The disappearing diamond: The Redemption of Vanity by Diemut Strebe, with technical expertise by MIT
In a board room on the sixth floor of the New York Stock Exchange there has recently been displayed a work of conceptual art that consists of a nearly 17-carat natural yellow diamond that you cannot see. What you can see is a smallish blob of black material supported on a slender golden stand under a glass cloche. The diamond has been treated by scientists at MIT, who covered its highly reflective, multi-faceted surface with a coating of minuscule carbon nanotubes, which are vastly skinnier than a human hair, and which absorb 99.965% of light, resulting in the blackest black you can find earth.*
Black, as you probably know, isn’t really a pigment, it is “the total absence of color due to the absence or absorption of light.”** The idea of the art installation was to produce a work “in which the most brilliant material on earth (a diamond) is covered with the most light-absorbing material (carbon nanotubes). Both are made of the same element, but with different atomic arrangements….”*** Writing about the piece, the NY Times coined the sly phrase, “blacker is the new black,”**** which, if we could be sure to leave aside any racist connotations, might be a motto for our times.
It certainly is a contrast to the message of the Gospel this morning: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” The “darkness” of which St. John speaks, may, of course, be literal, but more profoundly, the term is meant to account for all manner of absences of light - literally and figuratively - including the darkest darkness, the blackest black.
While there is nothing sinister happening at the MIT lab that produced the blackest black, on the figurative side, I find it hard to avoid the observation that we live in a world that is busy perfecting the absence of light. Ironically, you can see the deepening darkness all around us. Poverty. Warfare. Addiction. Greed. Violence. Selfishness. Exploitation. Of course there is more. With all our cultural advances, we continue to live in a deeply unfair and profoundly unjust society. How can this be? Light is absorbed ever more effectively. Blacker is the new black.
A little later in John’s Gospel, just a few lines after John 3:16, John says, “…the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light….” I always find myself flinching a little when I read those words, because they seem to me to be so true.
There is a parable being told in a board room on the sixth floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I’m sure that parable can be told in a number of ways. In one form it goes something like this: God can give us something of incredible beauty and value, and we can make it disappear; we can wring the light out of it; we can make it dark, then we can take that darkness and make it darker.
If the disappearing diamond is a parable, then what does the diamond stand for? Do we miss the diamond when we can’t see it? Can we remember what color it was? Are we able to restore it to its former luster?
Maybe the parable is teaching us that the diamond is God, and asks us to consider what it’s like to live in a world in which God has been obscured, eclipsed, rendered undetectable. Is God still present or powerful when 99.965% of the light has been absorbed into the blackest black? There are places in our world where this is timely question.
The Times tells us that “the key to true ultra-blackness is creating a material that absorbs light across the electromagnetic spectrum — not just visible light, but out to the far infrared, too.”**** I worry that as a society we are getting too good at absorbing light across the whole spectrum, and not just the visible light, but out to the far reaches of the spectrum, too. And when I hear the prologue of John’s Gospel, I think that this is exactly what God did not intend for us. God did not intend all this darkness that persists in the world. God intended light.
One character in the parable being told in the board room on the sixth floor of the New York Stock Exchange is an armed security guard. The artist called for the presence of this person not only to protect the diamond, but also to add meaning to the experience of gazing at a very large diamond that has been rendered more or less invisible before your eyes, by providing a reminder of the diamond’s value. After all, it’s hard to conceive of a 17-carat yellow diamond that you can’t see. All of the light that should pass through it, and around it, and bounce off of it has been swallowed up, and the diamond, which is is still there, is nowhere to be seen.
I wish that we could borrow this exhibit when its run ends at the Stock Exchange. And I wish we could display the disappeared diamond here at Saint Mark’s. The Lady Chapel would be a good place for it. And instead of a security guard - or maybe in addition to one - I wish we could station a priest, or a deacon, or anyone from the congregation who would stand there and read from the Gospel of John, the first eighteen verses that we read this morning. You could sign up on clipboards; the Verger would manage the sign-up sheets. And for, maybe, a week during regular business hours - or let’s say from 9:30 to 4, Monday to Friday, the same hours as the NYSE - someone would stand there in the Lady Chapel and read the prologue of John’s Gospel, standing in front of the altar, proclaiming the Gospel directly over the darkened diamond the way we proclaim the Good News over a casket or an urn at a funeral, when we are afraid that the darkness deepens, and we ask where God is to be found.
There would be the diamond, cloaked in its blacker new black: invisible but still there, every bit as brilliant, radiant, and light as it was when it was pried from the earth and cut to make it gleam, until we engineered a way to make it disappear.
The volunteer priest, or deacon, or lay person would stand there in front of the priceless altar of the Lady Chapel, the security guard not far away, the diamond, blackest black, perched on its little golden stand, under its glass cloche, and over and over again we’d read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…. the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth…. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace…. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.”
How many other diamonds might there be that we can no longer see, having rendered them invisible with the blackest black? What does the diamond stand for? Do we miss it when we can’t see it? Can we remember what color it was? Can we ever restore it to its former luster?
If it’s accurate that blacker is the new black, then we need more than ever to remind ourselves as often as possible that what has come into being in Christ was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There is one light that the darkness will never overcome. And we have received grace upon grace. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, will not, and cannot not overcome it.
Thanks be to God.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street
29 December 2019
*information on the installation is from www.the-redemption-of-vanity.com, the author of the concept is artist Diemut Strebe, collaborating with the MIT Center for Art, Science, & Technology
**Oxford English Dictionary entry for “black”
*** “How to Make a Diamond Disappear” by Tyler Foggatt, in The New Yorker, 4 Nov 2019 issue
**** Natalie Angier, “Ultra-black Is the New Black,” NY Times, 11 November 2019