You can almost take the temperature of a community by dropping an act of beauty into the midst of it and watching how it is received.
Look at the story in John’s gospel where Mary, the sister of Lazarus, pours costly perfume all over Jesus’ feet, filling the house with the sweet aroma of the perfume (Jn. 12:1-8). A thing of beauty dropped down into the midst of a fraught situation; Lazarus has just been raised from the dead and now the overwhelmingly sweet scent, the lavish gesture, the extravagant touch of Mary’s act fills the house. Then Judas Iscariot barks out, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (Jn. 12:5)
The thermometer shows that Judas is sick with the fever of this world, obsessed with utility. When the response to beauty is reduced to a protest on the grounds of functionality (which is what Judas is doing), we have lost sight of our primary calling as people who follow the way of Jesus. We are living in a distorted reality when value can only be ascribed to useful and productive efforts. We were made to be more than an assembly line after all.
Alexander Schmemann says it best when he writes, “Beauty is never “necessary”, “functional” or “useful”. And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love.”
Love is our reason for being. Not utility, but love.
I’ve said this before but as we move forward with plans for a new sanctuary, it is easy for me to fall into the Judas trap. The nations rage, SNAP benefits are reduced, our city has a major housing shortage, temporary protective status was just removed for Haitians and Syrians and the Islamic Community in San Diego is still enduring the lasting effects of grief and trauma after being terrorized by active shooters. How can we afford to spend all this money on a new sanctuary?
Through the lens of Schmemann, my question has changed; in a world so wrought with angst and anguish where churches, communities, families and the very earth herself are knee deep in trouble, how can we who follow Jesus not prioritize a place set apart for the purpose of lavishing the earth and all her creatures with a love so potent, that it adorns the beloved in beauty; with bread and wine, with music and art, with beeswax candles that smell like heaven, lit in the hands of 120 people on Christmas Eve or a brass quartet on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Easter Sunday. This is the church’s work.
The world is in trouble and part of its trouble is that we have forgotten that our primary calling is love and if that is the case then we have permission to be about the work of adorning our beloved in beauty. If you are sick with the same fever as Judas, thinking you exist for productivity, lay down and put a hot compress on your forehead. After it passes, walk into your sanctuary, your children’s school, your dining room, or down the sidewalk of your local strip mall. What act of beauty is called for there? It might be met with resistance. It might be called frivolity. It is, after all, not work that makes any sense in the humdrum ethos of productivity. But fear not, it is God’s work, it has power to revive and restore this world to its rightful state: belovedness.
Peace,
Pastor Bekki
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For The Life of The World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy