Van Gogh lifted the veil of our vision. He helped us to see dignity in the common person from coal miners to potato pickers. He lifted the veil of creation, and the common person from coal miners to potato pickers. He lifted the veil of creation, and showed us what we had never seen before. Helping us to see with the heart as much as with the eyes. His style made the relationship between the art and the viewer critical. Daring the viewer to see as he himself saw. Of course Vincent’s seeing had developed and moved on from earlier Dutch painters like Rembrandt. Less and less was he concerned with the realism of image, and more and more concerned with the realism of experience.
Nothing is static. All is morphing and developing. Certainly the life of Van Gogh was not static, his art was not static.
His personal starting point was not too far removed from my own starting point. Reared in a Christian conservative fundamentalism home. He was son of an influential Dutch Reformed preacher – a staunch Calvinist. And followed the footsteps of his Father into the ministry. Vincent quickly outgrew and saw through what he considered the legalism and restrictive lens of such Christian expression. Influenced in part by John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress Vincent became increasingly aware of the developmental nature of life and Christianity. The idea that Christ is in the process of sanctifying his church over time.
In other words, our faith, our love and our understanding are growing and developing over time. Vincent was convinced that God worked in a developmental way with the church throughout time. If so, for us, as we grow in our conceptual and social capacities: our ability to understand, to worship, and to experience God also expands.
Just as a human being grows through various stages of development, so the church develops. I don’t know about you but it seems to me that we are experiencing one of those growth spurts right now. We are transitioning to a different form of church.
Today’s church is here because of Christ’s work in and through the church that came before us but we can’t stay in that church. Christ’s community is developmental at her core. There is a continual process which God leads us through. God incarnating himself through his body; this is the sanctifying process of God applied to his community.
Maybe God is inviting us to leave our stanch legalistic systems and incarnate Christ’s love to today’s coal miners and potato eaters. Maybe God is inviting us to paint with bold and bright primary colors in the dark night’s sky. Maybe God is inviting us to leave the safety and security of our professionalism and become real sojourners. Pilgrims. People of the Way. There is always a price. Being misunderstood, feeling alone, being rejected by the establishment.
Vincent experienced those things, and some might argue was consumed by them and late in July of 1890 in a wheat field near Auvers shot himself, and died a couple of days with his brother Theo at his side.
Friends, it almost feels trite to say that transitions are taxing. Moving from the comfort, almost predictability of “our stage” to the next stage is frightening. All that we have known feels slippery, all we have done no longer seems to work, our minds feel foggy, we see in a glass dimly, we come to the end of ourselves, and there is God. And God being the gentleman that he is, gives us a choice. Turn inward and be consumed or trust him to guide.
The world will never know the beauty that could have been had van Gogh chosen to trust.
And now, God offers us the same choice.
Peace, dwight
