Pictures: “Early Sunday Morning - Edward Hopper 1930”
“A primeira missa no Brasil - Victor Meirelles 1861”
Passage: John 5
Today we had four students. Charlie, Fern, Donny and, visiting his grandparents, Jack. They were calm and engaged. I was not fully satisfied with our Bible discussion but I think the VTS discussions were some of the most satisfying so far. Unfortunately, immediately afterwards we had our church’s hunger walk. I did not have a chance to record what we discussed until late in the afternoon. I would have recorded, but Jack was there and I did not have permission for him.
We began with the Hopper painting. Everyone seemed keen on actually looking at the piece during our time of observation. When I asked what was going on, Donny jumped right in “It looks like New York… It's New York during COVID.” “Alright, Donny is noting it looks like New York City,” I paused realizing I had made an assumption, “Do you mean New York City or just New York in general?” I quickly realized I knew what he had meant and wondered if I was right to clarify. He explained, “It looks like any city, the buildings look like those fancy city buildings.”
“Ok, Donny is comparing it to his own experience with cities and his personal experience in COVID when everything was shut down. What else can we find?” Charlie answered, “There’s a barber shop.” What makes you say that? “There’s the barber pole in front of it.” I summarized this point. The next observation was the fire hydrant. I didn’t ask them to justify this, I just said “they noticed a fire hydrant.” Charlie, however, expanded on this point, “That means it’s a recent painting.” “Ok, Charlie’s noting that if there’s a fire hydrant in this picture it must be pretty modern in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t made in the 1700s or anything.” “The buildings could be older and it was added later,” interjected Donny. “Yeah, but that all would have happened before the painting,” replied Charlie, “I’m talking about when the painting was made.”
Next, Jack spoke up, “The buildings look run down.” What makes you say that? “Um… well, the words on the windows are faded, and… it just looks run down.” I summarized, “Jack feels that the buildings are run down; he’s noticed the faded words on the signs and a general feel of the street, that it’s in worse condition than it once was.”
Donny wondered aloud what the dark square in the top right corner was. Jack answered confidently that it might be a chimney. Donny, looking closer, suggested it may be a taller building farther away. “Donny’s wondering what the square is in the top right corner, we’ve got two ideas. Jack thinks maybe it’s a chimney, while one of you guys (I had forgotten who had mentioned the tall building idea), thinks it could be another, taller building.” Donny confirmed that he had suggested the second idea.
This was the first week someone had asked the title of a piece. Around this time in our conversation, Donny asked “Do you know?” referring to an imagined correct answer to ‘what’s going on in this picture?’ I explained that I knew the title but I didn’t know anything more about the piece. “What’s the title?” I told him: Sunday Morning (which isn’t actually the whole title). Still, everyone together gave a sudden exclamation of understanding. “So everyone’s at church,” suggested Donny. “Or at home, or sleeping,” said Jack. “Ok,” I said, “So knowing the title changes how we understand the piece. Now that you know, you guys think the reason everything’s closed is because people are either at church or at home; either way, people are enjoying the day of rest.” Here you can hear my bias emerge. I have often felt a generational nostalgia looking at this piece because the idea of a cultural rest day feels so alien and yet so wonderful. Church or not, having a day off is something I’ve wished for in modern America.
The last thing we observed were the yellow “shutters” which Charlie pointed out. After this, it felt natural to end the discussion but not like we had exhausted the possibility of conversation - a good feeling to have. I thanked everyone and got up to show the next one. Our second picture contained nudity and last night I had doubts as to whether it was wise to include it. I had prepared a surrealist piece by Magritte as an additional slide. With this group I saw that either would do. I asked if they wanted something fantastical or historical. Donny quickly said “historic.” So we went with that one.
I will add that this picture was an interesting one to choose because it could easily be interpreted in different ways by different people. It shows a scene of hoards of Native Americans crowding around and watching a group of Europeans partake in mass. It feels to me almost satirical, highlighting the absurdity of the whole situation, these out of place colonizers and their unnatural worship. On the other hand, it could well be seen as a heroic scene of staking a claim and spreading God to the world. Are we meant to pity the Natives or see them as savages? I was curious to see what the kids thought. These questions, however, are part of the fourth level of artistic development, my students are still at the first, second, and third. Still, I don't think I’ve yet seen them uncover so fully the intended meaning of a piece (in the literal descriptive, narrative sense; as I said, they have not yet arrived at questions of the artist’s motive, thoughts, and emotions).
