To Complicate Our Sense of Beauty

Homily for Sunday, October 25, 2026
The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 22:34-46

In a May, 2024, article in Defector,a sports and culture website, journalist Dan Brooks wrote the following about the purpose of music criticism:

There has been a lot of discussion about what music criticism is for since streaming reduced the cost of listening to new songs to basically zero.  The conceit is that before everything was free, the function of criticism was to tell listeners which albums to buy, but I don’t think that was ever it.  The function of criticism is and always has been to complicate our sense of beauty…  to increase the dimensions and therefore the volume of feeling.  

At first, it would seem that Jesus in today’s Gospel doesn’t complicate but simplifies:  when a lawyer of the Pharisees asked, “Teacher which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus does not miss a beat but immediately from the 613 commandments of the law selects one:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all our mind.”  It would seem that here Jesus simplifies, distilling the entirety of the Law into one commandment, to love God.  But then Jesus begins to complicate:  “And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  Jesus had the opportunity to keep things simple– “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, soul and with all your mind” –  why, then, did he complicate?

And though on the surface Matthew’s telling of the story might seem simple, a closer look reveals that Matthew as the evangelist likewise complicates. For example, when Jesus asks the Pharisees, “What do you think of the Messiah?  Whose son is he?” and, “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” it appears as though Jesus merely is besting the Pharisees in debate.  But in these questions, Matthew riffs on his genealogy in chapter 1 in which he breaks pattern and writes not that “Jacob was the father of Joseph, and Joseph the father of Jesus,” but rather that Joseph was “the husband of Mary, who bore Jesus” (1:16), thus making space for Jesus’ divinity.  If at the outset of his Gospel Matthew suggests that Jesus is greater than his ancestor David and is indeed the Son of God; now in chapter 22, near the end of the Gospel, shortly before the crucifixion, Matthew gives a nod back to his genealogy to reaffirm Jesus’ divinity, as if to say, “Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, and now he will show it to you by going to the cross.”  

For several weeks, we’ve been announcing that today is Trinity’s annual Consecration Sunday, the day on which we are invited to make a pledge of financial support to Trinity Parish for the coming year.  It might seem that for the Church to talk about money does not simplify but rather complicates:  “Wouldn’t it be simpler if the Church limited its message to God loving us and our loving God, rather than complicating that message by speaking about money?”  

When we pledge money to Trinity Parish, we throw simplicity to the wind and complicate our lives.  To pledge to Trinity Parish complicates our budgets, adding another line to already-full ledgers.  Pledging to Trinity complicates our internal sense of security, bringing up issues of scarcity. Pledging complicates our relationship with money, in which we may have been taught to spend and save but not necessarily to give.  Maybe pledging complicates our conscience, as we may know that the standard for giving in the Episcopal Church is ten percent of our income, and we currently pledge, say, two or three percent.  Maybe pledging to Trinity Parish complicates our relationship with God, whom we have been taught loves us unconditionally – “So what does it matter if I give?” we might ask.

And the complication of pledging money to Trinity Parish is before we even begin to think about loving our neighbor, with whom things truly can become complicated.  In a way it is easy to love God – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” Jesus said.  But what about our neighbor?  “And a second commandment is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Loving our neighbors, who are flesh and blood human beings, can be difficult.  (As my therapist will sometimes say, tongue-in-cheek: “People – they’re nothing but trouble. Best avoid them.”)   When we pledge to Trinity Parish, we not only give away our hard-earned dollars, but we cede control of that money to a group. And not just any group, but a group whose members we know and with whom we worship and with whom we might sometimes disagree.  “How will this group spend my money?” we might wonder.  “Will I agree with their choice of programs to fund or the salaries of the staff or which repairs to make or which charities to support?”  To pledge to Trinity Parish does not simplify but complicates our lives.

To quote again from Dan Brooks:  “The function of criticism is and always has been to complicate our sense of beauty, to increase the dimensions and the volume of feeling.”  I wonder if, when we pledge, what is being complicated is not merely our attitude towards money or God or the Church, not merely our conscience, and not merely our relationship with our neighbors and fellow parishioners.  I wonder if ultimately what is complicated when we pledge is our sense of beauty.  Pledging puts us in touch with and complicates the “beauty” of which Augustine wrote in his Confessions:  “Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new!”  Pledging complicates this beauty by ensuring that our sense of God does not remain in the abstract, one whom we might love only with our heart, mind and strength.  Pledging complicates this beauty by connecting it to money – to “our” money – about which we may have strong feelings and which we may not wish to share.  Pledging complicates this beauty by connecting it to our neighbor, to whom we are called to listen and whose needs and desires we are called to consider. Pledging complicates this beauty by connecting it to budgets, programs, salaries and repairs.  Pledging complicates this beauty by calling us to relinquish control of “our” money to the larger group.  And perhaps above all, whether we are aware of it or not, pledging complicates this beauty by connecting ourself-offering to his self-offering, the magnitude of which we often find difficult to acknowledge.  “If my offering to him isn’t very much,” we may tell ourselves, “perhaps I need not face the magnitude of his offering to me.”

It is the work of a lifetime to recognize the magnitude of his offering, to recognize and fully live into the beauty of what Jesus has done for us. Pledging helps us with this “complication.”  For not only is there something beautiful about giving generously – we probably all can tell stories in which we’ve witnessed the beauty of generous giving –  but the beauty of generous giving in turn complicates the beauty that is God, increasing the dimensions and volume of our capacity to love God, and also of our capacity to love our neighbor.  Generous giving may in a way complicate our life, but generous giving most definitely will change our life, to become more like his.

Though I’m reasonably sure Mary Oliver didn’t write this poem about Jesus and his self-offering or about our response and pledging, yet it is fitting. Perhaps you’ve heard Mary Oliver’s “A Pretty Song,” with which I will leave us:

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?

This isn’t a play ground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart:  rave on.