Worship Resources for June: 8. Celebration

One of the world’s most spiritual composers is the Estonian, Arvo Pärt. During his early career, he pursued an avant-garde style. This led to a seven-year absence from composition. When he returned, it was with a different style which he described as tintinnabulist. The word tintinnabulum is Latin for ‘bell’. It characterised a music which was minimalist and meditative.

It is most famously heard in his work, Spiegel im Spiegel, literally, ‘Mirror in the Mirror’. In this type of music, there are two voices. ‘One is the vulnerable, human voice that is straying and sometimes pained, the other is the stable, divine or angelic voice that consoles.’ writes Peter Bouteneff.1 The two are never far from each other, and he describes this as ‘bright sadness’.

If Pärt champions this in the music which is the fruit of his devotion to the Orthodox liturgy, then Vermeer surely champions this in his paintings. For as well as revealing the disconnection which people suffer, and exposing their inner longing for harmony, he also lets the light from that open window shine upon their faces and pearls and transforms the world’s sorrow into this extraordinary melancholic but bright sadness.

Perhaps we can extend this image to the four Servant Songs in the Old Testament for their bright sadness becomes ever more apparent as the singer extends his repertoire. The third song, like the first two, begins with an account of his call ‘that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word’. ²

Who are the weary, and how will their weariness be assuaged? We know nothing of it. All we do know is that the effectiveness of the servant’s calling is not in himself but in the Word of comfort. Sadly, things go wrong and the servant suffers.

As a consequence, he is a disgrace to others. But far from calling upon God to avenge his adversaries and justify his vocation, he says with remarkable equanimity, ‘The Lord God helps me.’3 He doesn’t say how, but he says it twice! One thing remains—his loyalty to God!

This was countercultural for it was thought that those who suffered were not favoured by God. But here is one whose favour cannot be denied—and yet he suffers. It is the tentative disclosure of a profound mystery, revealed in the surprised and surprising heart of an anonymous but faithful servant. Nothing is articulated with any precision as the bright sadness dawns.

Nae day sae dark; nae wud sae bare;

Nae grund sae stour wi’ stane;

But licht comes through; a sang is there;

A glint o’ grass is green.

Wha hasna thol’d his thorter’d hours

And kent, whan they were by,

The tenderness o’ life that fleurs

Rock-fast in misery? ⁴

In William Soutar’s homely turn of phrase, we see the bright sadness which is the transfiguration of all things, evident in his own life. Like Vermeer, he died in his forties, having spent the last thirteen years of his life bedridden because of a condition consequent on naval service during the First World War.

Whereas St. Mark’s austere gospel, enfolded in silence and secrecy, has a brilliant account of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, there is little more than the angel’s proclamation of the Easter event. This is not the case with St. John. For him, transfiguration is not a single event. It is the whole gospel. In his opening chapter, he talks about the incarnation as the Word made flesh which brings life to the world. It is like light which is more strikingly described as glory. It has two characteristics—grace and truth. Throughout the Gospel, this glory is evidenced at a wedding, a healing miracle, the crucifixion.

And this is illuminated in the most surprising way by the fourth Servant Song in which the servant’s suffering is enfolded both in silence and in beauty, underpinning the insights of Mark and John and connecting us to the silence and beauty of the Vermeer paintings.

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.5

The people are astonished by the disfigured appearance of the servant, but their astonishment is soon refocused on God. They are astonished with God and his involvement with one who had been despised and rejected!

We see Christ in it and the shadow of the cross lies over it. But we see more than our Saviour. We see ourselves, the beneficiaries of his wounds and bruises, the reluctant recipients of a call to be disfigured by the sufferings of others and to die shrouded in insignificance!

Vermeer’s death came suddenly. On the 14th of December, 1675, he suffered a heart attack or a stroke. The next day, his body was buried in the Oude Kerk in Delft. His wife, Catharina, not only had to cope with the ten children who remained at home but also the creditors. Vermeer was heavily in debt. Neither his art dealer’s business nor the recently inherited, but heavily mortgaged, family inn brought in much income.

For the past three years, life had not been easy. The war with France, which began in 1672, had created an economic crisis as well as causing flooding in Delft. His patron, van Ruijven, died in 1674 forcing Vermeer to borrow a thousand guilders. His last painting was A Lady Seated at a Virginal. She looks out on us from the keyboard with a half-smile and wide open eyes. It is the only painting in which there is no daylight. Darkness has fallen.

After his death, his wife faced much hardship and was at the mercy of the courts. In one declaration, she reported: ‘Owing to the very great burden of his children, and having no means of his own, he had lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day or day and a half he had gone from being healthy to being dead.’ ⁶

For the next two centuries or so, his name and much of his artwork were lost to the world. His œuvre was small, and his life was spent entirely in Delft. Paintings which did come up for sale were often attributed to better known artists like Rembrandt and de Hooch. However, an art critic in the mid nineteenth century brought him to life again. Like the servant in the last Song, it may be said of him, ‘Out of his anguish he shall see light.’7

His art has the power to transfigure, to imbue our world with light which enables us almost to touch the things which cannot be touched. Through his interiority, he leads us inside ourselves to explore our inner life in the light of his imaginative compositions. Through their attractiveness, we see beauty in hidden places and people. His paintings may raise unanswerable questions and create tensions, but, if they are not resolved, they are held together by the light.