Every Picture Tells a Story

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter III
April 18, 2021
 
“Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold Jesus in all his redeeming work.”
 
Or, to quote the British rocker Rod Stewart: “Every picture tells a story. Don’t it?”
 
I addition to poetry, one of my favorite expressive art forms is photography.  I took a few photo classes in college and back then, it was all old school.  We used black and white film and manually adjusted cameras.  In the field, we learned to capture shapes and patterns, use depth of field, shutter speed, and f stop aperture settings.  As we gained competence, we moved on to images of people beyond snapshots, and there was a day we even had a nude model to see the human body as a creative palate.  That was exciting and difficult at once.  In the darkroom, we learned the art of framing an image, zooming in and out for composition, and timing for developer, stop bath, and fixer.  Dust specks were the enemy of a good grade, and we were maniacally precise as light sensitive photo paper was really expensive.
 
Remember that back then, photographs were precious.  We saw them in print newspapers and magazines, but if you wanted your own to be developed, you had to drop off your film, wait a few days, and come back to pay for every single print, even if the subject’s eyes were closed.  These days, we just hit delete and print few if any through online services. 
 
There was a woman on my college campus who made a whole job out of taking pictures of students.  She was odd for sure, a true artist who never allowed pictures to be posed.  She would say “life does not look like that, so I won’t shoot it.”  Between classes, in the theater, at sporting events, and outdoor gatherings, she looked for moments, scenes, and interactions that she could capture and sell for two bucks a print.  Her name was Lynn, and we all called her Katie Kodak, but not to her face.  Twenty years after I graduated, I became the Head of School at the local prep school where I went to college.  The day of my installation ceremony, Katie Kodak came to take pictures, and on the sly, handed me a few particularly embarrassing negatives dating back to my senior year.  That day, she won my undying affection.
 
These days, we are all photographers.  We all have the capacity to make art.  Most of you have a camera on or near you right now.  I do not wax nostalgic for the old days as much as I appreciate the democratization of art.  I still love to see a well composed reflection of a moment, a mood, or emotion.  I remain suspicious of filters, photo shop, and anything posed.  We see lots of pictures now, but the realm of photographic art is still powerful.  An artist with a perceptive eye, a seeing heart, and honed technical skill can create such beautiful art.  Erin Edgerton from the Daily Progress gave us the amazing gift of shooting images our Easter experience for the newspaper.  I have looked at those photos online just about every day since.
 
In our Emmanuel Bible study this week, we studied the lessons but came back around to the collect, inviting us to “open the eyes of our faith to behold Jesus in all his redeeming work”.  Stories are crucial, but stories that come with, or create, images are even more moving.  The lessons for the week are like artfully composed pictures of resurrection seen, appreciated, and experienced from different angles and perspectives.  There is no one way to capture Jesus resurrection.  If there were, we would not need to strive daily to remind ourselves of its immensity.   In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter paints a large canvas, placing Jesus in the larger scene of God’s expansive landscape.  In First John, we are invited to see ourselves as children of God with some dark spots of sin getting in the way of light and life.  And finally, we see Luke’s picture of the resurrected Jesus coming into focus while fear, doubt, joy, and wonder shape the disciples’ expressions.
 
A picture is not worth a thousand words.  A picture takes us beyond words, which is where we ask God to help our faith take us.  What does resurrection look like?  What does peace look like?  What does forgiveness look like?  Those are just big words without a fleshy, world worn images to bring them to real life.
 
I remember two moving images from this week.  The first was of a masked little girl wiping the tears of her masked mother at the ceremony honoring of the Capital Police officer, William Evans, killed in the line of duty.  The President was there, but he is not even in the picture.  That picture says so much about what is important, and about the agony of human grief, and honor, and, yes, a child’s love and resilience.  The other picture is of a baseball team mid-jumping celebration after the pitcher has struck out the last batter on the opposing team.  In the foreground, however, at home plate, the pitcher is hugging the disconsolate batter.  We come to find out that he had just struck out his best friend to win the game.  Character, love, sportsmanship, friendship, victory, and defeat are all there.  The story is good.  The picture is better.
 
Circling back to Katy Kodak, I am reminded that there is no such thing as still life.  Still life is an oxymoron, like a small crowd, acting naturally, or social distancing.  Good images show us how we look and how the world looks when frozen in one fleeting frame of a moment.  Great images tell a story, evoking memory, making connections, and unmasking a panoply of feelings.
 
When we gather for church, we read from Holy Scripture, we give words to praise and prayer, and we break bread to image God’s love broken open in Jesus.  If we get caught in mundane explanations of pure theology, we are apt to get up in our heads, to remain at a distance, or just get bored.  But when we tell stories, we start the process of developing an image, an image that we can relate to real life.  As disciples too, we wonder, we doubt, we fear, and we find joy.  But what does that look like?  What does that feel like?  Where are we in the picture?  Admit it, we have to find where we are in a picture when we see it.  Are we in it, near it, or just looking at it?
 
“Open the eyes of our faith,” we pray.  What an invitation to get off the pages and seek God in our never still life.  And in that, we might behold Jesus in all his redeeming work, as a child showing immense compassion, or friends hugging at the intersection of agony and ecstasy. 
 
The image of God shines throughout life.  Faith is the lens that helps us see God more clearly.  Faith begs us look for ourselves in frozen moments of experience and memory.  And most importantly, faith helps us find the living and resurrected Christ right there in the picture with us.  Amen.