Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo + September 15, 2024
Beguiled by Beauty Week 5 - The Beauty of a World Without a ‘Why’
In his sermon for the fifth week of the Beguiled by Beauty worship series, Pastor Hector invites the us to shift from asking "why" to asking "how" as we seek to understand God’s presence in the challenges we face. Using the Song of Songs and his recent experiences in Serbia, he reflects on the beauty of love that pursues and embraces us, even in moments of pain and division. He emphasizes the need for vulnerability in our relationships with one another and with God, as we are all seen as beloved and beautiful in God’s eyes.
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, lightly edited for readability by Chat GPT
Grace to you and peace from God, our Father, Mother, Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our sibling, our friend, our lover. And we said, "Amen."
It's good to be back with you today. Last Sunday—I don't know if some of you noticed—but I was, uh, watching the first part of the service. It was evening, and we were preparing for a short devotional service in the evening with, uh, other partners, other clergy, uh, in our denomination in the ELCA, but also with other counterparts: bishops, archbishops, and pastors of the Russian church. So I saw 15 minutes of the service here. I was checking that you were behaving, so that you wouldn't scare Pastor Beverly! So I saw everything was okay, and I went to the other service. And gladly, we are here today, and we thank God for that.
One of the things that I discovered when I was, uh, listening to Pastor Bev's message is that, on my way and before I went to Serbia, I started preparing the message for today. And then, when I heard the message that Pastor Bev was preaching, I said, "You got my message!" So I had to make up a message for today. Let's see how it goes, but I'm very thankful for the words that you brought, Pastor Bev, and for the reminder of a God who pursues us and is always looking for us, no matter how the world—or how we ourselves—may think we look or whether we are worthy or not. We have a God who finds us, and I think that's the message we have today.
And then I started looking at the message, and I looked at the book of Song of Songs, as David said, the Song of Solomon. And I said, "Boy, I didn't know I was going to get into this!" We normally don't preach about this in the church, and now I know why. One of the reasons it was more interesting to me is because I remember that when I was young, growing up in a church in Mexico—I've shared this with you before—it had a more conservative approach to theology. This book was like the PG-13 book of the Bible that you, as a teenager, had to read when your parents were not around, for the language and the images that were there, or for the images that might be created in your mind. So we don't read this book very much, but I'm glad that we will have at least these few minutes to reflect on this book.
This book contains eight chapters that are a collection of poems. The name "Song of Songs" comes from the Hebrew idiom that repeats the word, and in translation, it would be something like "the greatest song of all songs" or "the mother of all songs," whatever you want to call it—the greatest song of all songs. It explores love and desire, but not desire in the sense that society has led us to understand it, but that yearning to be with the ones we love, the yearning to feel complete and fulfilled by sharing life in an intimate way that goes beyond the superficial ways the world sometimes teaches about love or relationships.
Some scholars say that in this book, we see images of the bride and the bridegroom seeking each other, finding each other, wandering in between those times, and how love and desire play in the hearts of these two individuals. Some scholars, again, say that the vision of the poet was perhaps an allegory symbolizing the passionate exchange between God and God's people. But also, it may show a colorful depiction of intimacy between lovers. In my view, I think this book invites us and calls us to see others in the way that God sees every person and all creation—beautiful, whole, and impregnated with God-given dignity.
From the beginning, when we started this series, I was talking about how, in order for us to live a life of contemplation and to be able to see God's beauty in every day of life, we need to be intentional. We need to experience intentionality and also practice it. Well, I believe that in this passage, God is telling us of God's intentionality to look for us and to see us as the beauty of God's creation. But at the same time, I believe that this passage talks about love—the power of love, but also the pain that love can cause in us.
I don't know about you, but at least in my case, I believe that the person who could hurt me the most—or the person who I could hurt the most—would be the person who loves me, or the person who I love. Because love requires vulnerability, and when we are in a relationship of love—and I'm not just talking about between partners or a couple, I'm talking about loving one another as human beings, as siblings in Christ, as members of a community, as members of a society, as members of a nation with other nations—when we talk about loving each other, it requires vulnerability. And that vulnerability means that if we do something to somebody else, it will hurt deeply because of the intimate relationship created between us. We need to be mindful of that, and I invite you to think about this.
One of the things that the book we are reading talks about is a world without "why." I think that we like to ask the question "why," especially when we are children. I remember that my daughter, when she was growing—and I believe this is the case for all children, maybe even you when you were young, as I was—every time you say something, the child will say, "Why?" And you answer, and the next question is, "Why?" And you answer a third time, and the question again is "Why?" I think that’s part of the development of a child. But as adults, sometimes the "why" becomes more about wanting to control things—wanting to know so that we can control, so that we can have power, so that we can decide for others.
In fact, there are techniques we call the "five whys" when trying to solve a problem. I don’t know if you’ve been part of that, but in some areas of work, you need to ask five times "why, why, why" to get to the bottom of the issue and solve a problem. But I think that this passage is asking and inviting us to think about not only the "why." I read a book a long time ago by a pastor talking about prayer and pastoral care, and it said that many times we, as Christians, tend to ask God, "Why? Why me? Why does this happen to me? Why do bad things happen to me and to others who believe?" The pastor challenges us, as we read the book, to stop asking "why" and instead ask "how." How is God present in the midst of this challenge that I'm facing? That helps us see things and experience things in a very different way. "How" describes a process, but "why" describes a reason or motive.
