Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
October 11, 2015
Scriptures: Psalm 96 and Matthew 13:16
Where do you find beauty? In rambling fields of wild purple lavender; or in the calm lines of a Japanese tea house; in the playful glint of sunlight on seawater or the flash of gold on a Byzantine mosaic; in the joyful eruption of children’s laughter, the angelic strains of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the resonate tones of cello and bass… In many different hands clasped, in a new friendship forged, or old wounds finally healed… where do you find beauty? Consider, for a moment. Maybe even close your eyes. Sift through the moments, the people or places that have stirred you deeply… Picture them in your mind’s eye; try to engage all your senses – sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste…
Beauty is like a sigh or sometimes a gasp. It stops us in our tracks, causes us to catch our breath, or reminds us to breathe more deeply. Beauty – which is awe, which is wonder, which is ‘wow!’
Hold on to those images you’ve conjured – the colors/textures/feelings/smells, but open your eyes if they were closed…
Did any of you picture a church? We come to church…to walk in beauty. “For there is strength and beauty in God’s sanctuary,” sings the psalmist. Not only here, but surely here. Churches, no matter what their architecture, are built to provoke a sense of wonder. They are meant to be beautiful. Those who built the soaring cathedrals did so as an act of praise. Our New England Congregational ancestors chose simple lines to calm the spirit, and clear glass windows to let the light shine in – and to permit the eye to gaze out into God’s world. Have you ever been drawn into a house of worship – not because it was Sunday morning, but because it was there, and you were walking by? Have you ever stumbled upon an outdoor chapel in the woods, or stepped into the cool, echoing halls of a renaissance-era sanctuary just to admire its dramatic scale?
Peter Hawkins, Professor of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School, wandered into churches all the time, as a boy. He went, he says, looking not necessarily for God, but for beauty. “Church was the one place where I could find architecture, color, decoration, imagery, flowers (in winter!), and an atmosphere that courted mystery. Each of the sanctuaries I visited had something to offer anyone who opened the door. They were places set up for wonder.”
Places set up for wonder. My sense is that our souls crave wonder, that we need to be awed as surely as we need human touch or air to breathe. And beauty has a way of stirring up our sense of wonder, of making our souls sing.
But what, exactly is beautiful, you might well ask. Does all beauty come from God or lead to God? Or can beauty distract from all that is holy? What are idols, after all, if not human renderings that draw our attention away from God, until we are worshipping silver and gold instead of the Maker of the Universe? The North African theologian Augustine of Hippo grappled with this very question, “oscillating between his love for music and his fear that its beauty might entice him away from God.”[1] There’s no question that beauty has been coopted by the marketplace. In the words of preacher and hymn writer Thomas Troeger, “We live in an age where beauty has been commercialized and degraded…Beauty is reduced to being young, fit, rich and glamorous.”[2]
This is not the beauty about which the psalmist speaks. We know this: that beauty is more than skin deep, that it asserts itself in unexpected places, in the wrinkles that deepen on a laughing face; or in the unlikely eruption of daisies pushing up between the cracks in a sidewalk. A member of our Bible Study observed that what we say about Christian baptism might also be said about beauty: that it is an outward and visible sign of an inward grace. An inward grace.
Author Terry Tempest Williams writes of finding beauty in a broken world. She traveled to Italy to be apprenticed to a maker of mosaics. “Mosaic,” she says, “is a conversation between what is broken.” Several years ago I traveled to Biloxi, MS, to help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. In a downtown park in the middle of Biloxi, there is a memorial to the devastating storm: a mosaic in the shape of a massive wave, made from broken bits of blue and green glass that were regurgitated by the storm. That wall is both heart-wrenching and beautiful to behold…quite literally, breath-taking. A conversation between what is broken.
I think also of the woman who tattoos the image of a winding ivy vine over the purple scar left by her mastectomy. Or the community that paints a thirty-foot mural across the wall of blighted building – or plants a community garden in an abandoned lot. Here, too, we find beauty: beauty which is life-asserting, soul-feeding, hope-engendering… full of grace.
