Consider the Environment



Robert Smithson, The Spiral Jetty

Matthew 13:1-23

On the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. And great multitudes were gathered together to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.

One fateful day in 1967 Robert Smithson felt moved to walk out of the confines of the art gallery and consider his environment. He would take natural materials from the environment (many that were varied types of dirt) and move them around to create art. First he started moving them inside the gallery and turned them into art by reconsidering them in their new context. Eventually he would create works that left the behind the restrictions and brought gallery goers to consider this environmental art in the actual environment. Robert Smithson was working in an art movement that would come to be known by several names (land art, earthworks, earth art) and his Spiral Jetty was to be seen as the movement's masterpiece. This 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide, counterclockwise coil that reaches into the Great Salt Lake in Utah. As its name states, it serves as a jetty, "a structure extended into a sea, lake, or river to influence the current or tide or to protect a harbor" and by default acts as a way for pedestrians to walk out into the body of water. But Smithson took this age old concept of water control and saw the potential to make it into something greater: something that would speak to and engage the onlooker. Jesus had his own Robert Smithson moment. As left the confines of the surrounding four walls he sat by the Sea of Galilee (which like the Great Salt Lake is actually a lake) and considered his environment. This consideration was less of the beautiful natural environment that surrounded him but rather the multitudes that encompassed him. He considered the spiritual environment that they existed in and considered its parallel to their relationship to the natural environment. Then he got into a boat in the water and served as the multitude's jetty: influencing how the viewed the current. I do not mean "current" in the sense of a flow of water, but rather the flow of our lives: the here and now of our present reality. That is the prophetic voice that the parable of the Sower still exercises over us today. Like the Spiral Jetty it takes age old concepts and uses their potential to describe something greater: something speaks to and engages the listener to reflect on his spiritual environment.  






 

The Art if Storytelling

Robert Smithson, Chalk and Mirror Displacement



Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

Robert Smithson started his foray into earth art by bringing the earth indoors and reflecting on it: literally. He took dirt, dust, chalk, granite, smooth river rocks and various other types stones and placed them in art galleries alongside mirrors. As strange as this may sound, Robert Smithson wasn't the first to use earth and rocks for art. I am not just talking about the others in the land art movement. I am not just speaking of sculptures who use marble and other stones. I am not referring to some exotic far off indigenous culture that uses land formations to express themselves aesthetically. The majority of visual art in the Western/European tradition use earth as in its foundation...especially painting and drawing. Obviously charcoal is used by grinding up the rocky residue left from burning natural materials but even the paints (pigments suspended in binders) of the Renaissance masters were often derived from natural minerals from rocks and earthen clays...hence the primary colors are "natural colors." Likewise Jesus did not invent the usage of the parable. When Jesus used these short illustrative stories that paralleled a spiritual truth he worked within a long cultural tradition of Hebrew prophets. The Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is full of parables that we don't think about. When the prophet Nathan was leading up to confronting King David about his adultery and murderous conspiracy he opened up with using a parable about the theft of a poor man's only lamb. When the men of Shechem came to tell Jotham of Abim'elech slaying his brothers the sons of Jerubba'al, Jotham retorted with a fanciful parable of the trees of the earth deciding to select their king. When Isaiah wanted to teach about God's prudent choice of diverse actions to further His ultimate will he spoke a parable of the plowman who planted black cumin. So when Jesus started a story of a farmer sowing seeds all of the multitude were aware that he was working in this prophetic tradition. I doubt that with this Jewish crowd familiar with the earlier prophets' use of parables (even agricultural parables) their would be any who would think that Jesus had just directed his speaking career in the direction of giving farming advise. Everyone knew what he was doing, making an allusion to a spiritual truth, but they mystery of the parable was what it all meant.

The Medium is the Message 

Robert Smithson, Spiral Hill

And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is by design a spiral. Since it is a fifteen foot wide path into the water it invites viewers to become pedestrians. This winding road has many layers that one must walk past to get to the end... and due to the intention of its creator the end is its center. Parables are the same. They are theological onions that where the truth is encased in several protective layers of allegory. But why use them at all? Why not abandon the mystery of poetics and reveal the truth of God in frank prose? That is what the Disciples wondered when they confronted Jesus about his use of parables. His answer was rather curious in that it deviates from the traditional description of a parable. Like its traditional usage Christ shares that his parables are an illustration to illuminate the truth... but that was only after he told them that his parables were a riddle/mystery to hide the truth from some. He even quoted the prophet Isaiah to justify his use of parables as an encryption tool. But why would God chose to simultaneously reveal the truth to some and conceal it from others? This is where I think that I should introduce the unpopular doctrine of election. This is the idea that God has chosen those who to be saved and those who are to be damned. The most popular face of this in Christianity is that of Calvinism's notion predestination. Now you may think that Calvinism is too cold and predestination conflicts with your beliefs about God, but if you will humor me for a moment I have a secret to share with you: You may think that you don't but you actually do believe in some form of election. Roman Catholicism refers to it as such: "one chosen or taken by preference from among two or more; as a theological term it is equivalent to 'chosen as the object of mercy or Divine favour, as set apart for eternal life'." And all readers of the Old Testament are familiar with the idea that God had chosen the people of ancient Israel to be His people. And I tell you this secret about your own beliefs because that is what the idea of the elect is: the sharing if a secret. And that is also what this parable is generally about: the secret of the secret. Jesus concealed the revelation of this secret for those who would pursue its true meaning: his Disciples. The same elect group of twelve that he had revealed so many other secrets about God and mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. So in his own words "For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him." The Pharisees and scoffers who were among the multitude had been rejected from knowing the secret and the Disciples would grow richer from learning more of God's treasures. The idea of election as illustrated by Jesus is about more than separating the righteous from the unrighteous (even though it does entail that). It is also about separating the elect from the other elect. Christ said that "many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it" but it was for a specific portion of the elect, the Apostles and those they would share it with (us), to hear the fullness of the secret...to enjoy the culmination of Grace. As the offspring of the Disciples/Apostles we too are those who have and will be given much until we have an abundance of God's Truth. This is the theme of the parable of the sower. But Christ did not stop at revealing the gist of his message, he would go on with a point by point exposition of his parable. For the spiritual pilgrims that journeyed this path with him he would take away the outer layer roads of the jetty and reveal the center of this work of art. 

