Wasted Beauty

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. – Mark 14.3-6 (NIV)

I would venture to suggest that most folks who have been involved in an artistic endeavor have wrestled with the notion that the resources used to create could have been better employed for a more practical purpose. It is a very sensible and human instinct. Resources are finite and must be managed and rationed. And there are those without physical resources who would find the money that paid for that paint or that guitar or that camera a great help in paying for their food, clothing and shelter. This is the case made by those present at the meal in this scene in the Gospel of Mark. There are more practical uses for this expensive perfume. Did she have to use all of it? Wouldn’t half of it have made the point? Use half, sell half. Better yet, use one quarter, sell three quarters. They believed the perfume applied in this way was wasted. But Jesus pushes back at their contention asserting that they have witnessed something beautiful, and yet have not recognized it as such. I think we miss much that is beautiful today for the same reason I believe Jesus’ fellow diners missed it then. We fail to understand that beauty is wasteful, and thus fail to appreciate the wastefulness of beauty.

Jesus later in the same story states that this woman, “…poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.” (NIV) This dinner scene takes place just days before Jesus will be crucified, during Holy Week. There is a sense in which the lavish, profligate use of this perfume gives a picture of what Jesus will do for humanity a few days later. Von Balthasar sees this Divine gift of the Divine self to humanity as a “squandering”, recognizing the recklessness with which the Father gives Himself away, resulting in the “divine recklessness of the Son, who allows himself to be squandered.”
This notion of squandering can be seen as extravagant, decadent, and magnanimously generous. It’s the Father giving Himself to the world through the obedience of the Son. Charles Colson coined what I think is a great phrase to describe this, “hilarious generosity.” This is a ludicrous gift, in that it is an over abundance of generosity, but what else has God to give to humanity than Godself? Everything else has been created by God and has already been given to humanity.

Humanity’s response to this gift however can tend to be skeptical and cautious at best, and is often openly hostile. It’s because of this response that this Divine recklessness and self squandering can also be seen as wasteful, misspent, frivolous and perhaps often fruitless. God knew this generosity would be abused and misused, as was every kindness God’s ever shown to humanity, and yet God chose to “waste” God’s over abundance on some who would never appreciate that abundance nor recognize that anything was actually given. However it is this act of hilarious generosity in the face of this lethargic, cynical and at times antagonistic response to the gift that is the heart of beauty.

This over abundance, this grace, is God’s attractiveness. These generous acts are what reveal what is in God’s heart. The Son’s actions through his life, consummated by Good Friday leave the Father’s heart exposed for the entire world to see, and what is divulged is a heart that will go to inconceivable lengths to reveal a committed, determined, intransigent love. If it were not for the Son who was willing to be squandered and wasted we would not know this. This wastefulness is the heart of God’s grace, and the heart of God’s attractiveness, thus is the core of God’s beauty. All Christian endeavors, be they artistic or more practical, should then remember that a resource’s most practical use isn’t always its best use.

The Aesthetics of Glory

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. -Romans 8.17

I like the idea that glory is an inherently aesthetic word; that is glory is something that can be seen with our naked eyes. It’s often referred to in terms of “streams of light”, or “beauty” or “brightness”, which are all visual terms; light, beauty and brightness all being consumed through the eyes. I’m not sure we generally tend to link the beauty and attractiveness of glory with the experience of suffering. Paul does, and not just here in Romans. In this instance he directly links the beauty and brightness of glory with the suffering of the cross, hitting at the heart of a truth that at first may seem counter-intuitive to us.

I want to walk down the trail of one of the ways I understand their connection and see if this relationship might make more sense. At the heart of the event of the cross is the absolute articulation of the Father’s deep love for the world expressed through the Son’s self-gifting obedience to the Father. The Son gives himself to the Father who directs the Son to give himself completely to rebellious, proud, obstinate, and darkened humanity so as to experience in his body the violence inherent in the broken relationship between humanity and the Divine. In this act of obedience the Son experiences the brutality of humanity’s sin, but also mysteriously experiences as a human himself the separation from the Divine caused by sin as the Father allows this self-gifting act to operate as an act of atonement. This amazing drama of love and grace played out on the world stage for all humanity to see, for those of us who are Christians, serves to attract us to God. It’s this act that reveals most completely the extent of the Father’s love for the fallen world and the lengths to which the Father will go to bring humanity home into the strong embrace of His love. With the cross the Father declares to the world, “Don’t you ever doubt that I love you.”

