"...beauty partakes of mystery, what beauty represents is something that can’t be put into words, we sense it with our whole being though it’s not something we can define. And that is true of our worship as well as we approach God, there is something that is so beyond our words, our ability to verbalize, that it requires the mystery of beauty around it in order to enable us to come into it at all.
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| Image by Tatiana Boyle |
Again this is something that I think runs very contrary to the way the world looks at things. That everything should be accessible, everything should be easy to understand. "
+ Khouria (Tasoni) Frederica Mathewes-Green
Beauty and the Liturgy
by Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green
Duration: 25:43
Source: http://www.stjohnsmission.org/articles/25th-donors-dinner-guest-2011/
[Transcribed by Cousin Abigail, thanks cuz!!]
Let me tell you something about the public speaker biz. Often you find yourself invited to give a speak and to give the speech as a keynote speaker at an event and where you're the one person in the room who knows the least about the organization, the ministry, or whatever it is that's being honored. So I there was back at my house in Baltimore trying to think through what I would say here having never visited St John Mission before yesterday. I was scouring the website to get a sense of what it's all about and I listened to a recording of an interview that was done with Father Roberto and Deacon Pawel and one of the things that Deacon said struck me as interesting. He was talking about the Lived Theology School where people can come and work here and learn here and read books and basically study and equip themselves over the course of a year...for this sort of a ministry, for this particularly distinctive kind of ministry and he said one of the four elements of the lived theology year is Liturgy.
And that’s surprising because you don’t often think of ministry to street people, ministry to the poor and worship. These don’t necessarily go together so I began thinking about, what is it about worship that might be distinctive and what kept coming to mind was the concept of beauty.
That beauty has power, has mysterious power, that we don’t quite understand, but it has a sort of a healing power and it is attractive, that it draws people. And I’m standing here with my back to this very beautiful Chapel, we have the narthex so to speak here, this gathering room which itself breathtaking when I first came in, when I saw all the icons on the wall and the great care which it has been decorated and then sort of progressed further into the chapel itself and to see the icons and the beauty of that room. So then I thought maybe I’ll talk about liturgy and beauty, and the role of beauty so it’s very a breath of life to look at the brochure tonight and read: “we look beyond what the poor lack and instead look to the unique gifts and beauty of each person”
And I am listening tonight, Presbytera Maria said, talked about this beautiful oasis the first time she visited St. John Mission, this beautiful oasis. And Dr. Mary said it was a combination, a juxtaposition grinding unglamorous poverty where it met the glory of God. And this, which used to be a boarding house is now a home and it is a beautiful place so I see some resonance there with this concept of beauty. And for Orthodox Christians of course we lavish beauty on our worship, beauty is a very significant and important part of our worship.So why, what is the point of beauty? Obviously in a sense it’s an add on, it’s not a necessary thing, it’s that extra mile you go to make something more attractive than it otherwise would be. And I thought about a story that Orthodox Christians love about St. Vladimir the prince of Kiev who in the 10th century killed his brother, taken the throne, very rough and tough character and he realized that if he was going to unite this kingdom that everybody needed to have the same religion. Until that time they followed a sort of pagan practice, they had many many idols and many different gods, so he thought it would be strategically useful.
He was quite a character, he was the youngest son of his father, his mother was a concubine, so he really didn’t have a right to the throne, but he killed his brother, then he wanted to marry a princess and she despised him because he wasn’t high born, and so he killed her father and kidnapped her. He lived like many asian princes did, he had seven wives and eight hundred concubines, he built temples to his pagan gods and offered human sacrifices including sacrificing Christians. So you think about this a person you might want to bring the Gospel to...[laughter]....with the four spiritual laws right? Got your living Bible on one hand and you ring the doorbell.
