When we visited The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee last Christmas, we were astounded to see gold as part of the adornment on the walls. We were brought up to think that gold in a house of worship was wasteful. It deprived the poor, it was unnecessary and pretentious. Our friend brought up the crucial question.
Is it possible to worship without gold?
The answer came to me today; it's simple.
No. You cannot worship without gold if you have gold. If all you have is silver then you cannot worship without silver.
Worship, I must remind myself, is not something that happens to me. I am not asking about the conditions under which I can recieve a certain experience. Rather I am asking what is my duty.
My duty is to offer to God whatever is my best. And the church's duty is to offer to God whatever is her best, collectively. I once saw part of a television program which surveyed the best churches in England. One cathedral was mentioned because of the tiny but lovely paintings at the top of the walls next to the ceiling. The church was so tall that almost no one ever saw those paintings until the modern age when video cameras and cranes and very tall ladders made it possible. The paintings weren't there to be looked at by men. They were an offering to God. This illustrates not that adornment in church should always be invisible to the worshippers, but that the beauty of our worship is not primarily for our own benefit.
This is the kind of waste in which our souls need to indulge and in which our churches need to indulge. This is the same waste on a ecclesiastical level as an hour spent in secret speechless prayer is to the individual, where there are no petitions offered, no boons granted. Resources thus lost to any earthly benefit are truly given to God. This is how the giving of material gifts can become an act of the soul. And let us not forget that kneeling and bowing, that singing and praising, are physical acts. We cannot add to God nor benefit him, whether by gifts material or spiritual. All we can do is break our alabaster box of priceless ointment and lavish it recklessly on his feet.
(And don't listen to the guy in the corner talking about how it could have been sold for the poor. His story doesn't end well.)
12 comments:
A noble thought, and an excellent point; and a topic not friendly in these days of mechanical, business-like 'worship centers.'
True. But it's frightening to think that once I understand these things I'm responsible for them in a new way. Truly worshipping God is our most difficult duty.
I hope that some allowance will be made for us regarding what we had available to work with.
Mechanical indeed. In a cathedral, one does not feel like a piece of meat.
Alana,
I love your last sentence: it answers a common objection and puts our sacrifice in perspective. As to the rest of the post, the Temple provides an excellent example of what you are talking about. The people were expected to contribute the best they had to build and maintain it, including gold. I find it significant as well that the first Church building was the Temple, and not the amphitheatre less than a mile away, or even an inexpensive "practical" building they built to hold all the people. It is also significant that from the beginning of recorded Church history and from all archeological evidence, the Church built beautiful buildings adorned with precious metals and works of art from the very beginning (as soon as they moved out of the houses or catacombs in any given location and time; but bear in mind that even the houses and catacombs were adorned with works of Christian art and in wealthy homes, precious metals).
Good food for thought, Alana.
Yes, we must worship God with our best: but I (ever the contrarian, so not to be taken too seriously: if you had stated the other side I would be stating this side) would like to point out,
1.) That there came a point when the Israelites were told to stop offering for the tabernacle. Our idea of what is our best must never be allowed to compete with God's presciption.
2.) That many sorts of material were used, even though gold was plentiful, both for the Tabernacle and the Temple.
3.) That architecture is not the only way to offer gold (or whatever) to God: the Levites were also supported with the material goods of the children of Israel. A church I heard of which chose to forgo air-conditioning in order to start an orphanage overseas truly offered that to God as well.
Good point, Ruben. We must not forget that our Lord said the Second Commandment was like unto the First. There is a very close relationship between what we do for our fellowman and what we do unto God. I think what I'm getting at is that when the Second usurps the First there is trouble, and that our generation is very much tainted with that view point. What we need to recover most, or first, is worship.
I've often thought it might clear our minds if we were to survey scripture and come up with first a list and then a schema of the Christian Virtues as they are actually spoken of there. It would be so helpful to have a clear idea of what comes first and how the others proceed from it. I really think that's one of the biggest differences between our age and Israel's, that is, where they had laws we are expected to have virtues. Then again, it's not as if they weren't supposed to be getting there as well.
I should probably add that our incapacity to adore the Almighty, whether by praises or by material gifts, is a spiritual deficiency first of all. We must address that in our souls which blocks this first natural impulse of the regenerate heart.
Reuben,
I have several answers for you, corresponding with your points.
1. The Israelites were told to stop only when there was enough material to complete the projects. The offering of gold, silver, gems, special wood, etc, was not continuous in the provision, but continuous in the worship; i.e. the gift only needed to be given once but its use in worship would last the lifetime of the tabernacle/temple. In a very real sense, the worshipper, and all worshippers to come, would sacrifice the use of valuable materials in building, maintaining and worshipping in a structure fit to allow them to feel a shadow of the Glory of God and to give tribute to Him. The offering of gold was in a sense, continual. Also, bear in mind that the Temple was invariably stripped of gold and valuable materials during times of apostasy and darkness.
2. Many sorts of material were used to build the temple/tabernacle, and most of them valuable. The Cathedrals of the Church were built in exactly the same way.
