Lost Words
Pentecost 2 – Summer Series
June 23, 2019
Sibley Park, Mankato, MN
Jeremiah 31.31-34; Acts 2.1-13; John 1.1-5, 14
Today is the second installment of our summer series, “Brushes with God.” In this series we are looking at the Bible through the eyes of artists, something I’ve wanted to do for several years. Artists bring unique perspectives to the biblical narrative and help us to see with fresh eyes. Today’s piece Lost Words, by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, is itself unique. It’s not a painting or statue. It is a piece that is assembled and installed on site in a particular place for a limited time and then removed. Lost Words only exists now in pictures and viewers’ memories.
If you look carefully at the picture, you can see that Shiota has filled Berlin’s oldest church, St. Nikolai Kirche, with black yarn threaded through the space to create webbed tunnels. Tangled throughout the woven net are thousands of sheets of paper. But these are just any sheets of paper; they are pages of the Bible in 100 different languages. They are placed throughout the net as if they had been blown by the wind. At the center of Shiota’s work are pages describing the Decalogue, also known as The Ten Commandments. People were able to literally immerse themselves in the piece by walking through the tunnels and viewing the artwork all around them.
In preparation for this message, I asked Jason Glaser why he chose this piece. (Jason took suggestions for subjects from our Worship and Music Team and put them together into the series.) I also asked two pastors who gathered for our text study this week for their interpretations. Among the three people I got at least five interpretations. Now, before I tell you any more about the piece, I’d like you to turn to one or two other people and discuss what you think Shiota is describing. However, I will tell you this Lost Words was commissioned for the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation two years ago on October 31, 2017. … So, what did you come up with? Does anyone want to share what this piece means to you?
Shiota told an interviewer that she wanted to link the piece to the history of Christianity in Japan. The Portuguese brought Christianity there in the 16th century but it was banned by the emperor shortly thereafter. Japanese Christians had to practice their religion in hiding and, because the Bible was also banned, the religion went underground. So an oral tradition developed in Japan where people would tell each other the stories of the Bible. Shiota was interested in how this oral tradition made the stories themselves migrate, how the meanings shifted in the retelling. So, the passages in her artwork all pertain to immigration.
To Jason, Lost Words evoked images of our connections to the larger church around the world in general and to one of our missionaries, Edith White, in particular. Edith White works with Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International to teach people in Togo and Benin West Africa to read so that they can read the Bible in their native language. The two pastors talked about the Word speaking order out of chaos; the light shining in the darkness; and the mystery of different languages yet one central message of God’s love for humanity. For me, the yarn also represents our connections with one another, but how that emphasizes that—just as the Bible was formed in and by community—it is also meant to be read in community.
Which of these interpretations is correct? Or is one of yours correct? If my Confirmation students were here they would say, “Yes!” The wonderful thing about art is that it both draws us in and opens us up to new ways of looking. Lost Words invites us to take the Bible off our coffee tables or out of our nightstand drawers and plumb the depths of the Word made flesh while entering that mystery that enfolds and sustains us. Even Shiota, whose parents are Buddhist and isn’t religious herself, understands the power these stories contain for us. I hope you will continue to engage the artwork we’ve selected this summer and have your own “Brushes with God.” Amen.
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