Sermon:” To be opened.”

To listen, to see, to touch, to taste and to smell. These are the five basic senses that makes us able to sense the world, each other, music, food, smells and words.

Characteristics to the human senses are that they all make us able to open to life in life’s many different aspects:  to be able to listen to the birds beautiful morning praise or the annoying constant song of the mockingbird at night: to be able to  watch the starry skies at night or the majestic views of mountains; to be able to smell the orange trees in bloom or the perfume of our beloved; to be able to taste the freshly baked bread or the salty Danish licorice; to be able to touch the granite of the old baptismal font or to touch the hair of our children.

Sounds and songs, heartbeats and handshakes, cinnamon rolls and conversations, roasted chestnuts and dusty books.

Our senses let us live as we listen, see, touch, taste and smell. Our senses make us open to life in all its beauty, in all is complicated abundance.

 Like the late songwriter John Denver so beautiful sang in Annie’s Song:

You fill up my senses like a night in a forest,

like the mountains in springtime,

like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert,

like a sleepy blue ocean.

You fill up my senses, come fill me again.

Let this be our prayer every new morning and day: O Holy Spirit, fill up our senses, open us to live fully in your creation with all our senses wide open.

The bulletin of this Sunday is bursting with strokes of colors. The bulletin is a waterfall of vibrant colors that speaks to our senses too: we can see the beautiful colors, and we can almost touch the visible powerful paint strokes, we can almost smell or taste the oil paint. 

Paint your pallet blue, green, yellow and orange, and catch the breeze, the sunshine and the smell of life. The bulletin speaks to us today: Be opened and be opened to life itself.

The bulletin reminded me of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. Of Vincent’s powerful strokes, his striking colors, his landscapes, his lilies and sunflowers, and his deep starry skies.

Starry, starry night

Paint your pallet blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills

Sketch the trees and the daffodils

Catch the breeze and the winter chills

In colors on the snowy linen land

The Paintings of Vincent van Gogh have always opened my senses, and often I not only see or enjoy the paintings or silently weep over the sad story of Vincent’s short and troubled life, but I also hear the beautiful song about the Starry starry nights of Vincent, sung by the mellow voice of Don McClean.

Starry, starry night

Flaming flowers that brightly blaze

Swirling clouds of violet haze

Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue

Last Saturday my family and I went to Immersive van Gogh LA.  A different innovative kind of art experience with massive moving projections of paintings on walls and floors combined with wonderful music. You were literary sitting or walking in Van Gogh’s universe, his paintings, his colors, his landscapes, his mind, his swirling trees, and burning sun, and his starry starry nights.

A reimagination of masterpieces for a digital age and generation. An explosion of colors, strokes, expressions, music. It was an explosive sensation – and I did not just sit there, listening and watching, I also tasted and smelled and felt. I was moved by the colors and landscapes and by the music that lifted my soul and faith.

Be opened. Listen, see, smell, taste and touch.

 

I have loved van Gogh’s paintings since I was a girl. Through Highschool I was introduced to even more paintings and even more stories about the tormented painter. Later I read wonderful biographies about Vincent van Gogh, his many many letters written to his brother Theo, his ministry as a devoted Christian, his manic-depressive mind, and I dived into the imaginary landscapes and the powerful religious paintings.

And with time I could sing with Don McClean:

And now I understand

What you tried to say to me

How you suffered for your sanity

How you tried to set them free

And when no hope was left in sight

On that starry, starry night

You took your life as lovers often do

But I could have told you Vincent

This world was never meant

For one as beautiful as you

Starry starry night, paint your pallet blue and gray…. Maybe this world was never meant for a fragile, sad, beautiful and lonely soul as the artist and man Vincent, but he truly marked this world with his art.

Like many other troubled souls, Vincent did not feel he belonged, and his sensitive mind did not make it easy for him to navigate in an often-cruel dark world.

Like the small girl possessed and tormented, like the deaf man that was brought to Jesus.

 “Starry night” was painted in 1889 during Van Gogh’s stay at the asylum near Saint Remy de Provence.

Starry Night is a moving painting that speaks to all our senses.  Blue dominates the painting, blending hills into the sky.

The little village lays at the base in the painting in browns, greys, and blues. Even though each building is clearly outlined in black, the yellow and white of the stars and the moon stand out against the sky, drawing the eyes to the sky. They are the big attention grabber of the painting. The powerful strokes make the sky swirl, each dab of color rolling with the clouds around the stars and moon.  In contrast, the town is straight up and down, done with rigid lines that interrupt the flow of the brush strokes.

Like many of Van Gogh’s paintings they are full of imagination, life, love, pain, sadness and faith. Van Gogh simply breathed the higher power into his art:

“When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.” ― Vincent van Gogh

The sky is the divine. It is by far the most dreamlike, unreal part of the painting, beyond human comprehension and just out of reach. It is moving, rolling, changing, but not on our human demand. The cypress, the hills, and the other trees on the ground. They bend and swirl too, touched and moved by the wind that blows. The Village is painted by the straight lines and sharp angles that divide it from the rest of the painting, seemingly separating it from the “heavens” of the sky. The village is manmade and inhabited by men. However, note how the spire of the church stretches up to the sky. Van Gogh brings God to the village.

 

The two stories told in todays gospel is all about the same. Jesus entered the world of people, their every day lives, their pains and struggles, - and he opened their hearts, their eyes, their ears and their minds.

To the mother whose little daughter was ill and to the deaf speech impaired man – Jesus said: be opened. Ephphatha!  Believe in the powers of faith and hope, and never forget to see, hear, smell, taste and believe.

Through one of Vincent’s truly manic and depressive phases, he started hearing voices. Mocking voices. Dark voices. Demonic voices. To shut these voices up, Vincent cut his ear of. Literary. Processed and dangerously self-hurting.

In today’s Gospel, a man was not able to hear and had trouble speaking. Vincent could only hear all to well and he tried to silence both the demonic voices and his own frantic cries. Vincent was longing to hear the soothing gracious voice of Jesus saying: Ephphatha. Be opened…. And he wanted to hear Jesus tell the demon to leave him. He longed to hear the words: “Be strong, do not fear!”

“When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.” ― Vincent van Gogh

Starry, starry night

Paint your pallet blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills

Sketch the trees and the daffodils

Catch the breeze and the winter chills

In colors on the snowy linen land

Starry, starry night

Flaming flowers that brightly blaze

Swirling clouds of violet haze

Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue

Reflected in the eyes of Vincent was a closed mind, a manic zest, a deep depressing undercurrent, but through his art he could open to his dreams, his faith, his hopes and his love. If only in glimpses.

Be Opened. Is the word of this morning.

Be open to believe in forgiveness and second chances – not to stay locked in by bitterness and resentment.

Be open to believe in change – not stay in status quo of all mistakes and ways.

Be open to hope – don’t sink down into a homeless state of pessimism and missed opportunities.

Be open to love – don’t push people away, don’t hide behind walls, but be open to love.

 In order truly to be able to listen to Jesus’ gracious voice, to be able to see the creator’s beauty all around us, to smell and taste and feel life, - we need to be open.

You fill up my senses like a night in a forest,

like the mountains in springtime,

like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert,

like a sleepy blue ocean.

You fill up my senses, come fill me again.

Amen.