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Dec 12, 2021

Beauty Will Save the World

Beauty Will Save the World

Passage: Mark 14:3-9

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Follow: Learning from Mark about Jesus’ Most Misunderstood Command

Keywords: gospel, burial, proclaim, anointed, beautiful, costly

I think we all see how power, wealth, access, influence, and knowledge can change the world. But what will save it? What will rescue it from what corrupts it (including the corrupting versions of those in the preceding list)? There’s a character in an old Russian novel who famously says, “beauty will save the world.” What did he mean? Moreover, how can that be? In this brief passage on the verge of Jesus’s last night beauty is all around. How does it point us to how beauty might in fact save?

Readings & Scriptures

PREPARATION: Psalm 27:4-5
LEADER: One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,

ALL: to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will lift me high upon a rock.

ADVENT READING: Matthew 2:1-11
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

Matt. 2:6 “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Matt. 2:7 Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” 9 After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. 12 And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

LEADER: Prepare the way of the Lord.
We light this candle in joy,
the joy that we have in Jesus, our Savior.

ALL: Prepare, then, the way of the Lord.

SONG OF ILLUMINATION
Of the Father's love begotten
ere the worlds began to be,
he is Alpha and Omega,
he the source, the ending he,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see
evermore and evermore.
Verse 3
This is he whom seers and sages
sang of old with one accord,
whom the voices of the prophets
promised in their faithful word.
Now he shines, the long-expected;
let creation praise its Lord
evermore and evermore.

CENTRAL TEXT: Mark 14:3-9
3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

BENEDICTION: Psalm 16:5-6
LEADER: The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.

ALL: The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Deuteronomy 15:11
  • Psalm 27:4-5
  • Psalm 41
  • Isaiah 61:1-3
  • John 12:1-8

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Most extravagant gift you ever received? Ever given? How did it feel in either case?
  2. What do you know of how the Hebrew scriptures speak of leprosy? Let’s assume Simon had been healed of , and yet still associated with, leprosy. How does Jesus’s reclining in Simon’s home suggest how Jesus viewed Simon’s association with leprosy?
  3. The unnamed woman is the clear focus of the passage. Imagine devoting to another what is worth nearly an entire year’s salary. What would motivate that kind of expression?
  4. What is Jesus’s view of the poor here? His sense of the guests/disciples concern for the poor? Imagine yourself being present. How might you have responded? Have you ever been witness to a moment of profound, selfless generosity? Why do you think it has a poignancy and power–the kind that often leads people to shed tears?
  5. How does her expression of generosity and the mention of the gospel fit together?
  6. How does a belief in the gospel inspire that kind of generosity? Why is it something like a liberation to give as much, if not more than, a compulsion to give? (How is hoarding an excess often an expression of pride or fear?)

QUOTES:

  • The infinity of the human soul–having been revealed in Christ and capable of fitting into itself all the boundlessness of divinity–is at one and the same time both the greatest good, the highest truth, and the most perfect beauty. Vladimir Soloviev
  • One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved?

    There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.

    Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition – and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.

    In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.

    But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force – they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

    So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

    In that case Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.

    And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
    - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • An artist is never poor. - Babette in Babette’s Feast
  • Blessed is the one who considers the poor!
    In the day of trouble the LORD delivers him;
    2 the LORD protects him and keeps him alive;
    he is called blessed in the land;
    you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.
    3 The LORD sustains him on his sickbed;
    in his illness you restore him to full health. Psalm 41:1-3
  • Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! - Augustine, Confessions
  • Beautiful people do not just happen. Sometimes the deepest, truest faith feels more like defeat than it does victory. - Scott Sauls
  • “Beauty is a gratuitous gift of the creator God; it finds its source and its purpose in God’s character. God, out of his gratuitous love, created a world he did not need because he is an artist...The biblical vision for the flourishing of our lives, lived fully under God’s love, includes the beautiful.” - Makoto Fujimura

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