Something Worth Seeing
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
February 13, 2022
Philippians 2:3-5
Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so nobody thinks of his own interests first, but everyone thinks of the other people’s interests instead. In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.
Last Saturday, Sue and I were blessed with two tickets to The Lume, the digital experience of Vincent van Gogh’s work at Newfields. I have to be honest, I had mixed feelings about the experience since it seemed like a marketing and money-making gimmick. And there were times when I did feel like I was experiencing something at Disney World more than at an art museum. Yet once we found a place to sit and take in the entirety of the presentation, I felt a deep spiritual connection that I was not expecting.
A couple of years ago, on his departure from a visit to our home, my friend, John Pattison from my previous Meeting in Oregon left our family a gift. It was the book, “Learning from Henri Nouwen & Vincent van Gogh: A Portrait of the Compassionate Life” by Carol A. Berry. I was intrigued by the book since I have always found Nouwen’s writing and van Gogh’s art speaking to my condition. Thanks to Carol Berry, here they were both interacting in one volume.
As I sat on the floor in the Lume taking in a visual and musical parade of van Gogh’s works, I was taken back to a quote Carol included in her book from art critic Maurice Beaugourg who said,
“One shouldn’t look at just one painting by Mr. Vincent van Gogh, one has to see them all in order to understand. “
These days, unless you go to the van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands you may at the most see one or two of his works at a time. A great deal of van Gogh’s collection has been spread out for more people to experience.
One of the beautiful aspects of The Lume, which I was not expecting, was how the viewer is invited on a journey through the life of van Gogh both in a chronological order of his paintings, as well as the places in which he lived. More in the way that Maurice suggested to get the full van Gogh effect.
I found myself mesmerized as they presented everything from the early sketches depicting the rural and urban poor, the somber interiors of peasant cottages in Holland, the individual tender portraits of the people in his town, the static bouquets of flowers, to the sundrenched landscapes created in the south of France.
Henri Nouwen believed that viewing van Gogh’s work in a sequential course would reveal the artist’s attempts at developing an art that spoke, that communicated, and that would touch people.
Nouwen also believed, “Vincent offers hope because he looks very closely at people and their world and discovers something worth seeing.”
That is exactly what I was experiencing. Yet it was clear, if you didn’t know van Gogh’s story, this would not have as much meaning. The emotion, the passion, even the struggle would just be strokes of paint or markings of charcoal. My wife, Sue leaned over at one point and commented, “I wonder how many of these people know van Gogh’s story?” I said, “Sadly, probably very few.”
The world has spent so much time exploring the life of Vincent van Gogh from an art history and psychoanalytical view, they have totally missed the deeply spiritual man behind the brush.
Van Gogh was a compassionate man who had a sincere love and care for the poor. Henri Nouwen explained this well, when he wrote,
“…when you realize that you share the basic human traits with all humanity, when you are not afraid of defining yourself as being the same and not different,” you have reached a place of commonality, a place where the burdens of life can be shared. The word compassion means “to suffer with.”
Van Gogh was a person who confessed his part in the suffering human condition and was willing to recognize that the anchor hold of their identity is in the common experience of being human.
Whether he lived in an urban or rural setting, van Gogh sought out the poor, the downtrodden, the less-fortunate, even the outcasts. He developed a solidarity with them. Vincent’s life was about taking Paul’s words from our text today literally. Listen as I read it again:
“Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so nobody thinks of his own interests first, but everyone thinks of the other people’s interests instead. In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.”
Van Gogh was known to ask the peasants in the countryside and poor of the city’s almshouses to stop for a moment and allow him to spend some time with them while he sketched them. This artistic pause connected him in a deep way to his subjects. Together they experienced kinship and companionship – and Vincent’s compassion and solidarity grew – because he took time to understand their condition, their perspectives, and what was on their hearts.
Vincent hoped that one day his work would be able to express to the greater world the deep feelings, concerns and needs of his subjects - that it would ultimately give them the voice that they could never have.
I became emotional and even held back tears as variations of the peasants, potato farmers, weavers, miners, and sowers in the fields slowly paraded past me on the walls of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I no longer could see them as just historical depictions of people. These were people that van Gogh had compassion on and whom he built solidarity with and wanted to represent and allow their story to be remembered.