So he knew he was going to need to get a religion to unite everybody so he invited representatives from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, alot of different religions to come and make a presentations and explain what their religion was all about. And then he picked some envoys and sent them out to visit different countries and see in a situation what is the faith like as it is practiced. So the envoys went and visited the muslims and the Christians in Bulgaria and when alot of different places, didn’t see anything they particularly liked. And this is why Orthodox Christians love this story...and then they told him about Hagia Sophia the beautiful 6th century cathedral, extravagance of building in Constantinople, and they said “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such splendor or beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it, we only know that God dwells there among humans and worship is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations and we cannot forget that beauty. Every man was partaken of sweetness will not afterword accept bitterness and so we can no longer remain apart from it.” So they themselves were converted and determined to become Orthodox Christians no matter what the prince decided to do.
So that’s how Russia became a Christian country and an Orthodox country, prince Vladimir was baptized in the Crimea, all the Pagan idols were dragged down from the temples and thrown in the river, there was a wooden idol and he had them drag it through the streets and had people chase it and hit it with sticks just to show that this wooden god was not even strong enough to resist people hitting it with pieces of wood. So he had a very dramatic conversion there and the faith that spread all through Russia did go very deep and became very strong. We see the fruit of it in the life of St. Maria of Paris who’s such a representative figure at this Church and a dearly beloved patron saint. It sustained the Russian people so well that they lived through seventy years of relentless atheism which twenty-million Christians died but as soon as the Iron Curtain fell the churches were filled with worshipers again. Seventy years of teaching that explicitly tried to deny Christianity really had no effect when it was possible for people to worship again.
So there’s something about the beauty in this worship that I think is not an insignificant factor. Love has something to do with beauty, that beauty opens the heart and disposes the heart to reach forward in love. I don’t know how exactly this happens but it is something that does seem to happen, it’s one of the effects of beauty. As I traveled and I speak about Orthodox worship and beauty before different audiences, there’s some Christians of course, and some people in general who are very wary of beauty. They see it as seductive and possibly leading to idolatry or to worship of beauty. I was being interviewed on NPR a few years ago and a woman who was the host of the program asked me “but you Orthodox people in your churches you do all this fancy stuff with the incense and the icons, does that get in the way? doesn’t that block you from having communion with God? is it a distraction?”
And I said “if it was your anniversary and your husband took you out to a fine restaurant and there was a wedding cloth the table, and a glass of wine and violin music and roses...would that distract you from feeling romantic?” [Laughter]
Beauty has this power and it is possible of course that we have all this beauty and just take it for granted. You can go to Church every Sunday and just yawn your way through it and not pay attention, it’s possible but it’s not fault of the Church of course. Just as easily you can read the Bible without paying attention and say that the Bible is boring, there’s nothing in there. You have to make yourself present to it if you’re going to get anything from it. That same married couple could go out to a fancy restaurant but their mad at each other so they never make eye contact and they just struggle with the food, well it’s not the fault of the restaurant.
So it’s a matter of what you bring to it.
Beauty is not the goal, beauty in itself, Love is the goal. Beauty is a delightful and effective way to escort us toward that goal. Even people who resist beauty in worship understand that instinctively when they’re planning a wedding even if they don’t particularly find worship beautiful on a typical Sunday, everybody seems to know that a woman is just getting married she should be surrounded with beauty, as much beauty as her family can afford. The newly weds deserve to be framed in great beauty, we just get this instinctively. I’ve heard that there’s some mega-churches that are building wedding chapels because women want to be married in a beautiful setting and a very very plain auditorium like church just isn’t where she always dreamed of getting married.
And yet some people assume that when it comes just to church having beauty goes along with being very stiff and formal and unreal in a sense, and self-conscious about your behaviour. But notice that at a wedding reception as at this meal tonight we don’t have stiff and formal, even with the nice napkins and white cloth and this elegant meal, people relax, laugh and enjoy themselves we’re not self conscious or critical whether or not the other person is hold their fork correctly, we’re not self conscious here. We behave naturally and we enjoy ourselves. And that would be true even a meal or a wedding reception was traditional and plastic and very formal in an old sense. If anything that would make our joy that much more profound. You would say the same thing about a Christmas dinner, if it’s your turn in the family to host the Christmas dinner then you get out the fancy plates and silverware and cook elaborate dishes, but everybody who attends feels joyous and at ease. That going the extra mile for beauty that adorns our Christmas celebrations doesn’t hinder or distract the guests from enjoying themselves, if anything that extra beauty makes it seem more significant, makes us savor the day even more and recognize the importance of it, it isn’t just an ordinary day. It’s the day we go a little bit extra.
