Why Jesus Is More Than Mere Chocolate

I still need to backfill some info from Wednesday's post – more links, etc. – and also put up here my response to Spartacus. I did, Wednesday night, check out several photos of Jesus-as-chocolate. The image itself, I grant, is indeed stark and stirring; the artist has achieved quite an effect by only suggesting a cross by the figure's positioning.

Esthetically alone, I still dislike the image – although I have in mind a particularly horrid crucifix in a Catholic church in Cambridge (Massachusetts) that looks even worse. But the artist of the chocolate Jesus cheapens his work tremendously by his choice of material, and then even further by putting it up in a museum. This just screams to me that he's looking more to jerk people's chains than to engage in art as art.

I'm not, and couldn't be, the world's ultimate arbiter on What Art Is. By definition, we're talking something subjective, and thus varying greatly in meaning and significance from observer to observer. And choice of venue is the artist's, and the venue's. My point isn't whether "My Sweet Lord" moves me inside by nature of its appearance (it does), but – as with that other image of the crucifix drowned in liquid gold – why it was made in the first place… i.e., what drove the artist.

I'm still feeling offended, though thinking it out here has mollified that somewhat. So what causes attractive art to offend? I would suggest at least two things: 1) material/medium and 2) motivation. Is a handmade lampshade valid art if it's made of the flayed skin of a concentration-camp victim? What about that image of the Virgin Mary made of elephant dung?

I submit, and maintain, that other things about a piece of "art" magnify, or obliterate, its cultural/social value. Minor cases in point include celebrities' doodles sold for embarrassingly high prices. How about Andy Warhol's hand-tinted soup cans? I don't find it art; to me it's just something pricey, again, because of who did it. Spartacus and I had a great debate a year or two ago about Jackson Pollock; I still see paint-spatters, and he sees a suffering artist.

So back to Jesus in chocolate: the bigger picture on it tells me I have reason to be offended, and I go on that. I can't detach my esthetic sense and go on that alone; I am more than that facet of myself, and that piece of overwrought confection is more than a mere image of the Suffering Servant.

But I didn't want to talk chocolate this evening; I wanted to meditate verbally on the Good Friday service (not a mass… there was no consecration) I got back home from about an hour ago. This was long (ninety minutes, versus about 60), and deeply moving at a level that chocolate and a urine-filled glass simply can't touch.

I found myself in tears twice. Once, after reverencing the cross (kissing it, in my case) and meditating on Jesus' suffering on our behalf, and again when we sang the stirring hymn "Were You There?"

Though two priests were participating (and another, in mufti, sitting in the pews with us), the service was led by a deacon – roughly this is a sub-priest; he does everything a priest can do, short of Eucharistic consecration, and hear Reconciliations… he can also be married, unlike all but a handful of Roman-rite Catholic priests. He and the servers and the two priests and lectors entered in silence (normally we have hymns as the celebrants enter), and then he prostrated himself at the altar – a sincere and profound expression of humility and reverence that sometimes gives me goosebumps, and is something I've done myself (in private) before the Eucharist, or Tabernacle.

There's a lot of terminology here I need to define in greater detail, and URLs/links I need to add for illustration. But it's getting late, so I'll work at these some this weekend, plus also give Spartacus the response his note deserves, before putting chocolate Jesus to rest. And I'd like to reflect at least a bit on Confession/Reconciliation, and my confessor this past Wednesday – he was the non-collared priest sitting among the congregation this evening, and he's also dying of cancer; this is probably his last Easter.

And… HeyJude sent me an awesome, beautiful PowerPoint presentation featuring quotes by, and images of, Mother Teresa. I'd like to get that up here, too, and possibly add a bit of a meditation on what her words stir up in me. This will also allow me a further test of WordPress's limitations.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb…