Who’s the baby?

My wife Bonnie and I recently went to the de Young Museum to see the Vermeer (1632 – 1675) exhibit on loan from the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The Exhibit is called “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” after what is perhaps Vermeer’s best known work. The girl turns to look at us over her left shoulder and as she turns our gaze is drawn to the single pearl on the lobe of her lovely ear. A text describes the painting as the Dutch “Mona Lisa.” The exhibit reveals a world of mostly prosperous looking men and women. Self assured, Protestant, one might even say secular. They are a class of people absent from earlier times, the early Renaissance and the Middle Ages. They are neither prelates (there is one painting of a preacher in the exhibit), nor princes, and they are certainly not peasants. They are burghers and their families, men of commerce, trade and industry; and they read and write. There is a charming, domestic scene of a woman, seated comfortably at a desk in her own home. She is writing, maybe a personal letter, maybe household accounts, but the point is she is writing, something that a few hundred years earlier few other than clergy were able to do.
As I looked into these paintings I wished that my students from St. Augustine’s Seminary in Arequipa, Peru, from where I just returned, could join me, because this exhibit illustrated vividly the social, economic, and religious reality that made possible, maybe inevitable, the transition from what I call the “Total Church” to the “Church against the Church.” In my Church History course, I refer to the Medieval and early Renaissance era as the era of the Total Church, the era when the Church was the underlying and pervasive presence in virtually every aspect of life. What, I ask the students, were some of the things that brought the Total Church to an end? Indeed, there was corruption and abuse. In the lecture to the young Peruvians, I even cited the 19th century Englishman Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But corruption and abuse, like the poor, are always with us. More important was the rise of the nation state and city, and, in the cities, the rise of a class of people who were neither prelates, priests, princes nor peasants. They were burgués, bourgeois, burghers. They made money, built solid, if not palatial, homes, had a voice in the governing of their cities and nations, and wanted a local church in which they had a voice, a strong, loud voice. These are the men and women Vemeer painted.
There are also drawings and paintings by Rembrandt in the exhibit. One of Rembrandt’s works is the only explicitly religious painting in the collection. “Simeon’s Song of Praise” depicts the Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple. (Gospel of St Luke 2:22-35) Mary and Joseph go up to the Temple in Jerusalem to make the offering for the first born son as required in the Law of Moses. In the Temple an old man named Simeon, whom they do not know, is inspired by the sight of the Christ Child to sing a song and praise. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation…” This song of praise, titled in Latin Nunc Dimittis is sung daily at either Vespers or Compline. As I was looking at the painting and silently singing the Simeon’s song of praise, a young man standing near me said, “Who’s the baby?” I told him the baby is the Christ Child and gave the brief account of the event noted above.
The young man’s question shows a number of things. One thing is that people aren’t afraid or embarrassed to ask, which is a good thing. Another thing, is that unlike Renaissance and Medieval paintings, Rembrandt’s Christ Child has no halo or other traditional icon of his divinity. Rather, the light within the shade that surrounds the child does not fall on him; it radiates from him. His bright, round face glows as the old man sings. Another thing the young man’s question shows is that many people, bright, well educated people, don’t know the Bible. Not so very long ago, most people, believers or unbelievers, looking at that painting by Rembrandt of the old man singing to the baby, the young mother looking on in wonder, and the guardian approaching with the two doves for the offering would have known that the baby was Jesus. No more. This is another reason why I wish my students from Peru could have been with me and had heard the young man’s question. They need to know that in California and Peru, and in much of the developed and developing world, including nations that are historically Christian, preachers of the Gospel can no longer assume that the events recounted in the Bible, and depicted in much of our artistic heritage, are widely known. We need to know this not in order to wring our hands, but in order to do a better job.
I’m just glad the young man didn’t ask me who is the girl with the pearl earring. Like Mona Lisa, it’s a mystery.
 
Canon Marvin Bowers is a retired clergyman and may be reached at

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