This devotional essay is based on a sermon delivered at the Chapel of the Resurrection on October 26, 2025, on the occasion of Reformation Sunday, Homecoming Weekend, and the conclusion of Valparaiso University’s Lutheran Centennial Celebration (1925 – 2025). Watch the full sermon here.
This mosaic of ceramic tile set in concrete and framed by brick is the work of the Peter Domen Studio of St. Paul, Minnesota. The mosaic, 14.75 feet in length and 7.5 feet tall, is located on an exterior wall just north of the main doors on the west facade of the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana.
Four other works at the Chapel are from Peter Dohmen. A smaller installation of tile and limestone around the northwest corner of the building serves as the ceremonial cornerstone. The nearly 100-foot-tall Munderlow windows describe the Holy Trinity in a series of discrete symbols and dominate the east end, taking full advantage of the rising sun. A smaller window, the Meyer window, divides two groups of organ pipe divisions at the west end and pays tribute to the gift of music. Finally, marble inlays cover the main altar of the Chapel and depict the flying beings associated with the four Evangelists in Dohmen’s characteristic style.
The Christian Scholar’s Mosaic is far less explicitly liturgical in its subject. Instead, it is a symbolic display of Valparaiso University’s identity and mission, as an independent Lutheran university. The mosaic was installed during the construction of the Chapel, which was dedicated on September 27, 1959. That the University chapel is the location of a presentation of the University’s identity and mission speaks to the centrality of the Chapel in the University’s self-understanding.
In preparation for a close reading of this mosaic, it is worth remembering that the Lutheran Reformation emerged from a university environment. The University of Wittenberg was founded in 1502 by Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, just 15 years before Luther posted his thesis on the door of the Wittenberg castle church. It had been founded as an institution to promote humanist studies. This rise of humanism is the great hinge point between the medieval and modern worlds. Intellectuals increasingly sought to study ancient texts in their original languages. Though Medieval theologians had known Aristotle, they were reading Plato’s works for the first time in centuries! Biblical scholars were keen to read the biblical texts in the original Hebrew and Greek and were not content to rehearse long-held explanations and interpretations. Everyone at the University was interested in the best data available. And with the 1450 development of the printing press in Europe (Chinese culture had movable type 500 years earlier), the best data was increasingly available. It is in this milieu that Luther and his colleagues came to their foundational insights into the nature of the Gospel, precisely because they had returned to the text’s source.
So, as one looks at the image before us, the first thing one might notice is three human figures: one in the middle and two on either side. Typically, we orient ourselves in an image by our frame of reference—left and right—but for this reading, we’ll be orienting ourselves according to the central figure’s left and right hand, as though we are in the image. This orientation is a key aspect of the mosaic’s meaning.
In the middle, we’ve got a seated figure with one hand raised, the other cradling a book; the black-and-white lines are the pages. The book’s binding is represented by a small white V in the middle of the lines. The book symbolizes the technology by which we transmit information from one age to another. It stands in for every technology through which human culture is transmitted across generations. These technologies allow us to advance human knowledge.
But there’s importance in the form of this symbol as well, because we can recognize in that binding what book scholars call a codex, where all of the pages are stacked, one on top of the other, and then they’re bound on one side. The codex was a new technology in the first century. It is significant in its form because it becomes the preferred technology of the early church. The codex is so completely connected to the early church that later artists, whenever they’re trying to portray an assembly of prophets of the Old Testament and the evangelists of the New Testament, will distinguish between the two groups by placing a scroll into the hands of the Old Testament prophets and a codex into the hands of the New Testament evangelists.
The codex/book is a symbol of the gospel.
But it’s more than that because the printed press was integral to the spread of the Reformation ideas. It is the book, bookbinding, and book publishing that are at the center of the shift from the medieval to the modern world. This new technology enables reformers to spread their ideas widely, even as it gives them access to ancient texts in a form they can use in their own libraries. The technology of the book is at the center.
The central figure is raising their right hand. In art, especially in the art of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, anytime we see a figure in the image doing anything with their hands, it’s a signal that they are talking. In the art of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, everybody talks with their hands.
So this figure is talking—to whom is it speaking? Let us turn our attention to their face. Hands and faces are so, so crucial that in studios where the master artist is employing apprentices to produce the work of the studio, the master artist reserves the face and the hands for themselves. We see the face of this central figure, the scholar, sitting in the middle, and we can tell by the tip of the scholar’s head and the subtle placement of the irises that the scholar is speaking to the figures, a little shadowed on their left shoulder. These figures are smaller and they are blue, unlike the scholar’s yellows and whites. Maybe they are behind the scholar. They might even be behind the scholar, not only physically but also in time. I wonder if the scholar isn’t having a conversation, via the book, with previous generations of scholarship.
What I love about the image of those five figures gathered there is that not only are three of them directing their attention to whatever the scholar has to say about the inheritance that they have received from these previous generations, but also two of the figures, the ones furthest away from the scholar, are engaged in conversation with one another. They are having their own little sidebar. So this is a conversation across generations and within the scholarly tradition, as wisdom and knowledge are passed down through the media technologies we have available to us.
