The energy potential of medium-bodied acrylic paints and a blank, white canvas: a painter can feel, smell, imagine, and almost see the nocturnal, waiting exhilaration of possibility, of what could be, even before the act of painting begins. This is the notion of Advent, or the Latin adventus, “coming,” of Immanuel. In this season, we meditate back to and imagine a time before the Word was spoken, before he came into the world, before his presence changed everything for us.
There was a time in art history, during the Impressionist movement from the 1870’s through the first and second decades of the 20th century, that painters spoke of “art for art’s sake” responding to the rigidity of institutionalized and aristocratic impediments on the Arts in France. Their result was painting outside for the first time “en plein aire,” with vibrant colors and brush-strokes whose oils even to this day feel like they move on the canvas, with the motion through which they were first painted. The problem with this movement was that while it was crucial to make painting accessible for all people and not just the privileged ultra-rich, even beautiful art is not and cannot simply be for its own sake.
The rest of art history critiques Impressionism’s tenant of “art for art’s sake.” Good painting should be more than insular. It should move you. A good painting could both continue to move on its surface and move the affections, emotions of future audiences. It’s an ironic notion actually: if a painter can feel the kinetics of oil, acrylic and invests so much of their own energy into orchestrating those mediums into harmony, why would we desire that this energy die or end, that its music stops, once it hits canvas? Instead the very notion of art is to create, to make where nothing was previously, for the chain of creation to never end.
A specific group of painters, known as the Abstract Expressionists, took this idea to the extreme. Why should paint even have to look like an object at all? Why does a painting have to be a picture of anything else? Instead, Jackson Pollock developed a new method of painting; he would drip and pour paint from a can or trailing paint brush as he danced, did random things, whatever. His idea was to capture the action and randomness of his raw emotion, splattered on the canvas, and thereby, capture his inner impulses. The results are breathtaking: if you find a Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York or the Art Institute of Chicago, they still appear like they are alive and moving. It’s as if you can feel the literal movements that Jackson made. His act of painting was so intentional that it brings you into that room where it happened, into that moment where it was birthed. It’s not a painting of a picture but an event of life, whose aim is to compel more life.
The irony with Advent is that to many of us, the concept of it is either foreign or mind-numbing. If we are familiar with it at all, similar to the season of Lent, it may evoke this annoyance in us, this unnerving notion that people would feign a religious, overly-spiritual or faux-pious disposition but actually live their lives unchanged. Yet, the intention and heart of Advent could not be more contrary to this.
In the Christian faith, the time period from Thanksgiving up to Christmas is when the entire big “C” church, all Christians across the world, prepare our hearts to celebrate the arrival of Immanuel: this God with us, the baby Jesus, the Messiah, the God-Man that lived, died, buried, and resurrected becoming our risen Lord, our everlasting Peace. In this season, the Church not only prays and fasts preparing our hearts to celebrate his coming but also participates in reading a common core of passages and meditations, called liturgy. From the highest cathedrals to mud-huts and cramped quarters, Christians across the nations unite in mediating on this one thing, the same scripture during the four Sundays, with four themes leading up to Christmas. Matthew 18:19 says that “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.” And this is the spiritual act of Advent: joining all the saints from all over the world in yielding to and pleading for the Son to take his rightful place in all of our lives.
We asked specific families within our Detroit Church community to take upon themselves reading, meditating, and worshiping through the four themes and scripture sets for Advent. Flowing out of this exultation and centered place, they painted. Out of their heart’s worship, as we continued to read the passages over them as they painted and while music played based on each Advent theme, they painted, dropped, and splattered their worship impulses on our community canvas.
In a season where many of us feel lost or unseen, these families represent all of us, and as we honor them, we honor you. You are critical to us, to this body, to Christ. In this Advent season, we celebrate not just that the God-Man came into the world, but that he left us never the same. We are not just witnesses to his coming but living, walking, breathing heirs: through the transfusion of his blood in our lives. God is the ultimate artist, and he is at work making all things new. Through His gospel, through this adventus coming, our broken and fragmented humanity became and becomes a work of art.
You are not just an audience to this painting. You are the painting. It’s the paint of you that makes our community. It is you living as a son and daughter of the Most High God that transforms the world. Our God did not just come into this world and all was done. It was the event, the start to all, to you, to you spreading this light of Him through all the world. When God spoke the Word, he birthed not only to give you life but ultimately that you could truly live, in him, dropping his imprint through you onto the canvas of this world. Your impulses, your intention sets off cosmic events for his glory; you show his beauty.
First Sunday: Hope
Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
The first week of Advent symbolizes hope. Conversely, the passages for the first Sunday may even seem contrary to hope. These passages highlight darkness, injustice, and the need of God and his return. It is in this world hungered by the pangs of injustice that the Word was spoken and came into earth. For this, Katelyn and Jamison flung and poured mixed hues of black, blue, and purple that mixed and swirled on the canvas background. They set the context that into great darkness, into the night, hope dawned and showed its great light.
Second Sunday: Peace
Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
The second week of Advent symbolizes peace. The passages focus on the great mediator that was prophesied to come and John the Baptist that was sent to proclaim his coming. In this set of passages, we find phrases used to empower and mobilize the Civil Rights movement, and we are reminded that justice and peace came at a cost: the cost of our savior. For this, David chose browns, tans, orange, and red. The image of a manger began to merge symbolically with that of a tomb. Dumping mixed paint, medium and water, a maroon river appeared to flow down the bottom of the canvas, much like the blood of the cross would. We remember the manger, but ultimately in anticipation: what the one who was born in it would do for us all.
Third Sunday: Joy
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28
The third week of Advent symbolizes joy. These passages speak to the rejoicing and byproduct from the longsuffering of Christ. Our mourning turned to joy. We can rejoice. For this, Ryan danced and worshiped. Both pouring with paint and applying a paintbrush, her strokes hit a background of green grass with grey, red, and orange, in concert with the joy of her rejoicing, dance, and worship.
Fourth Sunday: Love
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38
Finally, the fourth week of Advent symbolizes love. Traditionally, the last week focuses on reading the passages of Jesus’s birth: the love of the Father incarnate through Jesus. For this final week, the McClendon family splattered whites and yellow. Coming from the middle of the manger, tomb, they first put handprints and then splattered paint across the entire painting. Often manger scenes focus on the star in the sky, but ultimately, it is Christ that is the light of our story, and His light overwhelms our whole life: His light touches every part of us, from darkness to light.