That’s the beauty for which we come looking –beauty which has the power to soothe the soul, and heal the heart; to assure us that drudgery, fear and ugliness do not have the last word. We listen to voices of the choir, we watch the light stream through windows, we light a candle and maybe, just maybe, something opens up inside us, a window to the divine.
In his NY Times op-ed earlier this week, David Brooks reflected on the transformation of the university from an institution steeped in religious practice, to one that is entirely secular. He considers what has been lost in the process. Students now learn how to work, but may never be taught how to ask the deeper questions like, “Why should I pursue this?” or “What is my purpose?” In short, we no long talk about moral and spiritual things.
Because it’s David Brooks, he has suggestions about how to remedy this. He calls on universities to: “[F]foster transcendent experiences. If a student spends four years in regular and concentrated contact with beauty [he writes] — with poetry or music, extended time in a cathedral, serving a child with Down syndrome, waking up with loving friends on a mountain — there’s a good chance something transcendent and imagination-altering will happen.”[3]
Something transcendent and imagination-altering… Ah! There it is. THIS is why I come to church, why I suspect many of us gather here; this, indeed, is the very aim of our worship: not to guarantee that God will show up, but to cultivate the possibility that we might experience ‘something transcendent and imagination-altering’? Something that might open our eyes to the wonder of God at work in our lives and in all creation…
And why is that important? I believe our capacity to see beauty, experience wonder and activate our imagination is intimately linked with our capacity to love and to heal (ourselves and the world). To find beauty in the world, to be moved by it, to add to it, this may be our highest purpose, our way of praising God, the first Artist, our way of saying ‘Thank you!’ with our whole hearts.
Indeed, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, written in the 1600’s, asserts that our sole purpose in life is to “glorify God and enjoy [God] forever.” So, maybe we don’t come to church with that in mind, at the start. Perhaps we come, at first, like Peter Hawkins, just looking for beauty, like a plant that grows toward the light. But discovering it, we might just find our eyes – and our hearts – opened up to something more, opened to the presence of God, the possibility of grace. We might find ourselves asking each other the question that Russ Brenneman tells me he used to ask his students, “When you look at something, what do you see?”
This is a question we are invited to ask often at Saugatuck Church. As we walk the gracious and thoughtfully designed halls of our rebuilt church, listen to the strains of our Steinway, or explore the works of art in our Thin Places Project; even as we create the labyrinth that is taking shape on our front lawn. What do we see: an art object or a window to the holy? Something beautiful, or the source of that beauty?[4]
Here, then, is my prayer for Saugatuck Church: that together we might walk in beauty. That doing so might change the way we see the world and see each other; that it might transform our very understanding of wonder; that beauty in this sanctuary might inspire us to look beyond this sanctuary, until everywhere we look, we see the beauty which is God at work in the world creating, mending and transforming. That seeing, our hearts might be stirred to sing God’s Praise:
With the heavens, to sing: “Let the earth rejoice!”
With the sea and all that fills it;
With the field and everything in it;
With the trees of the forest, to sing for joy, to sing for joy!
Scriptures
Psalm 96 – New Revised Standard Version, adapted
O sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, bless God’s name;
tell of God’s salvation from day to day.
3 Declare God’s glory among the nations,
God’s marvelous works among all the peoples.
4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
God is to be revered above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Honor and majesty are before the LORD;
strength and beauty are in God’s sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due God’s name;
bring an offering, and come into God’s courts.
9 Worship the Lord in holy splendor;
tremble before the LORD, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord is king!
The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
God will judge the peoples with equity.”
11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
12 let the field exult, and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
13 before the Lord; for God is coming,
coming to judge the earth.
God will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with God’s truth.
Matthew 13:16 – New Revised Standard Version
16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.
[1] Thom Troeger in Reflections, Spring 2015, p. 13
[2] In Reflections, Spring 2015, p. 14.
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/opinion/david-brooks-the-big-university.html?_r=1
[4] Saugatuck Church is forming an Arts and Spirituality Team to help us explore these questions.