Throughout Lent, we will take a look at artistic renderings of the stories of Lent, seeking more meaning and hope through our engagement with these reflective works.
Jean Charlot was born in France to a Russian immigrant and then went on to live much of his life in Utah and Mexico. The span of geography in his life ends up in his paintings that probably resemble more his love of the Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada than it does his French or Russian heritage. Around 1933 he produced “The Sacrifice of Isaac” as a part of a notebook series. You can view the picture here. ( https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/sacrifice-isaac-4639 ).
When you look at Charlot’s “Sacrifice of Isaac”, your eye might be drawn to the center of painting by the negative space and the angles of the painting. There at the center you find the face of the angel who is telling Abraham to stop and not sacrifice Isaac, but you also find the point of the knife. There in the center of the image you find the dynamic tension of the story – the sharp point of the knife and the rescuing presence of the angel.
If you look some more at the angel, you find that his two hands are busy. One hand is grasping Abraham’s knife wielding arm, and the other is pointing with an outstretched finger at a ram whose horn is wrapped around a double branched plant or small tree ( Scripture calls this a “thicket” ). Again, we find the dynamic tension of the story: sacrifice and provision, death and life.
This mirrors the dynamic tension of Lent, even of all of Christianity. We deserve God’s request of our sacrifice, but we get God’s provision of a sacrifice on our behalf. We deserve death and we receive life. Christ deserves life and receives death.
Just as Charlot lived in the tension of his European ancestry and American life, so too we live in the tension of the original sin that we were born into and the heavenly citizenship that we live in. Towards the end of his life, Charlot was given the gift of dual citizenship between the United States and his native France. We live in our dual citizenship today – but one day, we will be freed of our citizenship in this world to only be citizens of heaven. One day we will hear a voice from heaven declaring our life rescued by the sacrifice of the Lamb.