This love revealed through the cross is what attracts me to God. It’s what I find beautiful. When I “see” the Son suffering on the cross, I’m seeing the glory, beauty, brightness of God. Michael Pritzl of The Violet Burning in his song “The Face of Beauty” articulates it well when he sings, “I’ve seen the face of beauty/His head is crowned with thorns/His face is ripped and torn/I’ve seen the King in all his strength”

So if God’s glory is linked to Christ’s suffering, what does that have to do with those of us who have staked our lives on what we believe to be the absolute importance of this event? In this simple sentence of Paul’s he suggests it has everything to do with us and the manner in which we make our choices, so as to also, through our lives, reveal the beauty, brightness and glory of God. If, as I believe, God’s glory is most clearly revealed through God’s self-gifting love, then when we are able to love our spouse, children, neighbors, co-workers, strangers, enemies, and fellow church goers with something like the self-gifting love the Father gives us, even when, and perhaps especially when that love involves suffering, distress or pain, we reveal a little of the beauty, brightness, and light of God. When we love in this way we shine God’s glory, thus helping people to see the beauty of God. In the end beauty must be seen to be appreciated. The Son is at the right hand of the Father. It is now the Holy Spirit working in and through us as we love those around us which makes this beauty/glory visible.

We Have Seen His Glory

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14 NIV)

This verse has been rolling around in my head for a few months now as I consider the incarnation. The reflection that follows was born during my trip to Mali. The six of us who were part of the team took turns preparing daily devotions, and the seed of this reflection was the devotion I shared while we were there.

John’s introduction of Jesus in his Gospel as the Divine Logos is full of rich imagery and metaphor waiting to be mined by the of believers and theologians who would attempt to grapple with John’s words in the centuries that would follow. The notion of that Divine Logos not just taking on flesh, but becoming flesh and living with and among humanity has spawned hundreds of thousands of pages of thoughts, insights and reflections. So what follows here is nothing new, just some of my insights and reflections as I work through some of these ideas, and what they mean for my life, which may speak to where others are in their lives as well.

In reading this verse I’ve always tended to focus on the tangible, that is The Word, Jesus Christ, becoming flesh and living, full of humanity here in our beautiful mess. This is the incarnation, the Divine becoming flesh and living with us, speaking in and through flesh what had already been communicated through the prophets, which is the heart of the God who, “led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love”, and who, “lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11.4 NIV). This image of the transcendent, creative God of the universe choosing to be limited to the confines of physicality as a means of sharing God’s love for and esteem of humanity provokes and humbles me, and I believe opens a window into the very nature and character of God. It moves me past the first sentence of the verse to the second.

John goes on to say that in this movement of love from transcendence to immanence, from spirit to flesh, from “light” to “darkness” we have seen God’s glory. In my own life when I’ve thought of glory, I’ve tended to default to the image aroused in my head by the second verse of the Christmas carol, “Silent Night”:

Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!

I picture light streaming from heaven to Earth, as if breaking through a cloudy day, shining a light into darkness. Assuming that Jesus wasn’t actually physically beaming light, glowing as it were like Moses coming down from Sinai while on Earth, I think we’ll have to assume that our beholding of God’s glory through the incarnation must mean something different. (Although the last verse of “Silent Night” does have the newborn Christ emitting “radiant beams” from his face, but we’ll chalk that up to artistic license).

