PRACTICING OUR FAITH:
BEAUTY
Psalm 19; Luke 9:28-36
February 14, 2010 ~ Transfiguration Sunday
Rev. Janet Robertson Duggins
Beauty. It’s hard to define, isn’t it? Whether we’re talking about nature, or art, or people, or something else … it’s hard to put into words just exactly what it is that causes us to be touched with a sense of awe or appreciation, to feel gratitude just for being able to experience the moment, to catch our breath or whisper, “oh, that’s so beautiful.” I think of those words from the hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth” : the “mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight.” It’s mysterious and although most everybody has known that feeling, we don’t all have that response to the same things.
What are some of the things which give you that awareness of the power of beauty?
Beauty … encompasses a wide range of experiences We might think first of visual images – the beauty in a mountain vista or in a painting or fireworks – but we know beauty through our other senses, too: music or birdsong or poetry, the taste of something delicious, the smell of roses, the feel of soft silk. There can also be a beauty in an idea or a new insight, or the smooth functioning of well-designed tool or machine.
It’s definitely something more than just decorative or useful, though: the nature of beauty is that it touches us; It engages us, it connects us, and invites (or sometimes seems to compel) our response. (Austin, pp 14-15)
Beauty seems somehow to be of God. Perhaps that is why people of nearly all times and places have both sensed the presence of God in the experience of beauty, and expressed their worship through the creation of beauty.
Among all my many reasons why I could never be a fundamentalist again – biblical literalism and lack of critical thinking and narrow definition of what it means to be Christian, and sexism - probably the one that is most powerful for me is that fundamentalism doesn’t have in it any real place for beauty.
What matters is believing the right things and saying the
right prayer… and getting as many other people to do the same thing so that
they too can be saved. It’s all very
cut and dried, almost mechanistic. Things
like beauty are incidental… nice, perhaps, but ultimately unimportant. I can’t imagine, any more, practicing a faith
in which the
But even in the larger and less narrow protestant church, of which we are part, it’s hard to say just exactly what “beauty” means to us.
We have a history of mixed emotions on this topic.
“From the earliest days of Christianity, when new believers painted signs of their faith on the walls of Roman catacombs, art has pointed the way to God. Creativity is at the heart of every spiritually vital religious movement.”
There were the various periods of iconoclasm in which Christians destroyed beautiful churches and works of art made by earlier Christians, on the grounds that such things were idolatrous or ostentatious or distracting from the “spiritual.” Few believers of any kind would do that sort of thing now, but the sentiments behind those events played a big role in shaping the character of the protestant churches in general, not only those we would call “fundamentalist.” You might think, perhaps of the Puritans, with their unadorned meeting houses and reputation for stern simplicity.
And then there were the ideals of the period we call “the Enlightenment,” which exalted “reason” above all else. Science and knowledge and exploration were where truth was to be found; achievement and invention were power. These ideas led many people away from religion but they influenced the church too. That’s especially true in the mainline protestant church, where we have been eager to show that we are rational, that faith and critical thinking can go together, that we can let go of dogma that can’t be “proven,” that our religion is not mere emotionalism. Beauty, which touches the emotions and defies explanation, doesn’t fit in comfortably here.
Sure, there were times when people reacted in another direction, wanted those beautiful churches and experiences of holiness and mystery and a faith to touch the heart … but for the past couple of centuries, American Christianity has been a struggle between rationalism and mysticism … with rationalism mostly winning.
And so, as Diana Butler Bass says, “People expect mainline Protestantism to be intelligent, but they don’t expect it to be beautiful…. After all, beauty is not the point. Knowing about God, thinking about God is the point.” (p.206) She goes on to say: “By the time I was growing up, mainline Protestantism amounted to little more than secular church.” Ouch. For me, that’s not so very different from fundamentalism.
But more and more these days, the church is awakening again to the power of beauty as spiritual practice.
Sometimes of course beauty and art are regarded merely as a “tool” … used to proclaim a particular message or accomplish some other, ‘larger’ goal. But embracing beauty as a faith practice is about engaging with mystery, about knowing God’s goodness in a way beyond words.
We practice beauty; it’s always been a part of who we are, although we may not have given it much thought: choir, interpretive arts, prayer shawls, art exhibits, the crosses we made and exhibited during Lent a couple of years ago.
There are so many ways churches practice beauty: They plant and enjoy meditation gardens. They sponsor art classes for kids. They host concerts of all kinds. They paint icons. They treasure and care for stained glass windows that tell the stories of faith. They write poetry and read and talk about books. They use their gifts to make their places of worship expressive of God’s beauty and holiness. They participate in praise and liturgy. They encourage each other’s gifts. They celebrate the seasons of the church year. They know how powerful symbols can be to connect people to faith.
The whole idea of beauty as spiritual practice is not without problems and controversy:
For starters, beauty is subjective.
What’s more beautiful:
a natural object, like a flower, or a great work of art?
a flock of chickens or a carefully planned garden?
a graceful athletic performance or a symphony?
a feat of engineering and design, or the wonders of the universe?
a classical painting or a modern sculpture or a velvet Jesus?
