Fritz von Uhde is the Lenten artist this year. Lent begins March 2. I thought his painting, Jesus Meeting With Nicodemus At Night might serve as an introduction. The artist was criticized for taking gospel themes and imagining them in his contemporary setting. Notice how Nicodemus is enthralled by Jesus, but dressed as a contemporary judge or cleric. The gospels are not simply reminiscent scenes from millennia ago but perennial and forever in their meaning.
Fritz von Uhde was Protestant, with a non-clerical, non-liturgical vision of Jesus. Let's remember too, no one owns Jesus or has any kind of copyright on him. And so the artist shows us Jesus without rays or decorations. Here is Jesus without a halo—but we still recognize him.
In this painting, Jesus is talking about God and our lives with God (John 3:1-21). And in doing so, notice first he has pulled back the heavy curtain. See the lock opened at the top of the window and that the window has been flung open wide. Jesus' gestures are expansive, inviting Nicodemus (and us) to venture into what seems dark at first.
Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister has written,
"We do not, by and large as a culture, have a God big enough to believe in. We have diminished God. We've made God a puppeteer, a magician, a vending machine, a warrior, a judge, all slivers of ourselves. But of course, anybody with an understanding looks up in the sky at night, saying to themselves, what is out there? Where did this all come from? Where is it going? And what about the people who have left our lives? Where are they? Those are cosmic questions. And I believe that, for me, my God is a cosmic God."
Nicodemus was a leading Pharisee, a religious man. He visits Jesus at night for fear his colleagues will see him and disapprove. But the night darkness is symbolic as well. The artist seems to have Jesus inviting Nicodemus out and into the darkness as if saying, "Leave behind all your old ideas and venture out into the unknowing." See the worn books on the table behind Jesus. They are what someone else has said about God. What do you, what do I say about God when we leave behind too-small ideas of God? Eventually there will be a dawn—as if coming to know God for the first time. For me, the new knowing of God is an ever deepening listening to Jesus.
Did you hear Bishop Michael Curry preach at the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?
"Jesus began the most revolutionary movement in human history, a movement grounded in the unconditional love of God for the world and a movement mandating people to live that love and in doing so to change not only their lives but the very life of the world itself."
Some people are terrified of this idea—Jesus beginning a "revolutionary movement in human history." The protestant artist, Fritz von Uhde, seems to express this in his Jesus-Nicodemus painting. We might sit with this painting a while as Lent approaches—a wide armed, expansive Jesus, standing at an unlocked, opened, night-window. Maybe Jesus is saying to Nicodemus (and us) "Your God is too small."
