Sermons

April 20, 2008

“Realism Beyond Reality”

I Peter 2:2-10

Rev. Phil Blackwell

The Art institute has an exhibition of the paintings of Edward Hopper through May 10th. It is paired with an exhibition of Winslow Homer, an interesting juxtaposition of two American painters of succeeding generations. Homer, the older of the two, made his mark painting maritime scenes, especially around Cape Cod . . . fishing trawlers, children playing on the boats, families looking out to sea, waiting for their husbands and fathers to come home.

Hopper was on Cape Cod, too, but it is as if he were painting back-to-back with Homer. Hopper sat on the beach and turned inland, painting the light houses, the Victorian houses with their gingerbread trim, and the simple cottages built to withstand the gale force winds. Hopper seldom included the ocean.

I was surprised, I confess, that Edward Hopper painted more than one picture in his lifetime. I knew what we all know, “Nighthawks.” Three people sitting at the counter in a diner later at night, a man and woman together, another man seated at a distance with his back to us. An older man working behind the counter in his white uniform and hat. All four characters are in the right half of the canvas; the left half is a dark, deserted street corner.

Do these people know each other? Are the man and the woman talking with the server bending down as if he is washing dishes? Who is the mysterious man sitting alone?

Hopper’s paintings look simple and straightforward, a kind of obvious depiction of reality, until you see in another painting a curtain blow out of an open window as a woman bends over to get something out of a dresser drawer. Or a window shade cord blowing in the breeze that tips us off that there is some kind of tension between the secretary and her boss working late at night. Or, as Hopper has us glancing in a window of someone’s parlor (Hopper makes us voyeurs a lot by having us look in on unsuspecting people; he would have loved riding the Red Line home after dark), a woman sits leaning on a piano, dressed to go out for the evening, while her husband, we assume, sits at a small table and pours over the day’s newspaper. And she reaches out absentmindedly with a finger to play a single note on the piano.

What is going on here? Have they just had a fight? Did they have different ideas about what they were going to do that night? What is so engrossing in the newspaper? What note will she play? How will he react?

Illusiveness. That is what makes Hopper’s paintings so real, says the brochure that the Art Institute has produced. “Hopper offered a brand of realism not bound by reality. His work appears at once traditional and modern; his women both erotic and puritanical; and the places he depicted are familiar and foreign, comfortable and disquieting.” For someone who said that all he wanted to do was “to paint sunlight on the side of a house,” he revealed a real world with a subtlety that reveals the mystery, the complexity, and the nuances of our own lives.

A realism beyond reality. “Reality” is having a tough time of it these days. Here I am thinking about “reality TV.” Of course, there is “American Idol,” where some awful singers are publicly ridiculed before some okay singers receive lavish praise from a panel of undistinguished judges. Idolatry has never looked so common.

There is “Survivor,” “Project Runway,” “The Amazing Race,” and “Beauty and the Geek.” There is “The Bachelor,” some guy who has been working out hard for the past six months, has an expensively bad haircut, and who speaks in such a way that we know he is not a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship, is fawned over by a bevy of wily, witchy, wannabes who pray that heir perfection will not melt in the hot tub. And “Big Brother,” which puts a bunch of really lowbrow people together in a house equipped with cameras and microphones everywhere in order to record everything, so that we begin to discover in minutest detail just how uninteresting these people are.

Reality is not all that it is cracked up to be when we drain it of its illusiveness. Take away mystery, complexity, and nuance, and we end up with “The Apprentice,” and Donald Trump sitting in judgment of us, instead of God, a distinction that Trump does not grasp.

There is a realism beyond reality that in its illusiveness makes life fascinating, and that is what we have in our scripture readings for today. Jesus tells his disciples that he has shown them the way to God, and they ask, “Which way is that?” And he says, “I am the way! Follow me, do what I do, say what I say, and you will find the truth that God has imbedded in this world that gives you life. I have told you all that you need to know to find God.”

And still it is illusive. Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” And Jesus responds, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” It is as if Jesus is saying, “Pay attention to the window shade blowing, the single note on the piano being played, the sunlight coming through the window at the angle of dawn. In those details you will find the richness of life.” “God is in the details;” Jesus did not say that, Mies van der Rohe did.

