Beauty and Brokenness: A Reflection on Beauty and the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

It was after my first year of Bible college. Interning with a church over summer we werein the midst of our week long VBS. Some 50 kids were huddled together jostling and fidgetingin the church basement as the associate pastor was about to lead them through an illustration of Jesus’ Feeding of the Five Thousand. The pastor took a bun, gave it to the children and askedthat they each take a small piece before passing it on. The bun weaved its way through ganglyand pudgy fingers alike finally returning to the pastor with almost half of its original contentremaining. The pastor looked around the room and raised the hand-pecked bun over his head.Then with the young eyes drawn upward he spoke of how far something can last for so many people.I have come to view this event as a reflection of a Mennonite distinctive. My experiencegrowing up in the Mennonite church and the little history I have had a chance to read points to a particular lifestyle and approach to the world’s resources. Many of our churches fundraisethrough the Penny Power drives. I have heard of individuals making duct tape wallets or newspaper sandals. After something broke on a particular camping trip as a child I canremember someone saying, “Well all you really need to fix something is some baler twine and a pair of pliers.” Mennonites have carried a creative and resourceful wisdom that is worthy of the book of Proverbs in its search to maximize material resources. These expressions seem to havecome, at least in part, from a long history of working the land, homesteading new areas andcreating self-sufficient communities.

2Keeping all this in mind, remembering all the good that can and has come from it,something still nags at me to rethink what I saw communicated in that church basement yearsago. Was the Feeding of Five Thousand just about the prudent use and equitable distribution of resources in the service of the Gospel? I am not convinced. There are other places we can look to in exploring this stream of thought and life. The Mennonite tradition has vigorously andcourageously explored what it is to give “a cup of cold water” or to encounter Jesus in the naked,hungry or imprisoned. There are numerous examples of how this particular ethic has been putinto the service of the Gospel.If this story is not tied directly or at least exclusively into the social demands of theGospel then what is it communicating to us? I would like to suggest that there is another possible reading, a reading which affirms the

earthy

nature of the Mennonite tradition butexplores an area that perhaps some of us are less familiar with.What would it mean to say that Jesus’ miracle was

beautiful

? Beauty is not a concept weoften use to help us understand Jesus’ ministry. At a time in history before physical science took over as a the dominant way of understanding the world the role of

the beautiful

once stoodequally alongside the pursuit of

the true

in philosophy and theology as well as the establishmentof

the good

in ethics.However sometime after the fifteenth century there emerged a view that world fully andexclusively obeyed the then developing “laws” of science and reason and so the idea of beautywas largely excluded in these developments and left in the hands of artists. In matters of theological precision, scientific discovery, and political ordering beauty did not fit into the moldsand systems being developed. Beauty was too subjective for philosophy or theology and toounpredictable for science.

3Hans Urs von Balthasar calls beauty “forgetful” in its tendency to play outside of therules. Beauty did not sit still long enough for our modern tendency to capture, analyze, andreproduce it in a controlled manner. Beauty did not fit well into modernity and as a result beautywas also left outside many church walls, especially Reformation and Mennonite churches.So why bother with beauty? Growing up I always associated the idea of beauty withvanity or uselessness. In college I heard a friend say that his mom would only have things thatwere either beautiful or useful in her home. That seemed strange to me because at that time Icould only think of valuing what was useful. Beauty was an unnecessary extra.Beauty, however, is one of the few things that still openly affirms both the material andspiritual reality of our world. It accepts the material and spiritual not as two distinct realms butas one environment of possibility. We encounter beauty with our senses and because of this beauty remains married to the material. Beauty takes its shape from the

stuff

of the world.However, beauty cannot be reduced to what our senses make of a particular object. A beautiful painting is more than the sum of its descriptions (i.e. bright colours, sharp lines, clear contrasts,etc.). Beauty does not lie as a corpse before us waiting for dissection in order to be understood.Rather, beauty is alive and active in its encounter with us. Beauty moves us. We receive from beauty. Beauty gives of itself.This is where it is important to be clear. Beauty gives differently than most objects. Thisgift is more than the warmth of burnt wood or the nourishment of prepared food. These materialgifts offer themselves only once and have run their course. Beauty reminds us that there are notonly renewable resources but that there are also

renewing

resources.

The gift of beauty poursitself out abundantly and will not be used up by purely practical uses.