Expository Preaching



Robert Smithson, Image from Field Trips: Bernd and Hilla Becher

"Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside. But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

 

With the art of Robert Smithson, the focal point is the earth. Dirt is taken to produce beauty. It is said that his earthworks all started when he took trips exploring his native state of New Jersey and observed dump trucks moving and dumping earth. He looked and saw how they excavated tons of earth and rock and somehow he saw more. He saw a creative activity that was timeless and monumental: he saw art in the making that no one else saw. Jesus saw something spiritual about the natural act of a famer's relationship with his agricultural environment. The farmer was not just sowing seeds, he was testifying to Man's relationship with God. Just like Adam in Genesis, the man who had been created from the clay of the earth, this sower of seeds had taken to tilling the soil as his means of support. And I would argue that the central image of this parable is not the sower (though he is the subject) or the plants that come from the seed (though it is the desired end of the sower's activity) but rather the soil itself. This parable is about Jesus' venture into critiquing Land Art. As he reveals to his Disciples the soil/earth, like Adam, is Mankind. The seeds are the "word of the Kingdom", a.k.a. the Gospel. So the parable is an illustration of God's botany experiment, when the seed of His Gospel is spread throughout soil of Mankind through the ends of the Earth. God inspected which men/women would respond to the Gospel. On the one end there were those whom the Gospel was spread to and it fell on deaf ears and hard hearts and the Grace of the Gospel was taken away. On the other extreme were those who the Gospel was preached to and it flourished and they were given greater Grace. But alas there were still two groups that Christ revealed that were not in either camp. They did not fall into the false black and white paradigm but reveal the existence of several shades of gray in the area of faith. Jesus didn't just tell this parable to show that there would be those who believed and those who didn't believe. He told it to show that even amongst those who heard the Gospel and "believed" their were varying degrees of how much of his grace they would chose to experience. Christ was not only exercising his preaching gift but intentionally engaging in expository preaching to enable his listeners to be able to understand and apply the Word of God. He wanted his disciples to understand the meaning and intention of his words: he was revealing God's secret.



Robert Smithson with model of Spiral Jetty.

I am not sure if the image that I have posted above was intentionally taken by Robert Smithson to document his model for the Spiral Jetty or if it is a snapshot taken by a friend or visitor to his studio. I do know, however, that it shows the intention of the artist. It reveals that the Spiral Jetty was not a "happy accident" that occurred when he was haphazardly dumping tons of earth and minerals into the Great Salt Lake. No, it is a testament to Robert Smithson's artwork being the final manifestation of his will. That leads me to ask. what was the intention the sower? Likewise what was the identity of the sower? We know that the sower is the source of the seed of the Gospel that is spread to the soil/ears and hearts of men/women. So you have at least two options: God/Jesus or the Apostles/any Christian preacher through history. I am not exactly sure which one I'd put my money on, however, in the end they both end up eventually having God as the source of the seed. That's the problem with parables. they ultimately break down. They are not intended to be an endless equation where several variables can be thrown in. They are a metaphor with a limited reference. I am sure, however, about the identity of the seed as a symbol of the gospel. Why? Because Jesus, the teller of the parable, reveals it as such. And I can be confident about the intention of the seed of the Gospel. It is revealed by the difference between the last three soils that receive the seeds. Ironically they all believe the Gospel but only one exerts true faith. One believes with joy and then falls away due to persecution and or hard times. Another believes but due to the cares of the world never becomes fruitful. Then last one is shown as the example be cause he believes the Gospel, understands it and produces fruit. The intention of the seed of the Gospel is to produce fruit not just belief. The intention of the seed of the Gospel is to produce joy not just obedient behavior. The intention of the seed of the Gospel is to not just to excite and inspire you but rather to create sustainable faith that endures the hardships of life. This parable is the story of those disciples of Jesus who believed, had joy, remained and bore fruit. It is not the story of the Pharisees. It is not the story of Judas. It can however be the story of you and I. God has placed us in an environment of Grace. He desires that we should consider His word and allow it to take fruit in our lives...long lasting, life-giving, believable fruit.