Many times, as I said, we ask these questions—we ask others "why," we ask God "why." It is a constant battle on how to remain fully present and engaged—alive in ministry, alive in relationships, alive in activities with others—that very easily can become mundane, routine, and empty. I think we are challenged with this passage and with the series we are working on together. It is about how we engage with one another and how we see how God is present in the beauty of every person and in the beauty of all creation that surrounds us.
As you know, last week, I was in Serbia. I was meeting with our companion synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in European Russia and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. I'm not going to go into the acronyms because they are very long, but we were meeting with them. To be honest, I was going without knowing exactly what to think or why things are the way they are in Russia. But as I was there, listening to their stories, and as I was able to see them in person, I could understand the importance of asking "how." How is God present in the midst of this gathering in Serbia?
Let me show you a few pictures here And let's go to our first. Our first, as you can see on the upper left, we have the group of the companions. You see, from the left to the right, we see Mary Mueller, a member of Bethlehem in Maryville. You have Bishop Shelly in the front, and in the back, of course, is me trying to make sure that you see me. Then we have Pastor Ivan of a church in Moscow. The taller pastor is Archbishop Vladimir Proov, who is the presiding bishop of the diocese in Russia. Then, Bishop Serg, who is the bishop of the European Russia churches.
Next, to the right, you can see Bishop Shelly with all of them, and there is another pastor from the Ural, in the far left, behind the Archbishop. Below, on the left, you can see the whole group that was there in Russia: all the pastors and representatives from the Northeast Minnesota Synod, the Central States Synod, accompanying the Northwest Washington Synod, and all the companion pastors in Russia that you see in the back.
The next slide shows Archbishop Proov sharing with us. You can see the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia with the three bishops: Archbishop Proov and Bishop Serge, and another bishop who wasn’t with us, the bishop for Far East Russia. On the bottom, you see a map of Russia. You can’t see the names of the cities, but what I wanted to mention is the extent of the territory of the Lutheran Church in Russia, which stretches from Kaliningrad all the way to Vladivostok. They told us that in their two dioceses that comprise this larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, there are eight time zones. For those of us who struggle to coordinate meetings, imagine the challenges they face coordinating meetings between the church in Vladivostok and the one in Kaliningrad.
Pastor Judy, who is here from the synod, I was thinking, sometimes we complain, and probably we, as associates to the bishop and DEMs, complain that we need to go from one side of the synod to the other. Well, it would take a helicopter to get to some places in Russia! We can see that they have 269 congregations, 59 pastors, and 170 parishioners. They serve around 20,000 parishioners across these two dioceses of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia.
In the next slide, you’ll see some of the scenery. In the upper left, you can see the Danube River. I walked along its banks and got some sand on my shoes, which I don’t want to shake off because it’s important to me to keep it there. Then, you see the churches in the plaza in Novi Sad, Serbia, where we met. That fortress, which, according to history, was never conquered, was a great place to visit.
I wanted to share these moments to give you an idea of my experience in Serbia and with our Russian leaders. But more than anything else, I want to reflect on the call we have as Christians to approach with wonder, openness, desire, and the willingness to be vulnerable, to experience the intimacy of relationships we have in the one Spirit and as members of the body of Christ.
It’s sad that sometimes, when we look inward, we miss the bigger picture. Even the trip, the flight there and back, helped me see the beauty of God. First of all, I didn’t know what to expect. I had many questions about why things were done a certain way. But when I heard the stories of our siblings in Russia — of a church that has been disregarded and pushed away during various historical moments in Russia — I learned so much. They face the challenge of serving in a territory nearly twice the size of the United States. They face propaganda that portrays Russians and Russia as bad, as enemies. Just last week, our government approved a $1.6 billion aid package for another country, likely feeding into the narrative that fosters hate toward them because we see them as our enemies.
These people are fighting against various sanctions, and pastors shared how difficult this makes their ministry. It makes me reflect on how I look for the presence of God in our journey. How will I seek the beauty God has created in siblings who, yes, are involved in a war — and war is not good in the eyes of God. We shouldn’t be part of it or support it. But how are we called to see the beauty of God in the midst of this and to act as those loved by God?
We are called to release all the expectations we carry and to practice looking and longing to know and be known — for mutuality and shared desire. I invite you, my siblings, to think and to pray. This intimacy, living with one another, even with those we do not know, is a testimony of the presence of a God who loves us, who says, 'My beloved, you are so beautiful. My dearest, look at you, you are so beautiful,' just like anyone else in this world.
We stand as the beloved ones, aware of God's presence, acknowledging God's passionate and gracious pursuit. We are moved by the Spirit to open the door, giving way to a trusting relationship that nurtures the divine within us. This is what we call mutual abiding, as John reminds us: 'On that day, you will know that I am with my Father, and you in me, and I in you.'
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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