The irony that we, 150 or so years later, would be paying money to go see renditions of their faces, their conditions, their lifestyles – and to think, most of these works of art are considered priceless.
I wonder if in another 150 years, we will be missing the point of what we are seeing at some art museum, with paintings of the homeless living under a overpass, migrant farmers working in our fields, minors in sweat shops making our name brand products, refuge families with multiple generations living in one bedroom apartments, elderly black people displaced because of gentrification…and the list could go on.
Even though Vincent had an on-off leaning to a career in ministry, he never seemed to embrace it fully -- or did he in a way we may not have expected?
Often Vincent would write to his brother, Theo and explain in depth what he was experiencing, painting, and feeling. On one occasion he wrote,
“Happy is he who has faith in God, for he shall, although not without struggle and sorrow and life’s difficulties, overcome in the end. One cannot do better than, amidst everything in all circumstances, in all places and at all times, to hold fast to the thought of God and strive to learn more of Him; one can do this through the Bible as well as through all other things.
It is good to go on believing that everything is full of wonder, more so than one can comprehend, for that is the truth; it is good to remain sensitive and lowly and meek in heart, even though one has to hide that feeling sometimes, because that is often necessary, it is good to be very learned about the things that are hidden from the wise and the educated of this world but are revealed instinctively to the poor and simple, to women and babies.
For what can one learn that is better than what God has put by nature into every human soul, namely that which in the depths of every soul lives and loves, hopes and believes, unless it is wantonly destroyed?”
Van Gogh is a remarkable theologian, pastor, even example for us today, as well as an artist. Yet it is no wonder people thought he was crazy. People in our world still think those who try to help the poor, the oppressed, the neglected, are crazy. I hear people say all the time, “They have all the same opportunities we have, let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. They don’t need our help.”
But the reality is when we say these things, we are missing the point. It is lacking compassion – especially the part where we “suffer with.”
Over and over in scripture, we skip right over the phrase that starts almost every encounter Jesus has with the people he was ministering to…
· “He had compassion on them,”
· “He had compassion on her,”
· “He had compassion on the multitude.”
· “He had compassion on the city.”
Until one enters another person’s condition, we really can’t say they need to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
Much like the Pete Rollins’ story from last week or the earlier quote from Henri Nouwen, until we realize that we share the basic human traits with all humanity and are not afraid of defining ourselves as being the same and not different, we will not reach a place of commonality, a place where the burdens of life can be shared.
When we look at our less fortunate neighbors, our suffering neighbors, our oppressed neighbors, our addicted neighbors…do we simply turn our heads, avoid them, and maybe hope we didn’t see their condition?
Or maybe we hope to comfort them by writing a check or making a donation to an organization that will help them.
Henri Nouwen taught,
“Those who come together in mutual vulnerability are bound together by a new strength that makes them into one body. Comfort does not take our suffering away, nor does it minimize the dread of being. Comfort does not even dispel our basic human loneliness. But comfort gives us the strength to confront together the real conditions of life, not as an unavoidable fate, but as an inexhaustible source of new understanding.”
What if we sought “something worth seeing” in each of our neighbors?
What if we took the time to sit with them and just listen, to understand their condition, to take the time to paint in our own minds a picture of their tender souls? An exhibit that would run through our minds as the paintings of van Gogh passed before me at the Lume.
And since in our world, we often assume because of our great wealth and privilege that we are to be the “saviors,” what if we stopped and entered into a conversation with a pallet of compassion – a willingness to “suffer with” our neighbors. How might that change things?
Henri Nouwen called it joy, but not how we might think of joy. He says,
Joy is hidden in compassion…It seems unlikely that suffering with another person would bring joy. Yet being with a person in pain, offering simple presence to someone in despair, sharing with a friend times of confusion and uncertainty…such experiences can bring us deep joy. Not happiness, not excitement, not great satisfaction, but the quiet joy of being there for someone else and living in deep solidarity with our brothers and sisters in this human family. Often this is a solidarity in weakness, in brokenness, in woundedness, but it leads us to the center of joy, which is sharing our humanity with others.”
So this week, as we enter a time of waiting worship, I ask you to ponder the following queries.
· Where am I discovering “something worth seeing” in my neighbors?
· To whom do I need to have more compassion – a willingness to suffer with?
· How might I truly find joy in sharing my humanity with those around me?