Oddly, this painting has a statement about that as well. In 2017 the Nelson-Atkins Museum undertook a close examination of the painting as part of research about fugitive paint colors (those colors that fade over time and change what the artist intended). The examination yielded questions about a red paint that Van Gogh used. But it also yielded the revelation that since Van Gogh sat outside with his paints and canvas, this painting has been the final resting place of...a grasshopper.
A paleo-entomologist determined that the grasshopper was already dead when it found its way to the canvas (there are no signs of struggle in the surrounding paint). But here, in the shade of these full olive trees, this particular grasshopper has been repaid. For all time.

To see the embedded grasshopper and read more about the painting, click here.
For thoughts on Luke 18:9-14, click here.

Isaiah 40.21-31: God's View

How we human beings strive to be seen as important in our world. Some people will trade everything that should matter to them in order to be powerful and important according to the world's assessment. But perhaps we should remember how we look when seen from a different point of view. Isaiah tells us that we look like insects from where God is sitting (Isaiah 40:21-31, Epiphany 5B). God sits above the circle of the earth, and the earth's inhabitants look like grasshoppers. 

With that in mind, you can probably work out the subject matter of the contemporary painting below. 

Nina Brooke. Shoreline. Available as a giclee print. https://www.ninabrooke.co.uk

Painter (and surfer) Nina Brooke has painted the beach from above. This view is closer to what the prophet describes in the lectionary text. The individual people look like small dark smudges against the tan of sand, the white of waves and the blue-green of the water. No individual features are recognizable. No distinctions of class or race are easily evident. The people move as groups and individuals, they move closer together and father apart, echoing the ebb and flow of waves and tides. The view from above can be no more detailed than that.

And yet, God's care is for each of those moving specks. God has promised that each of those little faceless specks can, if they wait on God, renew their strength. Each of those featureless dots can, if they wait on God, mount up with wings like eagles. Each of those indistinguishable blobs can, if they wait on God, run and not be weary. Each of those ant-sized beings can, if they wait on God, walk but not faint. They just have to wait on God. In other words...Patience (but wait eagerly), young grasshopper.

This week on Art&Faith Matters' Facebook page, how we, in 1936, got a little closer to God's view.

For thoughts on Jesus' search for a deserted place in this week's gospel reading (Mark 1:29-39), click here.