Sunday noitcelfeR
When it comes to old dogs learning new tricks, I've always put my money on the old dog.
Maybe because I'm an old dog myself, and I love to learn new tricks.
I was the first teacher at my school to get a computer and store tests on a floppy disk so I didn't have to take care of ditto sheets or store originals for photocopying. In 1986, teachers were still writing exams by hand.
In 2004, or so, I had my gall bladder removed and was out for 6 weeks. The sub knew nothing about creative writing. I used Second Life to teach the class daily from home. I built an outdoor classroom, and the kids could submit questions or their assignments to a message box. What amazed me was the kids were so fascinated by the platform, they paid attention.
When the pandemic hit, the church called for volunteers to learn video editing, and I signed up. What a kick! I use Filmora X. It's pretty intuitive, and there are great YouTube instructional videos. I was assigned to edit the submitted scripture readings, personal greetings, personal testimonies, and the children's sermon. When Christmas came around, I helped edit the choir, syncing 13 or 14 individual singers, plus soloists. Then I wrapped it with an introduction, banners, and credits.
If you go to YouTube or Facebook and look up Audubon United Methodist Church, you can see some of my new tricks.
But it's the learning that matters. Listening to the scripture reading or the children's sermon gives me moments of reflection, and sometimes I go down rabbit holes researching obscure things. For example, a popular solo is "His Eye Is on the Sparrow," but were there actually sparrows in Galilee?
My troubling reflection this past week was graven images and the image of God. God was very clear: no graven images. Before David became king of Israel, God insisted on no temples. The reason, to me, is found in God's name: I am that I am. Verb tenses in ancient Hebrew being pretty fluid, God says, "I am / was / will be what I always am / was / will be." God is the image, God is the temple, and God is God.
This is why I'm a big believer in that commandment of no graven images. God doesn't want us trying to focus on an image of God's appearance. If we do that, we miss the significance of humans being created in the image of God. You want to see what God looks like? Look around. Like the name, the image of God is very fluid.
It's ironic that so many religious institutions create movies and tv shows about Jesus in order to reach a mass media audience. I grew up thinking Jesus was blond and blue-eyed, just like in the movie with Jeffrey Hunter. How confusing when Jesus turned out to be Captain Pike on "Star Trek." Gravely mistaken graven image!
The great artworks of history, like the Sistine Chapel or the Pieta, are graven images. Christians pay as much attention to this commandment as they do the commandment about profaning God's name; Facebook even makes a pictogram of my avatar committing that sin.
Movies and tv shows about biblical stories are usually rife with misconceptions about what the Bible says and with historical inaccuracies that mislead viewers. The latest graven image is a streaming tv show called "The Chosen." Purportedly, it seeks to depict Jesus more realistically. Many folks in my church want everyone to watch it because it's so inspirational.
"You will make no graven images." I keep coming back to that idea that male and female, God created them in the image of God.
If you're reading this far, you're likely interested in the topic. I encourage you to spend today looking for the image of God.
Captain Pike was Jesus? I don't recall that. I like the Chosen but it is historical entertainment told from the point of view of the author(s), and their interpretation of the bible. And I notice even with this retelling they miss some scenes. Some I think are very important, but as an artist and a Christian I envision His life completely differently than Dallas Jenkin's. I had a vision of Jesus and the Eye of God enter me, and x-ray my soul. I painted the dream and showed it to my teachers and fellow students in EfM, education for ministries, lay ministries. I don't think of images of Jesus to be Jesus, nor do I worship them. I'm reading about Sister Faustina and her vision of Jesus and have a copy of the painting she had commissioned from her vision. I was a young art nun in Italy in the 1980s and visited the Sistine Chapel and touched the big toe of the David and was in complete awe of Michelangelo's works, but I didn't worship him or his works. I know about the graven images commandment, but I think what is meant is that we are not to worship these images. I think the atheists who destroy art and architecture in the brutal dictatorship of China, and the terrorists who destroy the buddhas in Afghanistan are the greater sinners.
ReplyDeleteI know that Christians don't worship the images as idols, but to me, the danger is in creating a fixed perception of an eternal God. People tend to look at something and say, "huh, so that's how it is." Consider how many people believe Noah took a male and a female of every single animal in existence, because it's fun to depict it that way, which is not at all what Genesis says.
DeleteI admit, when I saw the Pieta in the Holy Gate (before it was defaced--or at least, de-nosed), I cried. The exquisiteness of Michelangelo's work is beyond my comprehension. Art for art's sake is noble and should be respected.
And yes, if you watch "The Menagerie" or the pilot of "Star Trek," you'll see Jeffrey Hunter, who played a blond, blue-eyed Jesus in "King of Kings."
And I love the story of your vision! I also had visions of the child Jesus, when I was a child, and a vision of God when I returned to my faith.
DeleteCool, re: your visions. We are called. I can't recall the whole S.T. pilot. It was too long ago. I will have to rewatch it. I LOVED King of Kings. I cried and cried and cried and my atheist dad would laugh, (good naturedly, albeit sarcastically,) at me when I watched it every year. I had a dream in which Jesus said, "you are my yentl. you are mine."
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