Pr. Hector Garfias-Toledo + August 18, 2024
Beguiled by Beauty Week 1 - Beauty, Contemplation, and Radical Compassion
In his sermon for the first week of the Beguiled by Beauty worship series, Pastor Hector explores the challenge of seeing God's work in our lives and the world around us. He highlights the discomfort and vulnerability required to confront our preconceptions and open our hearts to the beauty that God has woven into creation. By cleaning our lenses and reorienting our daily lives, we can begin to appreciate the divine harmony and unity that often goes unnoticed. This journey demands intentionality, vulnerability, and practice as we seek to live in a contemplative posture, embracing the beauty that God has gifted us.
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, lightly edited for readability by Chat GPT
Grace to you and peace from God, Abba, Father, Mother, and Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the reflection of the beauty of God, our Savior and Lord. And we said, "Amen."
Well, I believe that by this time, with the liturgy that we have so far gone through together, and with the message that we have for our young worshippers, you have a very good idea of what we will be talking about for the next six weeks. And not only that, perhaps by this time, you’ve already found some connections with the previous series.
Last Sunday, we were talking about—if you remember, and I’m trying to remember what I was talking about—we were talking about God bringing together and completing the whole picture of the new order and the masterpiece that God is bringing together in our lives, and how all things work together. It is in this completeness that we are able to experience God. We talked about being children of God, and we also talked about having received the testimony, and that testimony is life eternal. Do you remember the instrument that I discovered—wrongly—what it was for, and the sound that reminds us how the message goes? And we are called to be those witnesses, or those who bear the testimony of the love of God.
I think that this series now is inviting us to pause and think about how you and I are going to live out that call we have as witnesses of the testimony of life eternal. So as we begin this morning—and it was already in the liturgy when we were invited to think about something beautiful, or about beauty—take a moment and try to think of an example of beauty or something beautiful in your life, or in life in general. Take a moment.
[Silence]
As I look at you, I see your expressions, and I see your minds working. I assume that you were thinking of beauty as something like what we are going to show you now in this slide, right?
Raise your hand if that was the beauty you were thinking of this morning. Nobody thought about...Mugly? This is a dog that won the competition for the ugliest dog in Britain some time ago, several years ago. And this morning, Rachel just informed and educated me that this dog is in one of the movies that is out there that I haven’t watched. I don’t remember the name, Rachel, so maybe later you can remind me. So, you were thinking about Mugly, right? This silence is making me nervous now. Well, if you weren’t, then what is beauty, or what is beautiful? How do we identify something that is beautiful, or someone that we consider beautiful? What is that in the heart? Are you sure? That’s right—if you knew the dog, probably you would see it differently, and perhaps consider the dog, or be able to see the beauty in that dog, even though the general idea may be that it’s ugly because it won the ugliest dog prize, right? Exactly. Thank you, Sandy. Well, okay, she already finished my sermon. What can I do now? All right, Sandy, that was not the point.
Beauty, I believe, and I’ve come to believe—and I don’t know if you have come to believe this—is a social construct. It varies across cultures and is influenced by society’s trends, desires, biases, and even biology. Beauty, as you know, and as the popular saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. That tells us, then, that beauty is a subjective experience that is perceived and inferred by the observer. Just as for those of you who were here this morning in the adult faith formation time at 9:00, the author of the book was talking about how one of her students Googled "beautiful" on Google. And the first images that came up in that search were...what? Skinny models. Or if you do it now—if you have your phone—or if you do it after the service, you will find that it will bring up models or it will bring up babies. That is what I believe the social construct has put in our minds: this idea of beauty that slowly becomes embedded in our minds on a micro level and affects the way that we operate, and the way we define or decide our attitude toward others. As Sandy just pointed out a moment ago, just think of...Mugly.
So during this series, during this time, we are going to look at different aspects and understandings of beauty and how you and I, as witnesses bearing the testimony of the love of God in the world, are going to look at beauty—and in some way, be countercultural to these social constructs that tell us what to think and what to say. Do you remember the story of creation in the Book of Genesis? Do you remember what God said—and John J. is not here, but remember John J., who talks about Genesis all the time—what happened during the time of creation? When God finishes creating something, God says it is good. The word "good" in the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew word, is "tov." And I don’t know if this is connected with the last name of Jeff Tobin, but I think there is a connection there—Jeff Tobin, Tov. Okay, we can talk about that later. But this word in Hebrew conveys the ideas of goodness, beauty, beneficial, well-being, and pleasant. So that gives us an idea that when God was creating, putting together all of this creation, there was this idea of fitness—things that bring life, things that are worthy, things that have honor, things that are to be respected.