I believe John may clarify the form of this glory later in his Gospel as he shares his account of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemene in chapter 17. Jesus begins by praying for the 12, and the approaching storm they would have to navigate. He then goes on to pray not only for them, but, “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (17.20). He prays for the unity among these believers, and their inclusion into the inner relations of the Godhead (a notion by itself deserving of hundreds of thousands of pages of reflection), linking the world’s recognition of the authenticity of Jesus’ actions, and authority of his teaching directly to this unity. He then drops a bomb that completely unravels my “Silent Night” notion of glory. Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (17.22 NIV). He goes on to say, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (17.24 NIV). John says that humanity has seen the glory of God embodied in Jesus’ humanity; he then shares Jesus’ statement that he has given those who have believed in him the glory the Father had given him. If we follow this, then “the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” is given to us as those who have trusted in Jesus as the Christ. It seems that this glory is part of the incarnation, and a part that we can and are intended to participate in. What is this glory then, if not streams of light shining from God?

Hans Urs Von Balthasar would contend that there is a connection between the notion of glory and beauty, although I’ve heard many mainline protestants and evangelicals make that connection as well. The most notable that I’m familiar with would be Karl Barth, and John Piper. Thinking in this vein the glory of God could be equated with the beauty or attractiveness of God. Moving quickly and loosely here, then, John can speak of seeing the glory or beauty of God among us because that beauty is wrapped up in the grace of the self giving love of God, embodied in that movement from heaven to earth, from transcendence to immanence, and from “light” to “darkness”. God was, is and will always be love, but that love was communicated at a new and unique depth in the incarnation, in the Divine’s participation in our finiteness. This is the form of glory or beauty at the intersection of the Divine and the human. This grace and love is inherently striking, drawing and transporting us, perhaps even involuntarily to God, overwhelmed by God’s attractiveness, and possibly not able to articulate why. I think there may be a corollary here between our experience of the attractiveness of God and our experience of exceptional earthly beauty. Some would even argue that there is no separation between the two. There are times that we’re overwhelmed by something in a painting, or in a song, or a movie, or even a sunset or a mountain. We see and are struck by what we’ve encountered and are filled with what I can only describe as joy. I believe that the grace and love of God work in a similar fashion, in that they overwhelm our senses, fill us with joy, and therefore create a desire for the object that is the source of that joy, namely God.

So then if one grants the notion that graceful, self giving love is the form of Divine glory and beauty, then there is a sense in which Jesus’ gift of glory to us is our participation in this form. In other words our participation in and emulation of that graceful, self giving love of God is us as believers sharing in the glory and beauty of God. As we imitate God’s actions in this manner, interacting with those around us, we recreate the attractiveness of God, and so participate in God’s glory. This participation then is also how the beauty of God becomes real in the lives of those around us. In the same way the love of God was embodied in Christ in the incarnation, it is embodied in us as we imitate the self giving love of God in our incarnation. In this understanding when a person imitates this love they take on the form of Divine glory, embody the attractiveness of God, and so become a conduit for the worship of God in that God is the only true source of this attractiveness and beauty, therefore the Divine, namely Christ, is at the heart of both the action of the one loving and the worship of the one recognizing the source of the action. Therefore when a person gracefully loves they witness to and argue through their action for the preeminent glory and beauty of God.

“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We see it not only in the life of Christ, but also when we imitate the graceful loving actions of our Saviour. As we emulate these actions, we too embody the attractiveness and beauty of God and participate in the glory given to Christ by the Father. As I attempt to continue to understand these relationships I stand in perpetual amazement, simultaneously filled with awe and joy as I stand witness to the beauty of the grace lavished by God through the love and mercy found in Jesus Christ.

The Perils of Grace and Beauty

This may seem an obvious statement for all who know me, but I’m a big Flannery O’Connor fan. When I first read her work, I was struck by her insight into and representations of pride and hubris. In fact much of my understanding of human nature and theological anthropology can be traced back to her short stories. I believe it would be safe to say that my interest in the “darkness” mentioned in the title of this blog can be blamed to a large extent on her, if one would care to lay that blame.

