Naked Worship

Last weekend, Jess and I went to Cannon Beach, Oregon for a short get-a-way to celebrate her birthday and relax. Jess and I love Cannon Beach; it is kind of “our place.” It is the place I asked her to marry me and we have spent her last three birthdays there. If you haven’t been to Cannon Beach in the rainy season you MUST go! The rates are cheap—a $350 per night suite goes for around $120—and the town is deserted. The only consistent noise is the sound of the ocean relentlessly beating against the dry land.

When we go to Cannon Beach there are three main things we like to do: read, drink one-of-a-kind beer from Bill’s Tavern, and look at all the current years art in the plethora of Cannon Beach art galleries. As you can probably guess, the majority of the art is of the ocean or the beautiful landscapes that make Cannon Beach so delightful. These are not the kind of art galleries that I go into expecting to see art that draws me into deep thought. But this year, one particular gallery caught me by surprise.

Where most of the galleries we had been in that day were full of natural light, this one was dark with limited track lighting. There was no one attending this gallery, just an open door and art on the walls. As we entered, the first thing that caught my eye was a large painting with a beautiful naked woman as the subject. I tried to divert my eyes before Jess saw me noticing. I led us around the gallery trying to avoid the elephant in the room, a beautiful, bare-naked woman. As we made our way around the room we realized these paintings, unlike the others we had seen that day, used abstract elements combined with more classical forms to draw the viewer into their own process of interpretation. We spent time, viewing, thinking, and discussing. After we had made it around the room, there was only one painting we had not surveyed—the beautiful, naked woman. When we approached it I thought we would give it a quick once over and head for the door. But Jess pointed out that the title of the painting was “Worship.” Being someone who spends copious amounts of time thinking about worship, I was drawn to look past the nude figure toward the composition. The painting was large and was framed by raw 2x4 pieces of plywood. In the painting, the woman is sitting on some sort of platform on her side, with one arm back supporting her and the other reaching upward. As she reaches upward, her raised arm is being transformed into an oversized, breath-taking rose (I had not even noticed that formidable piece of the painting before looking past the nude woman). After that discovery, Jess pointed out that on the bottom end of the painting she was blurring into the platform. Her hand and legs were smeared making her look like she was become one with her platform.

It hit me all at once that what I was viewing was a reality of our human worship. Like the woman, with one arm we—the image bearers—reach pathetically toward heaven, trying to give honor our Creator. Although there is beauty in us as God’s image and creation, we are imperfect and need to receive new growth, new life. God, in all His grace and truth, transforms us into a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). But this is not the end of the story; we still face the reality that the world fights to pull us back, enticing us to acquiesce and worship it. To me, the artist is showing the paradox of worship, imminence and transcendence. God is giving new live to his good, naked, vulnerable creation. But this new life—in worship of Him—is not black and white nor night and day. Through the grace of Jesus Christ it is a paradox, it is a journey, it is already but not yet.