Jonathan King, who wrote the book "The Beauty of the Lord," says beauty is the intrinsic quality of things that, if perceived, pleases the mind by a certain kind of fittingness. And I think that this has to do with what we were doing during the previous series: all things fit to bring the whole masterpiece of God’s love, grace, and mercy together so that you and I can live and experience life eternal. We need to remember that you and I are not creators of beauty. We are called to be, or to reflect, the beauty of God. And that beauty, which is an attribute of God—it is a character of God, it is the essence of God—is reflected in everything. As David was telling us and the young worshippers, it’s reflected in everything that God says, that God does, and that God is. The full expression of God’s beauty, of that goodness, is tangible in whom? How did God make God's beauty and essence tangible to us? I heard it. Who’s that? In Jesus, in the Incarnation. Remember in the Gospel according to John, chapter 1, it says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." In the beginning, God is with us. And even though beauty is associated with aesthetics, with beliefs that sometimes are used as an escape from the realities of this world, I believe that the gospel is reminding us that in the realm of the beauty of God, all these aspects of life—all these aspects of sorrow, and pain, and despair—can coexist with the beauty of God.
In fact, just think about—especially for those of you who are mothers—the pain, the distress of labor and giving birth. There is beauty, a beauty that we do not understand but cannot exist if it doesn’t come together with the pains of birth, or giving birth. For us as parents, the pain of seeing our spouse or partner going through that pain, and yet being able to hold a baby.
Saint Peter says in his first letter, "What matters is not the outer appearance, the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes, but the inner disposition that you have." So how do we engage in the nurturing of this inner disposition to be able to see the beauty in the world, in the context, in the family, at work, at school, in the community, in the neighborhood, in the church, where we are? For the past few years, I’ve gotten to know Richard Rohr, as you know, and I cannot concur more with the way that he sees things and the way that he tries to explain how beauty, and the beauty of God, is present in our lives. He says that religion and politics have given us conclusions—the dogmas, the traditions, and the ideologies—rather than to guide us in a process for you and me to come to the conclusions. We are taught what to see before we ask the question: How can I see this differently?
Years ago, when I was dating Jade, my wife, Pastor Jade, I remember that—I think I have mentioned this to you—that her mother was not Christian originally, but when we were dating, she liked to challenge me. I was a seminary student, and she was not at that time. So I tell you, one of the hardest theological questions that I had to face was when she was asking me questions, and we got into this conversation about believing in Jesus and Jesus being the only way through whom you can have salvation. At that time in my life, and in the way that I was taught, I was told about conclusions. My conclusion was that if you don’t know Jesus, you’re going to hell. So Jade asked me and said, "So Hector, what you’re saying is that because my mother is not Christian, she is ready to go to hell?" And Hector answered... what did Hector answer? Well I didn’t know what God had in hand for my mother-in-law at that time, who—I have already shared with you the story—but this is the type of thing we do when we have only conclusions and we don’t walk through a process where we are able to open up and grow, and to be able to see how God is working and the beauty of the work of God in your own life and in the lives of others.
It is a difficult process because it demands that we clean our lenses, that we clarify and quiet our hearts, and it confronts us with the realities that cause despair in our lives. And it can be terrifying.
Why can it be terrifying? Why do you think that being open can be terrifying? Why do you think that going through a process to see things from a different perspective is terrifying? Why was it terrifying for me? That question was terrifying for me at that time because it challenged me to see the conclusions that had been put in my heart from a different perspective that I didn't want to see.
When we miss out on beauty—the beauty of harmony, unity, and wholeness that God has intended from the beginning for all creation—we are not able to see the gift that has been given to us. So we fall into this practice of dismissing, despising, and even paternalism toward others, which disregards the God-given dignity of everything and every living being.
To see beauty requires intentionality, to make time, and to work on taking a posture open to that struggle. It requires vulnerability, which means reorienting our daily lives, integrating what we do as an ongoing prayer in our lives that goes beyond the pity or the shaming that forces us not to feel guilty. And it requires practice. And that is what we are going to do during these six weeks, as you and I walk through a process on how contemplative teachings instill a different posture that allows us to discover how to see ourselves, how to see others, how to see creation, and how to see Mugly, and to be an extension of God's divine compassion.
To live in a contemplative posture opens possibilities and intensifies the spiritual character that God has already placed in our hearts. So let me conclude with these words of St. Peter: "Rather, let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God's sight." (1 Peter 3:4)
And because we have been given that gift, you and I can sing together: "It Is Well with My Soul." Let us sing together. Amen.
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