Jack’s first assessment of the scene: “There are a lot of mostly naked people, and they’re really friendly.” I don’t recall the exact nature of my clarification, nor am I confident in this wording. I felt at the time confident that he was talking about their “friendly” invasion of each other’s personal space. It did not even occur to me that he might have been referring to the fact that they showed no hostility to the colonists. When I summarized, I said, “Jack’s noticing a lot of people with not very much clothes on, and he’s also seeing that they seem really close together and comfortable with each other.”
Charlie tried to tackle the fact that they seemed to be American Indians but was struggling to express his thoughts in an acceptable way. He expressed that he knew he was commenting on stereotypes and not reality, but that there was some reality behind it. His wording led Donny to ask if it's still a stereotype if it's true. Charlie explained that it was. I wonder what other perspectives exist on this question. “This picture reminds Charlie of other depictions of Indigenous people.”
Donny commented on the cross, the people in robes, and then suddenly exclaimed that this probably didn’t take place in Biblical times. Charlie used the word priest to describe the men and also noted they were white. It wasn’t until Donny Charlie noted the treasure chest that things began to click into place. When we looked at the treasure chest, Donny suddenly got very excited. “Ooh, ooh, I know what’s happening. The people just arrived there and everyone’s coming to see what they brought.”
And my memory fails me. I know Charlie brought up the men in armor. He compared them to conquistadors. This led to the thought that perhaps they were in South America. I asked what made them think it was South America. They struggled to find the word “tropical” but everyone agreed it was mostly how the trees looked. Donny pointed out water in the background with boats and a beach. In the end, they had a good feel for the scene as a group of European colonists who, having just arrived in South America, were holding a Christian service of some kind in the presence of the Indigenous people. I ought to have attempted to log it all sooner. As I said, I felt that they were really using their background knowledge to decode the painting in a way I hadn’t seen them do before. I wonder how much of this had to do with the fact that I had called it historical, this may have given them a feeling that there was a right answer and they could figure it out.
Today’s Bible discussion was a little less in depth. One interesting thing that happened while we were listening. I have previously noted that it often feels too long to discuss well if we listen to the whole chapter. I paused it halfway through today, but everyone wanted to keep listening (Donny particularly), so we did. When I asked what was going on in the passage, Jack answered that “Jesus healed him.” “Who?” I asked. “The paralyzed man.” About now, we were interrupted by Nancy who had to let Donny know about something that had happened last week with the muffins (they were left in the oven overnight). This was an acceptable interruption, but it derailed the conversation a tad. Charlie noted that the man did not answer Jesus’ question: “Do you want to be healed?” It’s a yes or no question but his answer was “I can’t.” It was in this context that Jesus healed the man.
I asked what else we noticed. “They didn’t believe him.” observed Jack. “Who didn’t believe him?” He looked in his book, “The Jewish leaders.” “Why didn’t they believe him?” I asked. “They were jealous?” suggested Jack. “Yeah,” I expanded on his idea, “he walked in and healed this guy, right? And they’re all mad at him. But he was like: why do you care?” I think here Charlie mentioned that it was the sabbath day.
Donny asked a question about if his name was Jesus or Jesús. I humored this question and explained that he would have gone by Yeshua, the Hebrew name of Joshua. Charlie commented that it’s ironic that the book of Joshua is so full of death when the name means “God saves.” This led to a tangential conversation about war in the Bible. I suggested that Christianity changed the nature of warfare. Today when there is a war it is shocking, I alluded to what’s happening in Israel and in the Ukraine. When people groups try to kill each other and take land, it goes against our global culture. Before Catholicism in Europe this was how everyone was, but when everyone was united under the church it made it harder to justify war against each other. Of course, war against other groups continued, but it laid the foundations for our modern notions of war. Having spoken on this, I tried to bring us back to the text.
The final thing we discussed was Moses, whom Charlie noted was mentioned at the very end of the passage. Here, I failed to lead the discussion well. I asked what the modern equivalent of claiming Moses but ignoring how he pointed to Jesus. This proved to be a hard question to answer and we all felt at a loss for any good ideas. Trump? Policies? The other verse related to it in the passage claimed that the Pharisees read the Word but ignore Jesus in the word. Again, we failed to come up with any good modern equivalent that was specific enough. I alluded to people who cite the Bible in justifying their political views but ignore what it says about Jesus. This led to Charlie commenting on the fact that there are contextual Hebrew laws we now ignore because they were for a people in a specific place and time. His example was tattoos which were once directly connected to pagan idolatry. I wondered aloud how God feels about tattoos of superheroes and cartoon characters (are we worshiping them?), just because our culture ignores a law doesn’t mean God wants us to abandon it. This ended up feeling like way too much of a contradiction of Charlie’s words, like I was shutting him down. The fact that nobody else seemed interested in adding to the conversation didn’t help. The conversation petered out and we soon switched to improv games.