Only more recently however have I begun to digest her understanding of God and grace, and the manner in which God interacts with the hubris in her characters. This interaction is of interest to me because it seems God is wholly silent in her stories, yet grace abounds, seeming to act as the voice of God speaking into the terrible darkness of her vision of the South. However, because her characters are emotionally, spiritually, and even sometimes physically grotesque and twisted, the grace must come in a form grotesque and twisted as well.

Inherent to this understanding of twisted grace seems to be an understanding of revelation as a shocking event in which God breaks through our impotence or indifference and grabs us at the core of our being and shakes, sometimes less gently than others. As overwhelming as this experience may be it is to O’Connor a moment of grace, though it may not seem at the time like “an undeserved kindness”. It’s in this vein I want to quote a lecture Rowan Williams gave on O’Connor in 2005. In it he refers to Tarwater, a character in her 1960 novel The Violent Bear it Away. The details of the story are unimportant for Williams’ point. But this portion of his sermon I think sums up nicely the parts of O’Connor’s depictions of grace and revelation that really resonate with me:


A God who fails to generate desperate hunger and confused and uncompromising passion is no God at all. It is not that Tarwater’s life and faith are held up as a model of or for anything; they are what they are. And they are what they are because God is as God is, not an agent within the universe, not a source of specialized religious consolation. If God is real, the person in touch with God is in danger, at any number of levels. And to awaken the hunger that Tarwater at last recognizes is to risk creating in people a longing too painful to bear or a longing that will lead them to take such risks that it seems indeed nakedly cruel to expose them to that hunger in the first place.

Taken from:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/2005/050210.htm


On a side note, I wonder if we consider this when we evangelize, that is the sheer terror involved in being in relation with an all powerful, devastatingly beautiful, entirely free and loving God who was willing to sacrifice a Son to be reconciled to humanity, and to individuals. We love what that means for us, it makes us feel safe that God loves us so much that “God gave his only begotten Son”, however I’m not sure we look at the flip side of that coin that often. It seems to me the flip side is that we who have trusted Christ are now also “sons and daughters of God”. If this is the manner in which God’s love is shown through the suffering and death of a Son, and we now share a son or daughtership with Christ, then what rightful expectation can we have to temporal security and safety?

A friend once told me that risk reveals love, that our love for someone is evidenced by what we are willing to risk for them. If the Father is willing to risk the Son in order to evidence that love, then should we not as fellow sons and daughters expect to walk the same path in order to communicate and embody that love? This picture of God reminds me of the manner in which Lewis writes Aslan in his Narnia books, as terrible and terrifying, yet loving, wise and good. I’m with most people who tend to love the wisdom, goodness and faithfulness of the Lion, and ignore its freedom, power and beauty.

At any rate, Williams gives wonderful voice to the dark beauty of grace, revelation, and incarnation in O’Connor’s works. It seems in her stories that God’s grace is always unexpected in its existence, timing and form. I find this resonating with my experience of God, with God’s grace often coming as a shock, perhaps because of to whom that grace is given, either myself or some person I sadly estimate is not worthy of that grace, or perhaps the manner in which it’s given. As for myself I find my passions, longings, and joy being kindled by this grace, and I sense the danger in that.

I sense in these longings a hunger that can’t be sated. It’s a hunger that seeks to encounter unmediated the beauty of God, but must experience that beauty mediated through broken, unreliable, hurting people in a world that appears unhinged. So I find myself, like Gimli after his encounter with Galadriel in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, desiring to experience the beauty of God again, and pursuing the paths God has blazed in which that beauty must be experienced.

That hunger to be in contact with the beauty of God however leads I think down the path in which Christ expressed that beauty in love and that’s through risking my own well being, esteem, emotions, and security in service of the least of these. I agree with Williams that on the surface it seems cruel to expose people to this, to relation with this God who calls us to follow through such danger, except that I think that perhaps there is something of the beauty of God that we will never experience until we travel these paths. Now this may seem entirely self evident to some, and of them I am truly envious, because this path is such a struggle for me to find, let alone walk. If it weren’t for the joy mediated through the beauty of God I experience when on this path in some fashion I don’t know that I’d be inclined to walk it at all…