A Good Reason for Me Not to Preach Every Sunday

Jane Barter Moulaison, a theologian on faculty at the University of Winnipeg Faculty of Theology and parishioner at St. Mary Magdalene, preached this Sunday:

And I think this passage has something to teach us today about beauty and goodness. If our efforts to do the right thing with our resources do not praise God, if they are not characterized by Beauty, then they fail to be truly Good. It is only when we place Christ, the Beloved, at the Centre that we know what goodness and beauty are. Yet, we in the modern Church, have been afraid of beauty. We have measured the value of a thing only by its utility. And so, we become nervous about art and about adornment, because they do not serve a purpose. We pride ourselves on being practical. But sometimes our practicality can be a sign that we think it our responsibility to save the world. Beauty helps to remind us that the world as God created it is good and worthy of enjoyment for its own sake. Like Mary, our task is not to shape the world to our own will, but it is to respond generously to God’s action and God’s being. Our job, as Christians, is simply to rejoice in God! And such praise, as the musicians in this congregation will surely tell us, is the greatest source of beauty that the world has known.

This is only one piece of an excellent sermon. Go read the rest here.