A Mural Toward New Community Vision

St. Luke’s has a new look- a mural of six Black saints on the front sidewalk of our church by artist Hue Love. It’s a hopeful offering of six of the stories of faith that are meaningful to us at St Luke’s, intended to spark helpful conversation amongst our neighbors and realign the church as a place of inclusion and empowerment. Already, we’ve gotten peeks into the transformation that is happening in our neighborhood. A few weeks ago, my daughter and I overheard a young African American man as he looked at our mural, saying aloud to his friends, “Wow, my perspective just broadened.” 

St Luke’s has long been a church of Black saints, even before our work of intentionally engaging with them. That effort began a few years ago, when it became clear that our children needed to hear more stories of faith about people who looked like them, and, in doing so, learn about the particular saints who left a legacy of ongoing devotion in the adults of our community. We wanted to lean into that waterfall of faith: the witness of the ancestors (saints) who inspired faithfulness in our church’s elders, who could, in turn, invite our children (and all of us) to walk more boldly and fully as followers of Jesus. In other words – discipleship by storytelling.

Depicted on the new mural are:

• Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese woman who made her whole life about Christ’s joy found in forgiveness.
• Charles Lwanga, whose steadfast faith spurred a Christian revival that continues to be the foundation for some 85% of Ugandans who identify as Christian.
• Mary Elizabeth Lange, who, as a refugee herself in a still unemancipated Baltimore, found a way to fund the education of Black children by starting the first Black order of Catholic sisters.
• Sojourner Truth, whose courage and earnest conversations with God led her not only out of her own slavery but towards the liberation of all enslaved Americans, and the rights of women besides.
• St Luke the evangelist, who gave us the words of Jesus, especially through the lens of healing that he experienced as a physician.
• Mwenebato Mishaki. The grandfather of seven children right here in our midst, running around the St Luke’s playground. Serving as an Anglican pastor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mishaki laid down his life to save dozens of children. He relentlessly fought against the us/them of tribalism because he believed we all carry the image of God. 

Through the passionate hand of muralist Hue Love, these beloved stories of our saints have taken on new life on our stretch of sidewalk. His interpretation of these heroes of the faith honors their time and place, but also their relevance for us now. For example, St Luke is pictured with dark skin and scrubs, a timeless healer looking a whole lot like some of our own community’s healers. 

In Hue Love’s words, “I believe that [the saints] all have a purpose. And that purpose is to represent the communities that we’re around. We live in a time where a lot of people kind of demonize other cultural groups, and to see them in the light of being ordained by God, I think it allows people to bring that humanity back to everyone…We’re all living the same journey in a way…Each piece, [each saint], spoke to me in the different time periods that it took me to finish [the mural]. So [they were] reflective of my experiences at work, my experiences at home, and also the battles that I deal with from my past. I think each one of the saints was, in a way, a personification of some of those moments…In each of their stories, I felt like I was able to see my friend, and I think that’s the point of saints: that they represent the human experience, with the reflection of God.”

As ambassadors of the transformation that is possible through Christ, the church has a unique opportunity to cast a new vision for our communities. We get to provide relief from widespread disillusionment and give eyes toward the grace of God that continues to be present with us. Our prayer is that St Luke’s especially might help shift the way we tell this current political story- to turn upside down the deprivation narrative where our largely refugee community is consistently victimized. Community art allows us this platform to make public the stories of empowerment that we’ve been telling ourselves for years now.

This time of year, we enter Hallowstide, a sacred season at St Luke’s. We have set aside five weeks to remember these stories of faith, starting in October and culminating on All Saints Day. During Hallowstide, we pass out bags to our congregation full of candles and cocoa, the images and stories of these saints, along with reflection questions for dinner table conversations and private contemplation. We tell these stories in our Godly Play room and reflect on these legacies of holiness in our sermons. We have a dress-up parade with our kids and share legacy stories in intergenerational small groups. As the weather starts to turn, as our neighbors are putting skeletons and pumpkins on their lawns, we are gathering together around dinner tables by candlelight in the cozy comfort of these meaningful and faithfilled stories, storing them up in our hearts and passing them to our children.

Now these stories spill out of our homes and church right onto our sidewalk, where, in our sometimes-challenging-to-park-at location in the heart of North Park, we’ll get enough foot traffic to hopefully start a neighborhood conversation. Our sidewalk is an evangelism tool we’re invited to steward to the neighborhood passing by. 

Our muralist, Hue Love, was the first evangelist in this work. “It was very, very interesting to meet different people from different backgrounds [while I was painting]. They would stop by and communicate to me about their experience. It was very interesting to hear, ‘Wow, what was your favorite part?’ and ‘What drew you in?’ Then to tell them why I’m painting African saints because many people notice that people of color aren’t really represented in the church in a lot of different ways. So a lot of [passersby] were curious or even happy to see that people of color are represented within the church setting. I even encouraged people to stop by the church service and actually join in. Because [the church] is a sacred place for people from all backgrounds.” 

It’s often understood that art is, most of all, about seeing. Art in the church can take that one step further- it’s about seeing a new way, pointing us towards the holy, helping the collective see God’s action and goodness anew. May this new mural of St Luke’s truly change our collective vision in North Park, and may our neighborhood be transformed. As artist Makoto Fujimura reminds us: “New Creation (art) fills in the cracks and fissures of our broken, splintered lives, and a golden light shines through, even if only for a moment, reminding us of the abundance of the world that God created, and that God is yet to create through us.”