Archive for the ‘Author’ Category

Continued from part 1 of Makoto Fujimura’s chapel address at Crossway on January 21, 2011:

I find it very significant that the ark was 2 ½ cubits by 1 ½ cubits. Half is, I think, a very significant measurement. It shows a need for God, and God’s mercy. It’s also a promise that even as we fail in so many ways, God is going to complete the work that he began in us. I tell people who are new to faith, that in the Old Testament you have this centripetal (a vortex that swirls toward the center) movement towards the arc in terms of worship . . . so you have this spiral going inward to this one place.

Because of Christ we have become centrifugal (in worship, a vortex that moves outward) starting with Christ we go outward, and that’s what the Great Commission really is. So we see this expansive movement that, because of the freedom and the confidence that the Hebrews writer talks about, we can enter this room because of Christ’s sacrifice, confident that God will accept us.

Because of that confidence, we can actually create things and dare to stand knowing how imperfect we are and how unworthy we are. We can stand knowing that every little thing done in faith will be multiplied. It will be centripetally driven to affect the world. That’s the most amazing thing to consider, to understand that even the small things we do in faith every day—a kind word given to a child struggling, or just choosing to forgive rather than to hold onto and harden your hearts, these little things get translated into this greater reality, somehow affecting not only our hearts, but the world.

When it comes to a relationship with larger culture, we as Protestants especially have this very tension-filled history. As Bill Dyrness (at Fuller Seminary) discusses in many of his books, much of the brokenness and fragmentation we see in culture can start from the church. Thus, he argues, the reason why the political landscape, the ideological reality, and the scientific community is so fragmented, the reason why the culture is so alienated from humanity could be because we have not done a good job as the church to hold those things together within the church, to lead in these areas, to believe that Christ can somehow in this centrifugal movement, bring healing to the whole. Of course, culture at large has their responsibilities, but it is something for us to consider.

So I believe, very audaciously, that every line that I draw, every stroke, every gesture— can renew culture. Not because of my talents, or my gifts, but because of these passages in Hebrews. The details from this New Testament writer are incredible—every measurement, every material used in the Tabernacle somehow gets echoed in these passages. I don’t have time to go into all that, but notice in the famous passages in chapter 11 of faith.

“These all died in faith.” Consider all the heroes of faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus made it clear that they were seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land, that land from which they had gone out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But as it is, they desired a better country. That is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

From Genesis 1, even before the fall, God wanted us to build a city. And we are on this trajectory, this direction. We are all being trained to be urban designers. We are to seek this city, which is invisible now, but will be a reality, weightier than the heaviest of gold. We will be able to dwell in this new reality when heaven is finally merged with this earth. And we will be able to create freely, liberated from our bondage to decay. We will be able to have this new, perceptive reality. There will be multiple thousands of colors that we have not seen yet. We will have this realm in which relationships are whole, healed. Face to face with this, who knows what we will be like, But having this capacity to create at a moments notice, create maybe new colors of our own, new sounds, new bodies, that will be free to dance.

I look forward to that, but this project has allowed me to get a glimpse into that reality. Through this journey my life has been transformed. My cynical thoughts about what I think of when I think about the Church. I think about the history, especially Reformation movements, and how exiled I felt as an artist. Everything I was able to re-contextualize, and in some strange way I felt totally broken and yet totally encouraged at the same time. I understand when the mystic speaks of these things, that there is this mystical reality that is very hard to speak about, but its there. Just as here in the book of Hebrews the writer talks about this heavenly reality being manifested through Christ into this new city.

Transcribed address from Makoto Fujimura on January 21, 2011 (part 2).

It was a joy and privilege to host Makoto Fujimura last week. We (here at Crossway) had the opportunity to hear an exclusive behind-the-art perspective on The Four Holy Gospels from Fujimura during chapel on Friday, January 21:

I wanted to speak from Hebrews and consider how we are able to think about these projects from theological and aesthetic perspectives. In Hebrews 9-10, the Hebrews writer addresses worship from the Old Testament reality of having the tabernacle of Moses, which is an interesting study in itself. As an artist when you read through the Bible you notice things that other people don’t.

When I was a brand new believer I wanted to read through the entire Bible, so I started from page one in Genesis. When I got to Exodus 30, I saw the description of the tabernacle and the way God gave it to Moses as a mirror image of the Law. So for you left brain thinkers you have the Ten Commandments and for you creative types you have the Tabernacle. As I read through Exodus 30 on the description of the tabernacle I was just thrilled! I was so excited that I went to my friends who are missionaries downstairs from Singapore. I said, “This is so exciting!” and my friend said, “I skipped that part.”

It talks about details of how one is to craft this tabernacle. They must have been trained in Egypt in order to execute the patterns precisely. God had already chosen them—not only this ability to create, but also the ability to teach others to do this. So this was very much a guild of sorts to create a place [for] a nomadic group of people needing a place to worship, gathering very much like we are today, but around this ark with a mercy seat on top, covered with gold, designed and inlays, and so forth. The designs very much relate to the materials that I use and the method of Nihonga, that I was studying at the time. Later on we see the magnificent splendor of Solomon’s temple, again using materials that I use. I realized very quickly that these passages that I respond to as a creative artist, some people may skip over because they have no idea the magnificence and the level of intricacy that God wanted us to experience in worship . . . and to approach him in this manner through the arts, executing these beautifully crafted objects . . . and how precisely it had to have been for God himself to be understood and to communicate to his people, “This is who I am, I care about beauty, I care about things that are crafted well.” And that spoke to me personally.

Now here in Hebrews, we have the writer looking back at these things and he says in Hebrews 9:23, “Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves were better sacrifice than these, for Christ had entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”

What he’s referring to, and I read this with trepidation, and I thought about this as I was illuminating these pages, is that there is in fact this physical reality of heaven that is being manifested onto a broken earth. That we can somehow tap into this, and they did, for a time, through the ark covenant, 2 ½ cubits, 1 x 1 ½ cubits, this mercy seat on top, this perfect square on the side. You know what cubits are? This is fascinating. The cubits are measurements, they measured Pharaoh’s arm from the tip of his finger to the elbow, and that was a cubit. So every Egyptian pyramid is made with a different cubit measurement. So, guess what, they must have measured Moses’ arm to create the Tabernacle, because God doesn’t specify what a cubit is and the assumption is that you measure the leader’s arm.

That’s really profound. It also speaks about this God who would use human measurement to create his tabernacle. The very design that is perfected in heaven enters our world and is translated into imperfect human beings. God, knowing fully how imperfect Moses was, and how he would not be allowed to enter the promised land, God used his arm. The significance of this is multiplied when you think about how he had to raise his arms and he had to have Aaron and Hur hold it up while they were being liberated from Egypt. This whole idea of leadership, the writer of Hebrews is saying that even that is imperfect.

Now that Christ has come, we can look back and see that the tabernacle was only a small reality that we were able to witness. As a creative person and an artist, I am determined to do things right. But I know that no matter how well I execute this, I cannot even approach this heavenly reality of God, what God already has created. And yet, this kind of project was in a sense an invitation by God to offer my brokenness, to be able to have Christ enter into that picture. My limitation as an artist is only met with this greater grace of Jesus who would fill the empty places.

Transcribed address from Makoto Fujimura on January 21, 2011 (Part 1).