And yet when it comes to Sunday morning many, many of our fellow Christians around the land, don’t think about beauty as one of the things as necessary. The main thing they want in a church building is functionality and that it not fall down and that it not leak, and be big enough. They are thinking is those sorts of terms. There’s the high church tradition where things are elaborate icons, candles and all of that and since the long term traditions where things are often very simple. I often wondered why did we originate these two strengths are regular, why are there two differences styles? I think it may well go back to whether your church believes that the eucharist is really the body and blood of Christ because if you do believe that then nothing is too much to give, if you really believe that Christ is really going to be given to you, not only held up for adoration, but actually given to you to chew and eat and shallow and incorporate to your own body then that is such an alarming thing. If you really believe that is going to happen then you would almost instinctively think church needs to be as beautiful as we can make it. And if you don’t believe that then you don’t need to be, you need something more like an auditorium because what you are looking for on a Sunday morning is for people to learn more. They will learn more about how to follow Christ or how to apply their scripture in their lives, live more effective lives, or how to witness, for example. I think that this distinction helps us understand us identify that there is such a wide range of differences in worshipers among Christian churches.
A difference in our view and valuing of beauty. the danger with ritual worship, with fancy worship is of course it can become an empty dead ritual to those who are participating in it. Even worse, it can become something to think about as magical, that if you go through and say all the right words, something magical happens, rather than participating with their whole hearts. So that is a danger in that its in the heart of the worshiper, whether or not real worship is really happens or that tragedy occurs where they don’t take it for what it really is. There is a reason why in our orthodox worship that deacons are so frequently saying let us attend, pay attention. There is a danger on the other side as well, i think that if you don’t there is any reason for elaborate beauty, the focus can become on the facilitating worship rather than worshiping, and falling on your face.
First time my husband went to an orthodox service, it was during lent, and he saw people get out of their pews, and get down on their knees, and put the palms in the hands and their foreheads on the floor and make a full prostration before the Lord. he came home and he said, “thats how we should be before God. If God is who we say he is, then we should be on our faces before him.” So that was a very moving moment for him. The question would be on Sunday morning, “how do you know that worship is successful?” Well if it successful, people understood the bible better, you don’t particularly need beauty; but if its this whole body experience of confronting the mystery of God, beauty does serve an important purpose, liturgy is at work. I recently heard a priest say he tells his people, don’t bring your prayer robe to church on Sunday morning, you don’t come to church to pray, you come to church to work. That all of us participate and the work of the people, we all work together and this beautiful liturgy is the result. This beauty is part of our tradition going back, of course to the worship of the Jews and the temple and in the tabernacle, and the synagogue. Even at the time of Moses, our Sunday time worship is actually based on synagogue work and the temple service put together. So we having the liturgy of the word, and the table. God gave Moses very detailed instructions for how beautiful it has to be. For example in Exodus 25, God told Moses he should make a box to hold the tablets of the law. So, imagine you have these stone tablets, and you think about it and measure them, then get into the car and go to Wal-Mart, and look for a plastic box that's going to hold them. That’s all this box has to do, just has to hold the tablets of the law. God told Moses a box of acacia wood that was overlaid with gold on the outside and the inside, even though nobody would ever see the inside, but that is where these holy things would be. That only God would see the inside, so it had to be gold on the inside as well. The ranks and the poles of this arc were also to be made of gold, be commanding a mercy seat to be placed on top, two cherubs facing each other with their wings touching, hammered gold. It’s a lot of effort to extend on storage container, and in the church again, there's something about this mystery of beauty, that it is necessary for us to understand God, and each other, valuing one another.
