A Blinding Sight

(March 2, 2008; Fourth Sunday in Lent; 1 Sam 16:1-13; Ps 23; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41)Our texts deal with sight and perception and so I pose a quick question; which of thefollowing images is more

realistic

?First is a painting by NormanRockwell of a boy, his grandpa andhis dog looking out into the sea.Second we have a painting by Pablo Picasso’s painting of a wine glass.I suspect that on first impression we wouldlook to Norman Rockwell’s painting as offering amore realistic image of life. Picasso’s work canoften strike us as distorted, obscure or maybe even alittle disturbing while Rockwell’s pieces are often comforting, familiar and reassuring.Where Picasso often leaves us confused and disoriented Rockwell offers safety andsecurity. Both painters lived around the same period of time. Both received wide publicrecognition. But both offered very different depictions of the world around them.

2This morning’s texts are about sight and perception. In 1 Samuel we find a passage which tells us that “God does not look at the things we look at.” In Ephesians weare told expose what cannot be seen in the darkness with light. And in the gospel we aretold that Jesus came so that the blind will see and that those who see will become blind.He concludes with the difficult words to the religious leaders, “If you were blind, youwould not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim to see, your guilt remains.”Our biblical texts remind us again and again that perhaps the world around is notactually as it seems. It nudges us to consider that maybe we cannot simply trust the firstimpression that our senses offer us. This is of course taboo in a culture that still hailsscience as the guardian of truth. The senses are fundamental and foundational toaccuracy of science. But what if maybe it is Picasso who can lead us towards the type of blinding sight to which Jesus calls us. Picasso began making his mark in the art world atthe turn of the twentieth century. Painters had it tough in the decades before Picasso.With the invention of photography painters had to revaluate their purpose.Clear and precise representation wasthe greatest skill artists offered the public.Even the greatest painters were match for the perfect detail of a photograph. From thiscrisis of identity there were groups that beganto rebel against the strict and technical rules of painting in Europe at the time. First therewere the impressionists who discarded thecareful and uniform brush strokes which they

3were taught and began to let light, colour and expression have more importance than justaccurate lines and forms.Many art experts were critical of these early works as they deviated from the goalof being a still mirror to the world around it. But what these experts did not allow for was the possibility that perhaps there is more to the world than what one set of eyes cantake in. Their point of view assumed that the world around them was fixed and stable.They assumed that an object could be accurately represented from just one perspective.From this movement there arose another artist named Paul Cezanne whocombined a strong realistic portrayal with impressionistic style. However, what he took note of was that when he was paintingsomething if he changed his position or perspective at all then the image he wastrying to paint also changed.In many of his paintings he tried to representtwo slightly different perspectives at onetime. In simple paintings such as this thereis an appearance of movement or of beingslightly off balance as the image itself moves between the two perspectives.All of these expressions however could hardly prepare audiences for the work of Pablo Picasso. As Picasso’s work developed he seemed to discard completely the ideathat you could imitate three dimensional reality on a two dimensional canvas and so hetried to take the basic shapes of what he intended to paint and flatten them onto a canvas.