Beyond every image

The Lutheran this month does what all art seeks to do: Invite viewers "beyond where image exists." So says Janet McKenzie, the Vermont artist who painted the cover art. It's paradoxical. She uses an image to invite us beyond images into realties no words or brushstrokes can capture. Doing so, she captures us.

It's the closed eyes of the women in her painting that capture me. They draw my soul to the unspeakable wonder, the resurrection of my Lord, that I may know him alive in depth and heart, with joy and surprise.

Two moments flow to mind when I see through their eyes, two profoundly human moments that we each know.

The women approach the tomb early on Easter morning, as the gospels describe. How can their eyes not be closed, turned inward where each one knows her own sorrow? That sorrow is easy to imagine. We've been there.

Christ's loving presence touched their lives and awakened a startling truth: They were not bit players in a cosmic drama whose lives were of no consequence in the mystery of creation.