Christ's Mission Statement

In my Creative Process, Spiritual Practice class, we discussed the first few chapters of Makoto Fujimura's Culture Care:  Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life.  We talked about Fujimura's quote from Isaiah 6:2-3 that he used when giving a presentation at an art gallery in SoHo:

"to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair."

He talked about it as a call for beauty, which is not how I have interpreted it.

I talked about the text in the context of the Jesus in the temple as an adult in at least one Gospel and that this text was the one he used and said had been fulfilled that day.  I had never thought of it as Jesus declaring the importance of beauty or of the importance of creativity.  I have always been taught that it was Christ's mission statement and creating art and beauty was not mentioned as being part of the mission statement.

I have always been in groups that focused on the earlier part of Isaiah and presented Jesus as having arrived to disrupt the empire in a social justice kind of way, not as an artist kind of way.  Might Jesus have been advocating that we use beauty and art to disrupt the empire?  Was he suggesting that art and beauty can achieve a more just society?

These juxtapositions have stuck with me for several days now which is why I wanted to record them here.  I'll let them continue to percolate to see if other new possibilities emerge.