Beauty in the Broken

What if God is ugly?

            When we see something we think is beautiful (a sunset, a mountain peak), we often think of God. And rightfully so, you would think. But we all have a different sense of beauty. As individuals, we do. As a culture too. What some find to be beautiful, perhaps others don’t. And if someone else thinks its ugly, does that mean it’s not from God?

            Ask cultures from different parts of the world who is more beautiful, you will get different answers.

A teacher asks her students to make a list of ugly and beautiful items. And the lists, of course, are quite creative. Under the heading of “ugly”, you’ll find things like “spider”, or “Grandma’s 15-year-old Chi Wawa”,  or “feet”! But what exactly makes these things ugly… especially if God made them? What we call ugly is only our appraisal.

            Daniel says that God’s hair looks like wool. I don’t know… but to me that seems a bit unattractive. Shampoo commercials make us think that silky smooth is beautiful. John says that God’s feet are like bronze glowing in a furnace. I’ve got to be honest… that doesn’t do anything for me. “And out of his mouth”, St. John says, “came a double edged sword”. I have one word: Ewww.

            So what if God is ugly… according to Revlon or People Magazine or whoever influences our culture. Can we handle it?

            We’re fascinated… fixated with beauty… sometimes dangerously so.

            In an obscure little corner of Vermont, you’ll find the Huntington River. It’s a beautiful spot. Trees, rivers, wildlife. Intoxicating sights and sounds of nature. It would be a great place to sightsee or hike, or camp… just not the best place to swim. On the surface, the water looks calm and placid, but beneath this attractive scene are strong currents that run swiftly over treacherous waterfalls and whirlpools and sharp jagged rocks. In the last 40 years, over 20 people (mostly young adults in their 20s and 30s) have lost their lives in the Huntington River Gorge. Those seriously injured while swimming have numbered in the hundreds.

            State officials have designated the gorge “the single most deadly place in the state.” Public service announcements have been run. Warning signs have been posted. All the while, swimmers continue to be attracted to the scene. It has been said it’s the favorite gathering place for students at the University of Vermont, just 14 miles away.

            Beauty is not always what we see with our eyes or what we gauge with our senses. Beauty- in fact- is really not even ours to define. What the bible says about beauty is very simple and quite plain: Proverbs says “beauty is fleeting” (31:30), while 1 Peter 3 says, “it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.”

            Two weeks ago, we read the story of a woman who had lived a sinful life. She approached Jesus. She was broken. Dirty. Rejected. Worn out. Worn down. Somehow, someway, she was able to enter into a most honorable place… the home of a well-to-do man of the cloth. And when she saw Jesus, she fell to her knees… and wept. Her tears falling at His feet, washing them. Her hair falling… drying them.

Three times, Luke mentions Jesus’ feet. If little Jerusalem children were asked by their rabbis in their little classrooms to name something ugly, it would be safe to assume that most would say feet. There’s a reason Luke mentions it so often. In biblical times, feet were the worst. Luke wants to capture the picture in this house of Simon the Pharisee. A woman of ill-repute, with ragged clothes, an expensive bottle of perfume, in the lush home of a wealthy man, interrupting a prominent power lunch, falling on her knees, carrying on, washing, drying, anointing, and kissing Jesus worn and ragged feet.

Perhaps the question in all of this is most significant: In this small snapshot in the life and ministry of Jesus, what is actually beautiful here? Jesus sees it. You see it. I see it. Simon? Well… listen: “he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is- that she is a sinner’.”

            The beauty in that moment was not in the home, the surroundings, the invitation list, or even in the jar of perfume… it was the unfading beauty of a gentle spirit inside. A fruit of the Spirit blooming bright… and gentle.

            A few years back, deep-sea divers recovered a leather case containing 40 small vials of perfume oil from the wreck of the Titanic. The little bottles, which probably would have been sold in New York as the ingredients for cologne, belonged to a businessman from Manchester, England. When they pulled the case from the water, the fragrance of the oils filled the air. Broken after almost a century, still smelled as sweet as when they were first brought aboard.
            Jesus turned to the woman, and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?” A simple rhetorical question that begged to be answered. Simon didn’t see her. Didn’t find the beauty in the moment. Didn’t see the gentle beauty in the broken. Didn’t even allow the possibility. So Jesus stopped everything to show all of it to them.

            Two thousand years later, that moment smells as sweet now as it did then. It is… in a word… beautiful.

            Have you walked that road? Have you cried those tears? Have you felt ugly inside… or even out? Well, I’m telling you… you have reason to smile today. Because God- our wooly and wonderful God- finds your brokenness beautiful. Your tears exquisite. And your sins forgiven.

            In a word… beautiful.