It’s not so easy to say what it means for us as a community to practice beauty, when we may not mean the same thing by it!
I wonder, too: does this open the door for us to be elitist (my taste is better than yours, or our taste is better than theirs)? There is potential to be ethnocentric (what’s beautiful is MY culture’s idea of beauty). Or even more troubling: what I think is beautiful is more holy than what you think is beautiful.
Of course, as many before us have understood, there’s always the potential for a beautiful object or the artist or even the pursuit of beauty to become more important than God (one of the concerns of the reformation roots), or with respect to the beauty of nature, for the creation to be more adored than the Creator.
Because we are sinful people in a fallen and broken world, our ideas of beauty are sometimes flawed. It’s true that sometimes beauty is only “skin deep.” We can get selfish about the beautiful things we want for ourselves. We can’t help but know that many beautiful things in our world – from magnificent cathedrals to diamonds to lovely vacation spots – have terrible injustices behind them.
And one of the most tricky issues of all: art and beauty not “practical” or useful. It’s often said that we can do better, more important things with our money. Those who are passionate about social justice and helping those in need often push us to wonder whether caring about beauty is really as vital as feeding the poor or advocating for human rights.
Still, in spite of all that, beauty continues to move and inspire, to draw people into awareness of God’s presence. Beauty continues to be a powerful way for God’s people to express their faith and gratitude and praise.
More and more people are discovering that beauty can be a doorway to understanding faith and knowing God.
One former seminary student said that it was impossible for her to understand the Trinity (God is One in Three? why three?!) from all the arguments she heard and the theology she read… until she heard a professor describe it as an “elegant” vision of God. A young man was confused by hearing people debate over the historicity of the story of Jesus birth. He said it’s “so beautiful it has to be true whether it happened or not.” Not very rational you might say. But those insights have connected people in a deep way with God – and opened up new understandings for them – in a way that never happened for many people via “propositional” faith expressions.
I’ve been reading Diana Butler Bass and another writer, Richard Cartwright Austin on the connections between beauty and faith. And both of them (to my surprise) led me to … Jonathan Edwards, one of the leading preachers of the 1700’s, in the Puritan tradition, who is probably most well known for his classic (and scary) hellfire and brimstone sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (which by the way was over an hour in length!)
What’s not so well known about Jonathan Edwards is that he also thought and wrote a great deal about beauty. He believed that beauty was God’s most distinctive characteristic, that beauty conveys the expressive and self-giving character of God – openness to beauty opens us to enjoy God.
I was really taken with Jonathan Edwards’ notion of
creation: instead of the traditional
Christian way of talking about God creating the world from nothing “ex nihilo”
he preferred to say that God created “ex extra” … out of God’s own over-flowing
abundance and beauty. (
Edwards “suggested that the apprehension of beauty, what he called ‘the divine and supernatural light,’ was the pathway to true Christianity and the only possible antidote to intellectual and spiritual aridness.” (p.209) He was certainly not suggesting that anything beautiful would inevitably lead anyone to true faith in Jesus Christ; but he did believe that genuine faith couldn’t be only intellectual assent to doctrines and morally correct behavior. Genuine faith meant engagement of the whole person, heart and soul, mind and body with God’s goodness, beauty and holiness.
That’s really the key to the power of beauty as a practice and value in the life of a community of faith. It says, in a strong and concrete way, that Christian faith is not reducible either to a set of beliefs or a set of correct behaviors. It beckons us to open our hearts to mystery and to the presence of the divine. It demands a response of the whole self. It changes us. Consider the scripture we read today: the Transfiguration story is one of the most amazing passages of the gospels! At it’s heart is the experience of beauty, glory, mystery, wonder, worship - - for Peter, James and John… and for anybody who hears how Luke tells about it. You could try and substitute a paragraph on “what this story teaches about Jesus,” but I don’t think it would be the same.
When we embrace beauty as spiritual practice, it keeps us from the kind of religion that has often been described as “dry and lifeless” or more bluntly as “boring.” God is beautiful, the world is beautiful, life is beautiful … when we believe this, and live it, how can our faith be boring?!
Practicing beauty is about connection with God’s creation. God made it and it’s good, beautiful, and interesting. We are invited to pay attention and inspired to curiosity. In a way, this makes the whole process of learning – especially when it engages our whole self – a holy work.
Beauty may seem like a luxury when we
remember how many people around and among us are hurting: But consider that beauty connects us to God
at those times when we are too tired or hurting or have no words to offer. Beauty can heal the spirit.
It was moving beyond words to hear about
musicians from a music school in
We often hear, nowadays, that the church is
changing. That often implies a sense of
loss or uncertainty or fear for the future.
But Diana Butler Bass, reflecting on the practice of beauty in the
church, gives it a different spin. She
writes, “Christianity is changing – from being the Truth of rational
speculation to being an exploration of the exquisite truthfulness of
beauty.” (p.210)
Resources:
Christianity for the Rest
of Us, Diana Butler Bass, 2006.
Beauty of the Lord, Richard Cartwright Austin, 1988.