Pastor Beverly Piro + September 8, 2024
Beguiled by Beauty Week 4 - Abyss, Mystery, and Wonder
In her sermon for the fourth week of the Beguiled by Beauty worship series, Pastor Bev reflects on how beauty, though sometimes elusive or unexpected, draws us closer to God. She discusses how our understanding of beauty can be deepened through the breath of life, seeing it as a reflection of God's constant presence
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, lightly edited for readability by Chat GPT
So, this is your fourth week in this Beguiled by Beauty emphasis in your congregation, but it's kind of my first week into it. So, I hope you will indulge me as I do a little exploring about this whole thing about being beguiled by beauty.
What an interesting word that is—beguiled. I dare say it's a word that doesn't find its way into our vocabulary very often, but it's not totally unknown, right? Even so, I went to look up its meaning. I don't know why, but one of the things that has traveled with me from my college years, from place to place, is this enormous two-volume set of the compact Oxford English Dictionary. It's huge! The print in it is so minute that it comes with a magnifying glass. It's clearly out of date because the Oxford English Dictionary loses words and adds words every year. But I did find this word.
Beguiled, of course, means "concealed or disguised by guile." Now, I thought it was against the rules to use the root word in the definition of a word, so I had to back up a few entries to beguile. That definition read: "to entangle or overreach with guile." Not yet helpful. But then it said: "to delude, deceive, or to cheat."
One internet offering was this: "to charm or enchant someone, sometimes in a deceptive way."
AI adds a little contemporary nuance. First: to be deceived, to be a victim of deception or trickery; or to be charmed, to be influenced by charisma or flattery.
So why spend so much time and energy on this one word? Because I think it adds layers of meaning to the focus of this worship series—Beguiled by Beauty. The Oxford English Dictionary would imply that we are deluded or deceived by beauty, and in our context, in this context of worship and prayer and praise, that just doesn't make sense. Is this beauty—of creation, of peace, of harmony, and justice—trickery that sucks us body, mind, and spirit into a relationship that then becomes something quite unexpected?
This past week, my husband purchased and set up in our yard a rat trap. He has seen a few of them helping themselves to our very small urban garden, and so he launched a rat relocation program. The trap is set with a feast of food to draw them in, and then the trap slams shut. So far, we've only gotten mice. My theory is that the rats are sending the mice as scouts, and when they don't come back, they're not coming either. But our hope is that the rats are beguiled by the promise of something wonderful—this feast—only to come to the reality of something quite different. It is trickery. It is deception.
Except when we are beguiled by God, there is no trickery or deception. AI might have captured it best by suggesting being overwhelmed by beauty, being engulfed by the unexpected. That is something I can not only live with, but embrace wholeheartedly. Being engulfed by the unexpected is exactly the way that God engages with us and all creation. We are indeed beguiled by love, by beauty, by justice, by mercy.
The psalmist in today's reading nailed it on the head. We are so limited in our grasp of God that, left to our own devices, we might imagine a God like us—one without ears to hear the sorrow and pleading of a broken world, without a mouth to offer comfort and forgiveness, hope, or promise, without eyes that see deeply into the soul and humanity's need for love and grace. But the psalmist surrounds those words of brokenness with songs of praise for Yahweh, praise for God's goodness, and praise for God's name.
We talked about names a little bit already with our young worshippers, but I want to remind you of some things that Pastor Hector said last week. Our scriptures use several different ways to name the Holy One that we call God. Some writers use the word Elohim. Some use the word El Shaddai. In some translations, you see the word Jehovah instead, which is based on the Hebrew word Yahweh. Yahweh is only four letters. We don't know exactly how it was said because those ancient Hebrew pronunciations have been lost.
But some rabbis believe that, as Hector told us last week, it might be based on the inhale and the exhale of our lungs. This word is used nowhere else. It only stands for the name of God. In fact, most Jews hold that it is too holy to be spoken, so they substitute another word whenever Yahweh appears in scriptures. They say the word Adonai.
So, perhaps you have been thinking about this breath word over the past week. Inhale: "Yah." Exhale: "weh." Inhale. Exhale. Yah. Weh. Do it with me. Yah... Weh...
It is meditative. It is unique. It knits together our very source of life—our breath—with the name of God. Breathe God in. Breathe God out. If you can't sleep at night, focus on breathing the name of God. In your meditation or your prayer, pay attention to breathing the name of God. You can just breathe it as a prayer. You can just breathe it as praise. Let the name of God inspire you—inspire you, your very being. Even when you are not thinking about it, you are breathing God into yourself.
When your breathing quickens because you are frightened or worried or scared, in your very breathing, you are calling the name of God to be with you. We breathe in and out—the internet says—about 22,000 times a day, seven and a half million times a year, from our first breath to our last.
Then consider the words that come out of that same mouth. Are they worthy to be spoken by one who is inspired by God? Are they words of judgment or acceptance? Words of praise or criticism? Words of love or words of hate? Of inclusion or exclusion? Creation or destruction?
My words are not always honorable. I fail miserably at breathing out the breath of God as God would have it. But then I ask for help and forgiveness and grace and a chance to try again and again to live as a beloved child of God.
So, my friends, that is what is so beguiling about God—that God never gives up on us, never turns away, never abandons us because of what we do or what we fail to do. If there is any deceit, it is this: that God's ways are not our ways. We expect punishment. God gives us grace. We expect judgment. God gives us acceptance. We hold on to hatred. God holds on to love. We fall into despair. God gives hope. We expect to get what we deserve. But instead—instead—God gives us all that we don't deserve.
Yahweh, the breath of life, the breath of living. The psalmist says: Sing praise to God's name because it is beautiful. And so we shall.
Amen.
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