Beauty

"A quaint drinking village with a fishing problem" is the unofficial slogan of Homer, Alaska. The town is set at the end of the Kenai Peninsula, encompassed by harbors and mountains. The natural beauty of the town's setting is evident on every wall of the numerous art stores and restaurants. The lines of shops are interrupted by weathered wooden structures that are dilapidating in the background, reminiscent of old cabins or shacks. As the greenery grows around them, it adds to the charm of the artistic fishing town. However, there are new buildings that are nestled closest to the streets, many of them churches.

The churches, often stacked next to each other, resemble the storefronts of the town. They are the same designs and building materials, and, on the outside, they subtly convey the same message: "Pick your flavor." There are different kinds of "churches" here, too. Set in contrast to the denominational markers on the signs, they are found in coffee shops and community centers, though they too have signs and stickers, just of a more secular nature. For as many churches as there are in a small town, there is a steady ideology that I am sure has worked its way into many of the churches, in both pew and pulpit.

I am not writing this as a judgment but as an observation of a battle within a small community and the role of beauty in its fight. In a community surrounded by natural beauty, it is surprising that this beauty does not extend to most of the church buildings in the area. I say most because some Russian Orthodox chapels dot the bluffs and mountain ridges, though their Slavic beauty is very rustic. The incongruity of beauty reflected in the church building and its natural setting prefigures the incongruity of the church's message and its cultural and ideological setting. The fullness of beauty is displayed when all things are rightly ordered. Homilies can display the beauty of the Gospel, but when beauty stops there, it often portrays that the Gospel is simply a cognitive understanding. A church can have a beautiful building, but if the preaching does not contain the beauty of the Gospel, there will be an untethered focus on the external (i.e., a "social gospel" untethered from the truth and beauty of God). The beauty of creation stands as a measuring stick that shows the congruity or incongruity of our worship. Is it beautiful? Does our building reflect the beauty of the heavenly worship that we participate in? Do the homilies and hymnody reflect the beauty of the Gospel? And lastly, are all of these joined together in a rightly ordered way that brings us to true and laudable worship of God?

I am not sure if you are familiar with the story of St. Boniface. Born in 8th-century England, he eventually became a priest and felt a call to be a missionary to the Germanic people. Legend has it that many were converted by him when he struck an oak tree that the local people had used in their worship of Thor. The story recounts his striking of the oak tree with an axe, accompanied by such a great and powerful wind that the tree blew over. When Thor did not strike this missionary down, the people were amazed, and many converted. Boniface used the wood of the mighty oak tree to build a chapel and monastery for his continued missionary work. The story of the oak tree reminds us that just as all things can be disordered (even our view of nature or what we think is beautiful), all things can be put to order to reflect true Beauty, to reflect God.

But how do we ensure that our understanding of beauty is rightly ordered? We look to God, who is the author of beauty and the fullness of Beauty. Yet, if we look to Divine beauty only in his creation or only metaphysically, we are only looking at parts of the whole. To behold the beauty of the Divine is to gaze upon Christ, he who shows us the fullness of divinity. Therefore, we must look at the fullness of Christ as the display of Beauty, not just his transfiguration or ascension, but also his birth and his death. We will fail to understand beauty if we cannot see it in the cross of Christ.

The orthodox faith, received in Scripture and affirmed in the creeds, offers us the correct lens by which we behold the beauty of Christ. This faith guides our worship physically and intellectually. We preach Christ, we sing of his works, but we also receive Christ, who is faithful to give himself to us. And it is here that the beauty of the building helps to form us and order us as it ushers us into further worship of God. As we behold the Beautiful, we encounter God. For we worship the God who created all things for his glory, who took on flesh, who is redeeming all things, why would we expect to meet him only cognitively, abstracted from the physical beauty that leads us to God? This divine encounter cannot leave us unchanged; it must form us and rightly order our perception. Rightly ordered beauty orders us.

The natural beauty of Homer brought a strong contrast to the utilitarianism of the church buildings. In a perfect world, this isn't the way it is supposed to be. The beauty of the orthodox Christian faith made manifest in Church architecture should stand with God's creation as a foil to secular ideologies that are contrary to the Beautiful. It should not surprise us that even when cultures no longer seek to reflect Beauty, people still go to the mountains and the seas, and they still make pilgrimages to the cathedrals searching for Beauty. 

God's Peace,

Fr. Aaron