Wednesday • 6/12/2024 •
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me.
We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week and next. Instead, we’re thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader Magazine a few years ago.
They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor.
“The ‘Clown’ Was Me”
Just as I was ordering my Big Mac, a woman came into McDonald’s yanking on the arm of a young child. Ugliness leaped from this slovenly woman. Dragging on a cigarette butt, she yelled at her kid: “Shut up and tell me what you want to eat, or I’m going to kick you from here to Kingdom come!”
But then I noticed this distinctive shape to her face ...
Suddenly, I realized this face was identical to that of one of the prostitutes French artist Georges Rouault had once painted. This woman could have served as his model.
Though he lived from 1871 to 1958, Rouault’s most notable working years spanned WWI and WWII. Many artists of his day heard in the turmoil of their times the death-knell of Christendom and of the Christian faith. For Rouault, though, the times were proof of our need for Christ.
His art became the means of bringing together God’s story and our pain.
As a teen, Rouault had apprenticed as a stained glass artisan. He learned to tell a story through simplicity of line and color. In his early adult years he studied the realistic technique of Rembrandt, in quest of that master’s psychological depth. Rouault’s early work, not surprisingly, reveals an artist who has not yet found his voice.
Then, around 1903 when Rouault was in his early 30’s, he had a happenstance encounter with an off-duty clown. Everything changed. It is the moment, as he puts it, “that marked the beginnings of poetry in my life.”
Rouault comes upon this old clown “mending his glittering and colorful costume.” He sees the jarring contrast of “brilliant, scintillating things, made to amuse us,” on the one hand, and the infinite sadness in the man’s unguarded face, on the other.
I clearly saw that the “Clown” was me, it was us. ... This rich and spangled costume is given to us by life, we are all clowns more or less, we all wear a “spangled costume,” but if we are caught unawares, as I surprised the old clown, oh! Then who would dare to say that he is not moved to the bottom of his being by immeasurable pity.
Rouault begins to paint pictures that tell us the truth about ourselves: sorrowful clowns (“Who does not paint himself a face?”), imperious kings (“We think we are kings...”), self-absorbed bourgeoisie (“The well-bred lady thinks she has a reserved seat in heaven.”)
He drops his realistic technique for the look of the stained glass of his youth: thick, simple lines. Vivid colors. Simple but penetrating truths about ourselves.
Stained glass is above all the church’s art. Here’s where Rouault’s art becomes poetry. He uses his stained glass effect because, in pity, he would point us to Jesus, to him who had become “like us in all things, save sin” so he could redeem and heal us. In Rouault’s hands, one portrait of Christ looks as ugly as the sinners with whom he identifies, while another portrait is iconically transcendent, a promise of peace and resurrection.
Standing at that McDonalds counter, I realized that despite all that made us different, this woman and I were the same. Same ugliness. Same dignity and beauty for which we were created, but from which we have fallen so hopelessly and seemingly irrevocably.
Then came the epiphany, unbidden. In a flash, I recalled Rouault’s famous Head of Christ. I think it was the shape of the jaw. In my imagination, the woman’s face morphed, first, to that of Rouault’s sad, angry prostitute, then second, to his sadder, compassionate Christ.
Art of any sort — from painting to music to worship design — has this extraordinary power: it can bring a whispered promise or a shouted call from another realm. The incarnation itself brings, after all, God’s permanent residence in our reality.
Rouault’s portrait of the prostitute said: “Doesn’t she look a lot like you and me?” His portrait of Christ said: “Didn’t he come for the likes of her and you and me?”
I should have talked to this “Fallen Eve” (a term Rouault sometimes used). But the words wouldn’t come. All I knew to do in that moment was pray: “Lord, have mercy. On her. On me. On this sad world you love. In your own time and in your own way, show yourself to this dear child of yours, and save her. And Lord, forgive my blindness to what, or rather Who, makes us one.” I pray for her still.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+