The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A, 2008, April 20, 2008, St Augustine’s Chapel Nashville

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jo. 14:6).

A work of art can change the way you look at things, whether in music, books or the visual arts. “Very moving” we say of a great musical performance; the notion being that our heart was moved, but also perhaps that we were moved, from wherever we were to some new place of understanding. Impressionist painters like Monet or Degas provided a new frame for reality, depicting familiar scenes in a fresh way and causing people to see these things differently. Art is also not morally neutral: director Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, which she made about the 1934 Nuremberg Congress of the Nazi Party, is a beautiful film, effectively framing reality in a compelling way, but one that in retrospect is morally repulsive.

Art is meant to give us new eyes and new ears; and the role of the artist is to give us a fresh perspective that undercuts what we thought we knew and helps us to apprehend the truth. The artist frames things in a particular way, imposing or perhaps uncovering the pattern, which is a thing of beauty.

This is precisely what Jesus is doing in our Gospel today. He is moving his listeners to a new place of understanding, helping them to see the world in a new way. Edgar Allen Poe described poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”, and this is what Jesus does in our passage. Rhythm is all about pattern and form, as any artist knows, and Jesus is framing reality in a way that allows the pattern of truth to emerge.

It’s a mistake to see Jesus describing himself as “the way, the truth, and the life” as a churlish claim to exclusivity. Instead, it’s the radical proclamation of a very original artist, who (like any other artist) proclaims a unique and transforming vision. The world in which the Gospel was first preached was full of competing visions of reality and of different spiritualities. It was also a world threatened by collapse and by a growing sense of chaos: the downside of multiple and pluriform truths. The Roman Empire itself was an attempt to impose order to forestall crisis, an attempt that had no moral basis beyond the extension and application of power. Reality was framed and life continued under the Empire, but like Hitler’s “New Order” in Europe, it was morally compromised. In the midst of chaos and compromise, “the way, the truth, and the life” offered an artistic frame that moved the hearts of peoples and of nations, and moved them as well to a new and different relationship with God.

Jesus Christ gives us a fresh perspective on reality, beautiful and compelling like the vision of any artist, and not morally compromised. But Christian faith goes one step further in believing that God is the maker of all things, the “Artist” with a capital “A”, and in believing in Jesus Christ himself, “by whom all things were made”. So the works of the Artist are all around us as we look out the window today (especially today!). And the works of the Artist are also in evidence within the building, as we look upon God’s handiwork, upon those created “in the image and likeness of God”. The homing signal that brings us to God through Jesus Christ is one that has its ultimate source in our creation by God and our fashioning in his image: the code that is embedded within us that makes us a work of art. Jesus Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life”, is not the sour claim of blinkered dogmatism, but the signature of the original Artist himself.

John Donne wrote somewhere that “The sculptor does not make the statue. He removes what is hid.” Jesus Christ is hard at work on you, removing what obscures the image and exposing the work of art. For we are God’s creation, and the hidden image is being lovingly uncovered by the Artist. There is pattern and form here, something lovely and compelling in God’s People. Those baptized and confirmed today are helping to remind us of this truth. They are helping to change the way we look at things, and giving us a new and fresh perspective on the works of the Artist.

The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

Back to Bishop's Forum