Chichester, Chagall and Visual Exegesis

The Chagall window in Chichester Cathedral is on my must see list.

It's a 20th Century Jewish pictorial exegesis of Psalm 150, created to enhance Christian worship.

It's a startling and beautiful work in stained glass, one of my favourite things to look at. Baptist churches should have stained glass windows may be a minority view of one, but I struggle to see any valid objection to visual beauty as an aid to worship.

It's an interpretation of written text in image, form and colour. Along with music, such art provides an exegesis that is neither more nor less important than written commentary or spoken exposition.

It's a picture of exuberance. I don't mean it's an exuberant picture, but that it represents worship as praise, gratitude, wonder, noise, dancing, walking, climbing, arm-waving; it represents joy embodied and laughter in movement, the human spirit doing what it does best in response to the exuberance of God, the shared exuberance of Creator and creature, of imago dei answering to our Original.

It's a psalm in glass, and in colour, and looking at it is intended to create in the heart the words it depicts - exuberant praise of God. 

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

I have followed Chagall paintings for years, in Nice, In Israel, and in little churches like Tudely in England. The talk on Psalms and Jewish Worship at Oxford 2010 was of Chagall. He wrote of his own work: Colours and lines flow out like tears from my eyes but I am not crying.

The gifts of the artists are of course a high priority in my thinking since two of my children are in the profession as musicians.

I am also impressed by the praise commanded from dragons and all abysses in Psalm 148. Besides the depths of the created order so evident in the earth, I think the dragons, like Lewis's Eustace, are a symbol for the depths of our humanity. You have stimulated a post in me .

[Jim Gordon]

Hello again Bob - Sue Gillingham's book is a wonderful gift for Psalms scholars and I'm slowly working through it with great enjoyment. You're not helping my struggles with envy telling me about your Chagall tours! On the journey home I was listening to some of John Michael Talbot's Psalm renderings.

[Bob MacDonald]

I am glad that Sue's book is good. I have not had a chance to study it. Maybe I should get it on inter-library loan. Her lecture at the Oxford conference was jam-packed.

[Jim Gordon]

Bob, the book is jam packed as well and with extensive bibliography. I think you'll want it when you see it. As to psalm 148 - in case you haven't come across it. Terence Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament, chapter 8, 249-268 is about Nature's praise of God. Fretheim is one of my favourite OT theologians - his wee book on Jonah published decades ago is a gem. His big book on Jeremiah is profound in its theological exegesis.