Kintsugi – a way of thinking about Easter

Sermon by Jamie Howison on 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and Mark 16:1-8

Click here to view a brief video on Kintsugi feauring Makoto Fujimura

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

And having proclaimed our alleluias, we stand in this pandemic time, faced with the least celebratory of the gospel accounts of the resurrection: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” This is where the oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel according to Mark end, with a look of fear on the faces of the women who had gone to the tomb to anoint the dead body of Jesus, only to discover it was empty. “He has been raised; he is not here,” the angelic figure tells them, and it scares them out of their wits. The end. Seriously?

Now if you take out your bible and turn to the 16th chapter of Mark, you’ll see that there is more material; two additional endings in fact, usually bracketed off and called “The Shorter Ending of Mark” and “The Longer Ending of Mark,” neither of which appear in the most ancient manuscripts. It would appear that these are later pieces, added by writers who knew the other three gospels and wanted to bring Mark’s gospel account to a more satisfying conclusion.

It is possible, of course, that the original ending of Mark has been lost—ancient manuscripts are fragile, and often fragments have to be painstakingly pieced together by people far more patient than me—which is the opinion of some very fine biblical scholars. Many other equally fine scholars, however, are persuaded that we do in fact have the story as Mark intended to tell it; that what he has given us as his account nears its end are two snapshots: firstly the look of awe on the face of the Roman centurion as he utters those words, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” and then, secondly, the look of fear on the faces of the women as they flee.

But surely, you might say, surely Mark knows that the women did go and tell Peter and the others? And surely he did, but the gospel writers didn’t work in the way that modern historians do, in that they aren’t concerned so much to line up the facts as they are in conveying a message. And Mark’s message is basically, “You’ve heard the fast-paced story I’ve told you about Jesus, and you’ve seen the looks on the faces of that centurion and those women. Now how are you going to respond to it?”

Here I appreciate the insight of Makoto Fujimura, when he writes, “In the Christian journey, the greatest triumph, the bodily resurrection of Christ from the grave, is not the ‘happy ending’ of a fairy tale, but only the beginning of the New with the entry point being suffering and persecution.” “The beginning of the New with the entry point being suffering and persecution,” which in fact it was. Remember Jesus’ words to James and John when they’d come requesting places of honour in his coming kingdom: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38) And all of them would in time drink that cup of suffering and persecution, for that was how the New was brought about in a hostile world.

I recently finished reading Makoto Fujimura’s new book, Art and Faith: a theology of making, in which he has some extraordinary things to say about all of this. Mako is a Japanese American artist of international renown, whose written works explore the intersection of art, faith, culture, and theology with remarkable insight and power. Born in the United States, he spent most of his childhood in Japan where he was immersed in its language and culture. As a painter, he draws deeply on Japanese techniques, using an array of traditional materials that require time and discipline to prepare, and patience to apply layer after layer after layer of paint. His approach to art, in fact, has been described by David Brooks of The New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time”.

His paintings, though, while done with traditional materials and techniques are very modern, very contemporary, and both adventurous and lovely. Perhaps it is not unfair to characterize him as an ancient-future artist, as he draws deeply from ancient wells in order to say something to the world about its possible future.

In his book Art and Faith, Mako introduced me to an artform called Kintsugi, which comes to us from the Japanese tea masters of the 16th century. When a tea vessel is broken, rather than either discarding it or simply repairing it, it is renewed, even transformed. This is done using Japanese lacquer, which is then overlaid with gold. And so Mako writes,

Kintsugi does not just “fix” or repair a broken vessel; rather the technique makes the broken pottery even more beautiful than the original, as the Kintsugi maser will take the broken work and create a restored piece that makes the broken parts even more visually sophisticated. No two works, done with such mastery, will look the same or break in the same way.

Mako finds in this a way of talking about resurrection. Not that it is a perfect image for the resurrection of Jesus, but what image could ever be perfect? For in his resurrection, Jesus’ broken and dead body was not “repaired”—that would be resuscitation and plastic surgery—but was rather raised into a whole new way of being truly and fully alive. And yet he has scars in his hands and feet. “The resurrected Christ still bears the wounds of the crucifixion,” writes Mako. “Through these sacred wounds a new world is born; through the revealing of the wounds still embedded in the new body of Christ, our faith is given.”

The risen Lord is recognizably Jesus, and he will take fish and bread into those nail scarred hands and eat with his friends. But he is also something and someone new, more beautiful, more vibrantly alive than anyone ever has been.

And broken vessels that we are, we too are caught up in resurrection life, both now in the present and, ultimately, in the fullness of time. And so Mako comments,

Thus, our brokenness, in light of the wounds of Christ still visible after the resurrection, can also mean that through making, by honouring the brokenness, the broken shapes can somehow be a necessary component of the New World to come. This is the most outrageous promise of the Bible…

Think on that. Yes, the women fled in fear from the tomb, but as the other three gospel writers tell us, they did eventually find the courage to go and tell Peter and the others, becoming the first heralds of the resurrection. Poor broken-hearted Peter, full of shame for having denied Jesus, stands in the resurrection light and under the power of the Spirit, and becomes the rock-solid apostle Jesus always said he would be. Thomas with all of his doubts, who takes one look at the wounds in Jesus’ hands and falls to his knees in awe. Paul, who in today’s epistle reading describes himself as “unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God,” is knocked off his feet and struck blind by his encounter with the risen Christ, yet becomes the most important figure in sharing resurrection gospel light with the gentiles, slaves, merchants, outsiders, women, and so many others who had little place or status under the status quo of Empire or of the Temple religious system.

Broken vessels all, now remade, with hidden seams like gold making them more whole and more beautiful and more truly themselves than they’d imagined possible. Not that they suddenly became perfect or invincible or free of struggles. No, this side of the fullness of the coming of the Kingdom, that will never be our lot. But even in our brokenness—especially in our brokenness—we can place ourselves in the wounded hands of Jesus, and trust that his resurrection is remaking us too; the broken and fractured pieces of us restored anew with the gold that is the grace of God. That is Easter.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!