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The Language of Beauty
At St. Martin’s, we have the opportunity to worship in one of the most beautiful settings in our city. Every detail of the worship spaces has been carefully considered. In the main sanctuary (“The Church”) we find the Rose window through which light streams in ribbons of color; story-telling stained glass windows; needlepoint kneelers that have been lovingly stitched by members of guilds; soaring ceilings; a white oak pulpit; Stations of the Cross; and more. At the macro level and the micro level, we have embraced beauty, declaring that a house fit for the King of kings should be beautiful. That same level of detail carries through in Christ Chapel and the Parish Life Center.
The vocabulary of beauty is not the language of laws and treatises, which is why the Temple leaders of Jesus’ day were so frustrated by their interactions with Him. They wanted concrete. He gave them abstract. They wanted measurable, definable data. He told them stories and defied their expectations. He spoke the language of beauty, of glory, of majesty. The vocabulary of beauty is an entirely different language. It is the language of the Spirit, of heaven, of new creation. We need to be fluent in that language. The world is aching for it. We are aching for it.
Beauty delights us, disarms us. Creation and created beauty turn us toward the One who is the source of all beauty. The Christian imagination — when shaped by worship, prayer and the Word — is a means by which we can begin to see things not as they are, but as they can be. We long for the new creation, the world that is to come. We must allow our imaginations to be expanded by the Spirit so that we can see and experience more of the Grand Story of the redemption of humankind and the new creation.
The Rev. Dr. Tom Wright warns, “For generations now, many Christians have really believed, and acted on the belief, that the arts, the imagination, are the pretty bits around the edge, the kind of decorative border, whereas the middle bit, the main bit, whatever it is, is the kind of solid, stodgy, chunky bit in the middle which is Christian truth, dogma, belief, and ethics, and all that stuff, and then you can kind of go away and play sometimes around the edge if you’re lucky. But the arts, the imagination, our capacity to create beauty ourselves, is not simply incidental to what it means to be human.”1
Allowing our imaginations to be transformed by our Creator and Redeemer is holy work. Looking and listening for beauty is necessary work, sacred work. Will you join me in that work?
1 From transcript of lecture at Seattle Pacific University, emphasis mine
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