crucifixion

Art and Christianity: An Interview with Dr. Glenn Kreider, Part Two

This is the second part of my interview with Dr. Glenn Kreider, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. The interview is about beauty and sentimentality, and this segment looks specifically at the cross and resurrection.

The video runs about 5 minutes.

Related quotes from "Beauty, Sentimentality, and the Arts," an essay by Jeremy Begbie in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts:

"In a nutshell, Christian sentimentalism arises from a premature grasp for Easter morning, a refusal to follow the three days of Easter as three days in an irreversible sequence of victory over evil" (p. 61).

"Easter does of course throw its light on the ‘renting’ of Friday (to use Yeats’s word), but not a soothing glow so much as a white light that exposes the rupture between Creator and creature, the depths to which the human creature has sunk and the depths to which God’s love is prepared to reach" (p. 62).

"This is emphatically not to say that the crucifixion as an event of torture and death is really beautiful and not ugly, if only we would change our perspective. That would be gross sentimentality (and, of course, opens the door to sadism or sadomasochism). But it is to say that in and through this particular torture, crucifixion and death, God’s love is displayed at its most potent" (p.63).

You can see part one of the interview here.

Holy Week Thoughts–Maundy Thursday

This is My Body, broken for you.

This is My Blood, spilled for you.

You walk back to your seat and kneel first for a bit. In the loft above, the pianist and organist play. A voice joins in.

Down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem that day.

The priests, deacons, and chalice-bearers have changed into their black robes. They strip the communion table, the elements, the cross, the candle.

It is finished.

You close your eyes and see a ballerina. She wears a black leotard with a long, flowing white skirt. Her toes point, and she dances, her pale arms reaching, her leg stretching. A tear slips down your cheek. Still she dances.

Down the Via Dolorosa called the way of suffering.

After the song, the priest reads Psalm 22.

My strength drains away like water;all my bones are dislocated; my heart is like wax; it melts away inside me.

The choir sings How Great Thou Art, then in silence you leave. The only sounds are the click-clack of heels on the pavement. Cars start and pull away, their wheels crunching on the gravel.

Still, you don’t talk.

You turn on your car, and the music starts. Jamie Cullum. It feels wrong, this sound, but you don’t turn it off.

In your car on your way home, it occurs to you where Jesus was headed 2000 years ago tonight. You don’t mind that the light is red.

Eventually your toe begins to tap. You remember that you have to work on a project for work, and you think, only three more days until Easter. Three more days until you can have ice cream again.

You wonder which flavor to buy first.

But that isn’t until Sunday. It’s Thursday, and there’s still Good Friday.

This is the Dark Night of the Soul.