“I am in the Father, and the Father is in me,” says Jesus. That is not an explanation because it does not make logical sense. Paradoxes are nonsensical, but they are true. And Jesus does not want his disciples to miss seeing the truth that will provide them the way to a real life. It is illusive, but that is what makes it powerful.

A few decades later the author of the First Letter of Peter to the infant churches in Asia Minor, a portion of today’s Turkey, must also point out a truth that is not obvious at first sight. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.” “What?” the beleaguered Christians would say. “We are despised, persecuted, vilified, and ridiculed, that is who we are. We are of the offscouring of society.”

But a truth that cannot be known at first glance is that when God raised Jesus Christ from the dead God created a community with norms different from the “real world.” There is a Christian realism beyond the world’s reality.

We are a “chosen race.” That is, we are a chosen race in God’s eyes that transcends whatever racial identity we claim on our passports and legal registrations. There is a basic humanity of which Jesus is “the way” we must follow. We are to be a human race that champions the truth and cherishes the life that we have seen in him.

We are a “royal priesthood.” I am an ordained minister. So are Claude, Cerna, and Cherie. But ordination does not set us above the laity, but rather calls us out to perform certain duties within the Christian community. We all are priests, says this early epistle to the floundering Church. A good Protestant idea, the “priesthood of all believers.” Thank you, Martin Luther. You are a priest in God’s eyes, even if it is not obvious to others. What is most illusive can be most important.

We are a “holy nation.” The “we” here is the community of faith, not any given country of the world. This is hard for some to hear, because it means that our pledge of allegiance to Jesus comes before our pledge to any nation or flag. We belong to God, not Caesar.

And, to sum it up, “We are God’s own people.” Not for privilege, but for purpose. God has other people in addition to us; we must make room for that likelihood. But our purpose is to proclaim the truth we have learned that has called us out of darkness into marvelous light. The Church’s sole reason to exist is to witness to the truth that we know.

Those four metaphors of attachment were not at all obvious to the early Christians, and I suspect that they are illusive to us, too. We are living in a time in our own society where the Church is slipping from prominence. There is a very good progressive Christian periodical published here in Chicago entitled “The Christian Century.” A little over 100 years ago when the magazine started at the dawn of the 20th Century, it looked as if it would be a triumphant future ahead, “the Christian century.” And there was period at the middle of the century when the Protestant church in America held sway in our culture. In the 1940’s and 50’s it was “the thing to do:” to go to church.

Not any more. Religion and its institutions may be tolerated today (if the bells do not ring too loudly, if the traffic does not disturb the neighbors, if we do not attract the “wrong kind of people” to the church), but we are not encouraged. As a high school principal said to me years ago as I stepped to the podium to offer the invocation for graduation, “Invoke, but don’t excite.” We sure would not want an excited God in our midst. A simple tip of the hat in our direction will do. Of course, such invitations just to invoke are not extended any more.

Back in 1924 when this building was completed, it was the tallest building in the city. The church dominated the skyline. Later, it was business that ruled the heights, Sears and Hancock. Today, what has taken over? Trump Towers, and other monuments to self-congratulatory celebrity. We can tell who triumphs just by looking at the skyline.

But it is good that the Church no longer dominates. It allows us to subvert, to call upon the illusiveness of what is real . . . the mystery, the complexity, the nuances . . .to tell the truth that we know in ways that catch people by surprise.

Last week the Pope gave a speech at the White House. Afterward, our president was heard to say, “Awesome speech, Your Holiness.” Awesome speech. I did not read what the Pope said, but it had to be more eloquent than the drivel that passes for rhetoric today in Washington. And if the Pope said anything about stemming the tide of increasing poverty, healing the sick, protecting the children, and making peace instead of waging war, then it would have been an awesome speech, indeed.

Realism of a Christian sort, it is not always obvious. For the disciples it was right in front of them, but they had to be told what they were looking at. For the early Church God’s blessings were obscured by the struggles they were facing, and the letter writer had to call upon exquisite images of association to portray the truth. For us today we are so bombarded with “reality” that we sometimes mistake it for authentic living, but God continues to paint a picture that reveals to us what really matters most, what inspires genuine awe, and what is salvific, that is, what saves us from triviality and offers us a life so deep, so abiding, so mysterious, so wonderful that we call it “eternal.” And for that we give thanks and praise. Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
April 20, 2008