Faith in Dialogue with the Arts

Sermon by Bishop Richard Holloway given on Sunday 12 August 2007

FESTIVAL 2007

Why was the ointment wasted?

There’s an interesting distinction in the meaning of the word ‘good’. Some goods are what philosophers call ‘instrumental goods’, because they are good for something: chairs are good for sitting in, forks are good for picking up food. But some goods are just good in and of themselves: we love them for their own sake – beauty, love, joy – these are things that are just good in and for themselves alone, and philosophers call them ‘intrinsic goods’.

I have opened in that way, because we’ve been having a bit of a debate in Scotland recently about the arts, the kind of things you’ll be enjoying during the Edinburgh festivals that kick off this weekend. Is art an intrinsic good, something that’s just good in and of itself, or is it an instrumental good, something that we value because it delivers what politicians, who love to measure things, call ‘outcomes’. Before putting more money into the arts they want to know what the payoff will be, what the benefits to society, how it will help Scotland be more prosperous or more equal. However, artists don’t like their work to be measured in that way: they value what they do because they think it is good in and off itself, not because it may benefit society in some way.

Actually, it’s a pretty pointless debate, because what we call ‘art’ is obviously good in itself and good for something else at the same time.

There’s a famous Scottish painting by David Allan, done in 1775, called ‘The Origin of Painting’. It is based on a story by the Roman historian Pliny about a young Corinthian woman who sketched the outline of the shadow of her lover on a wall before he went off to war so that she would have something to remind her of how he looked when he went away, possibly never to return. What she did she did for a purpose – it was an instrumental good, good for remembering him by – but it turned into something of beauty that was good in and of itself.

That tells us a lot about human beings. We have a genius for doing things for a purpose, but we end up doing them for their own sake, because we find them beautiful, worthwhile in their own right. We go on making chairs for sitting on, but soon we make them beautiful as well, objects that are valuable in their own right. And here’s another example: Before a battle in the olden days the standard bearer would troop the regimental flag or colours round the regiment so that soldiers would know where to rally in the heat and fog of battle. Now we have a ceremony called Trooping the Colour, which we do for its own sake, because we enjoy the theatre of military bands and the marching of soldiers the way we enjoy Swan Lake or West Side Story – for the sheer spectacle.

Take another example. I interviewed the novelist Ian McEwan a couple of years ago about how he wrote, what his routine was, that kind of thing. This is a man who tells stories for a living, and words are his instruments. ‘How many words a day do you write?’ I asked him. The answer surprised me. ‘On a good day, maybe 300’, he replied. That was because he lovingly polished every word, made it fit perfectly, like a joint on a Chippendale chair, something beautiful, something done for love’s sake.

That’s exactly what the woman in the gospels did with the precious perfume she poured over the head of Jesus. Some of his followers were outraged at such a waste of money. Something good for other people could have been done with it, but here she was simply wasting it in an extravagant gesture of love. Jesus praised her, because she had done something that was good in and for itself alone: she had done something beautiful.

There’s a poem I love by Robinson Jeffers that makes exactly the same point.        

‘Is it not by his high superfluousness we know

Our God? For to equal a need

Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling

Rainbows over the rain,

And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows

On the domes of deep sea-shells,

And make the necessary embrace of breeding

Beautiful also as fire.

Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom

Nor the birds without music…

The extravagant kindness of God’.

Alan Watts said something

similar about the music of Bach:

‘The preludes and fugues are simply a

complex arrangement of glorious

sounds. They need no programme notes

to explain a moral or sociological

message. The intricate melodies flow

on and on, and there never seems any

necessity for them to stop. He composed

them in vast quantities, with the same

Godlike extravagance to be found in the

unnecessary vastness of nature’.

Godlike extravagance is the key to art

and why we do it. There is something

in nature, something in life, that simply

provokes these outbursts of creative

exuberance and joy. We do them for

their own sake, the way a lamb gambols

in a field and kicks up its hooves for the

sheer pointless joy of it all.

Some of you may remember the

Cultural Commission’s report on

Scotland’s artistic life from a  couple

of years ago. The best bit of the

report came on page 10 where they

pointed out that a Greek

politician had suggested that the best

way to measure the outcome

of their legislation was by what he

called the happiness index: Will this

move, this policy shift, this expenditure,

make people happier? I think that’s a

great way to measure social policy: does

it make people happier?

If you use the happiness index to

measure the worth of what we do,

then art, play, festival, are the most

important things in life. They are the

precious spikenard poured out for the

sheer beauty and joy of it. By that

standard, Scotland is richly blest.

It is full of writers workshops and jazz clubs and dance classes and water colourists and fiddlers and pipers and brass bands and choral societies and drama groups and basket weavers and glass blowers and dry-stane-dikers. The doing of these things sees us at our best and most distinctively human and creative. More to the point, these are the activities that energise and fulfil us. They give us joy, the best therapy on earth.

So enjoy the Festival. Be happy, be extravagant, pour out the costly ointment and make no apologies for what it costs you.

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