Off to the scholar’s left, we see a figure standing there. This figure, as indicated by the position of the hands, is not speaking. In fact, if we look really closely, we will see that the figure has been writing. The figure holds a pen and a piece of paper or another writing surface. Upon closer inspection, we see black mathematical symbols. This figure appears to be doing mathematics. Below them are scales of evaluation. Maybe they are scales of justice, perhaps they are laboratory scales. Over the left shoulder of this mathematician, we see a white lightning bolt. To underscore that this is intended as a reference to science and technology, below the lightning is Edison’s light bulb.
We have the sciences, and in the blue figures, the humanities. There it is—the whole College of Arts and Sciences gathered there, off to the scholar’s left hand. This is Luther’s kingdom of the left hand, where, under God, human accomplishment and human service advance human knowledge, and society works itself out as people use their gifts for the sake of one another in acts of service.
On the opposite side is a third figure. The figure is speaking, we know this because their right hand is raised. Typically, when we see that gesture, we say it’s a right hand raised in blessing, probably so. The left hand is clutching a cross. The 1961 guide to the Chapel of the Resurrection and its art states that this figure represents “the gospel imperative,” the command to go and proclaim the gospel to all the nations. I think that reading leaves money on the table. Frequently, especially in early Christian art, Jesus isn’t depicted on the cross. Jesus has a cross, and he is carrying it like a scepter. It is the symbol of his authority. This figure is best read as being Jesus. Jesus has a halo. It happens to be green. Off to the scholar’s right hand, we see the kingdom of the right hand, ruled by grace, where forgiveness is always given and mercy is extended.
This is Jesus, hand raised, speaking blessing over the scholar’s enterprise.
Those are the main elements of this mosaic. The question then is, what does this mean? Well, to get at the meaning of this image and the mission of this university, we have to let it go to the birds.
There are two birds in this mosaic. The first is clearly visible down there at the bottom. It’s a little owl. Again, the 1961 guide identifies this as the owl of wisdom, the wise owl. But anytime in the symbolic tradition of Western culture, anything called an owl of wisdom is always Athena’s owl.
This then is Athena’s owl.
In the Iliad, Homer called Athena the bright-eyed one. She’s called bright-eyed Athena because she is brilliant and insightful. She is the giver of knowledge and wisdom. Nearly every time she is portrayed, she’s accompanied by a little owl. The connection is so tight that, though this little species of owl in English is literally called the “little owl”, in Greek, they’re called the bright-eyed ones because of their bright faces.
Athena’s owl brings Athens to this mosaic—Athens, the philosopher’s home. The guide of 1961 observes that, off the owl’s left wing, there are several pyramids that “symbolize ancient knowledge and accomplishment.” I would also observe that pyramids are undeniably African. There is a strain of thought that has asserted itself in our current culture, that Western culture is white culture. This is an error. In Athens and elsewhere in the ancient world, people were drawing good things from wherever they could find them, whether in Africa, Asia, or elsewhere. It was all good. When the reformers reached for ancient texts, they did not discriminate. They went for any good data they could find. That’s how human society flourishes. This is Athens, in all of its international and multicultural glory. That’s the one bird.
The other bird is harder to find. The other bird is a dove. It is over the scholar’s head. It is defined only in silhouette. It is the dove of the Holy Spirit descending upon the scholar. And just in case we don’t recognize the baptismal significance, the artist provides us with blue waves of water, filling the space between the dove and the scholar’s head. This is the scholar’s baptismal identity as a child of God.
What is really profound in this image, maybe the most profound thing in this whole mosaic, is that the dove is made entirely of concrete—the foundation for the entire mosaic.
I have not seen every mosaic in the world. But I have looked at quite a few, and I have never seen a mosaic where a figure isn’t created by the tiles. Here, the image of the dove is created by the ground beneath the tile. The power of the Holy Spirit is the foundation for this whole mosaic. It is the means by which all of this work is being done. The dove, as a sign of the scholar’s baptismal identity, represents “Jerusalem,” because, playing off a line by Tertullian, the early church father, this university, according to Valparaiso University’s influential university president from the time of the Chapel’s construction, Valpo is the place where Athens and Jerusalem meet.
The University motto, IN LUCE TUA VIDEMUS LUCEM (In thy light, we see light. Psalm 36:9), is written along a horizontal line that runs between the bottom and middle third of the mosaic, just below the Scholar’s book. “VIDEMUS” is “we see.” Members of the University community are in this together. As we view this work of art, we are not just looking at a separate object. We are engaged in the viewing. As viewers, we are participants in this work of art.
Brain science now recognizes that the neural networks that are firing in our brains, whenever we look at a work of art, or listen to a piece of music, are the same neural networks that are firing when we’re gathered around the dinner table, having a conversation with people you love. Art brings us into a conversation. It is a social event. And so we are gathered into this circle with the scholar and their conversation partners. This mosaic visualizes the University community as a full participant in a legacy of Christian scholarship, that is, scholarship under the blessing of Jesus Christ, using the best data available.
The University seal and two milestone dates, the date of the University’s founding, 1859, and the date that it began to run as a Lutheran institution of higher learning, round out the mosaic.
– Pastor Jim
Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.