Everybody needs beauty, everybody deserves beauty. It’s even more extraordinary when you consider that these Jews were refuge Jews and they were fleeing and they had left with just the things they could carry, in a desperate state, wandering in the wilderness for four years and nevertheless upset, making the table, tabernacle, make the vale, make it alter, all of these things were going to require so much of their resources and time to make around the extravagant details, around the priest’s garments, embroidered pomegranates and bells. A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate around about on the skirt of the robe of the priest’s dressings. Even though they were wandering the desert, God commanded Moses to employ extravagant resources in making worship beautiful. And they had to make it portable so that this impoverished people could carry it wherever we go.
Beauty must mean something and that is why in our chapel here and in this meeting as well where meals are served twice a day, that is why we reach for glory, we try to provide glory. It’s not enough to just give paper plates, Styrofoam plates and paper towels and napkins. We need to provide for those we serve. Beauty is something that they’re about and so their hearts might open and they will be drawn toward it as well.
I think another element is that beauty partakes of mystery, what beauty represents is something that can’t be put into words, we sense it with our whole being though it’s not something we can define. And that is true of our worship as well as we approach God, there is something that is so beyond our words, our ability to verbalize, that it requires the mystery of beauty around it in order to enable us to come into it at all.
Again this is something that I think runs very contrary to the way the world looks at things. That everything should be accessible, everything should be easy to understand. The first time you walk up, you should be able to get it right away. But there are some mysteries in building human relationships. When a new person comes into this room they’re coming into a community, in a community there are so many layers of relationships, so many histories that it’s a complex thing, it’s not as simple as handing everybody a cup of coffee, an identical cup of coffee and sending them back out again. The mystery and complexity of human relationships are beautiful as well and that is what we invite people to partake of, to participate in, and to become members of when they come through those doors.
So I think, I criticize, and I invite you to be skeptical of the impulse of our culture to make everything simple and boiled down to three words and accessible. Make room for mystery, allow there to be mystery. People don’t have to understand everything all at once. I think that’s especially appropriate in our worship. One of the most consistent roles that religion has served throughout human history is guardian of and contact point for mystery and I think we make a mistake in trying to make the worship experience as approachable and comprehensible as possible.
I think it’s a good thing for people to be mystified from time to time, especially when they are encountering the God of ultimate mystery and awe. And even if they don’t understand what they see when they first come through the door, they can look at us, they can look at the other worshipers and see that they are treating it with awe and with respect and with love.
That is something, an analogy that I do think of from time to time, that we can’t see something, we look at something we don’t understand it, what do you do? usually you look around at the other people and you see what they’re doing. I remember Tertullian said “they say of the Christians, look at how they love one another.” That’s how people knew the Christians was their love for one another.
When I was a kid I was nearsighted, I’m still nearsighted, but my parents didn't know it for a while and alot of my childhood was spent in frustrating experiences, like they would say “there’s a bird at the top..do you see it? do you see the bird up there? look at it, right where I’m pointing.”
And I would squint and try to see it and most of the time I never saw the bird, I would either say “forget about it, I’m just not going to see it,” or I would say “oh yeah, I see it now, ok can we move on?” but I never said “I don’t believe you, there is no bird there.” I never said that. I trusted them, that if they said there was a bird that even if I couldn't see it that they could see it and I would trust it on them, their word.
And as they venture into the next room to participate in worship at first they may just look at us doing these weird things and singing these weird songs and having these...I didn’t like icons at all at first, these dower looking threatening pictures I think was a comment once... one of the icons of the Virgin Mary. I didn’t get it but I could look around and I could see the ones who do get it...look at their faces, look at the awe, look at the joy, look at their experience in something that is so deep. I trust them, I trust that something real is going on here and it may take me awhile to get the hang of it but it looks like something I want as well.
So I think it’s no mistake that the word beauty appears in this little brochure and it was in the words of both Dr Mary and Presbytera Maria. Not something that many people, if you stop somebody on the street and say describe a mission to the poor in five words, what five adjectives would you choose. They’d probably wouldn’t say beautiful, or a place of great beauty, but you have made this a place of beauty and it continues to be beautiful day by day by the love you have shown each other and the love you show others who walk through the door and in that way you reflect the beauty of Jesus Christ, Who is your Lord and your Leader, the One Whom you serve, the One Who’s feet you wash every time you welcome the poor. Thank you.