3. Architecture is certainly not the only way to give Glory to God, nor should it be used to the exclusion of the rest. It is however, indespensible and should not be neglected. As to AC, well, that is neither gold nor silver. It represents not the Glory of God, but our own comfort. Giving that up to build an orphanage is the proper thing to do (certainly commendable in our age), but not a good example of your point. The Cathedral walls offered a break from the wind and a heat trap, but that was about it. If churches were to be built without the high-tech sound systems, comfort systems, innumberal spotlights and lighting systems and even big screen televisions, they could be built for the about the same cost as a traditional building. I know the actual cost of those systems, as I am in the business of selling them. Believe me, it adds up, and I don't know of a single Fundagelical church (in the US)that is not heavily invested in at least several of the above categories. Fundagelicals often confuse giving their best for their own comfort and giving their best to God, or more accurately, giving God that which is in accordance to His own nature. It is not cost alone that explains the poverty of architecture in the (relatively) affluent West. Poor Churches can build beautiful buildings out of mud, stone, wood and other available materials or else meet in homes; they have for centuries.
I know you are not making excuses for anybody; but I thought it would help if I clarified our thoughts.
Alana,
As to virtue vs. law, that would take us rather far afield at this point. I don't believe the two can really be distinguished, since the law is spiritual (commandment #10 shows that).
I am also not sure that the 2nd great commandment has usurped the first. Not that the first is being obeyed, by any means; but then, neither is the second being pursued, is it? As WK pointed out, and as a missionary friend of mine in a closed country has also remarked, there is a lot of money which is floating around in churches and not being used to any constructive end.
And yes to your second reply. If we cannot worship on a mountain, or on the beach, if we cannot worship in a backyard or in a cement block building with a tin roof, then being in Salisbury or Winchester Cathedral will not make much difference to our hearts.
And that brings me to my reply to WK.
1. Precisely. There was a point at which, by God's prescription, it was enough. Adornment and elaboration was not endless. There were other things to be done as well. The Temple was also stripped of its glory, not as a punishment of God, but as a punishment of His people.
2. As to point 2, it highlights the difficulty of us defining what is our best. We certainly want to give God our best. But have you not heard that argument used to require a certain standard of dress for worship that has nothing whatever to do with morality or practicality? I understand the impulse: when young, though understanding perfectly well that the shiny coins were of the same financial value as the dingy ones, and that God didn't care about money as shiny, I still wound up giving those because I valued them more. This giving of our best is a good impulse; but it can lead to terrible things.
3. I certainly agree that much money is spent in entirely frivolous ways that wouldn't be needed if the due simplicity of Biblical worship were maintained. I think, though, we must be very careful with our ideas about what glorifies God in art, architecture, etc. It is entirely possible to minister to our own aesthetic preferences, under the rubric of giving to God that which is in accordance with His own nature. What we do know is that God approved of deep sacrifice (think of the widow with her two mites), of places that were sufficiently functional for the activities of worship, and was not so very happy with people coming up with ways to glorify or serve Him on their own. The Temple and Tabernacle were closely regulated and built on a divine plan: it seems to me a bit simplistic to take that as easy justification for architectural fancies of our own.
Unless we can define from Scripture that there is an architecture that pleases God (apart from the divinely instituted symbolic architecture of the Temple and Tabernacle) it seems to me that we run a great risk of facilely assuming a good deal of similarity between lucky us and God.
Reuben,
I want to address our points of discussion once more, if I may.
1. The giving of the gold is slightly different than worship with the gold. You are quite correct to say that giving doesn't have to be continuous; a one-time gift may finish the job. The worship and the effect on the worshipper with the gold IS continuous. It is one of the benefits/reasons to use precious materials in the first place.
2. I am in complete agreement with everything you said. "Giving one's best" is a dangerous cliche that has been used to destructive effect by fundamentalism and A.T.I. For that reason, I attempted (rather badly, I suppose)to clarify what I meant by using the cliche by stating that I meant: "giving God that which is in accordance to His own nature." My thoughts on architecture are supported not by the old Fundagelical ways of thinking I was brought up on, but on the Christian interpretation of Plato's theory of the Forms, and how all the works of Man must conform to the nature of God, and not to mere functionality (such utilitarian thinking is a pillar of Modernism). I suppose we are already in number 3; for me, the answers to 2 and 3 are related. I believe in the liturgy, the ancient architecture of the Church (not my own interpretation of aethetics, I surrender that to the judgement of the Saints and Apostles) and even dress. Dress is a thorny issue in our former circles because in my opinion, the underlying issues are not understood. The outfits required were designed by modernists to exude certain Humanist values, none of which are very Christian. If dress is to reflect the Glory of God, it will look much different than that which the Fundamentalists require. I look toward the Middle Ages and earlier for examples. Even today, ministers and priests in the traditional denominations wear clothing that is significant and meaningful in a Christian way. Furthermore, I would never require or push anyone in a Church to dress the way I wanted them to. I beleive natural separation would eventually sort all that out anyway. As for architecture pleasing God, I guess I didn't really look at it that way. Architecture should make us feel certain things about God in the same way and the same sense as music should. It should reflect the forms of the good, true and beautiful (which we CAN recognise under the possession of the Holy Spirit) and the nouminous nature of God. The design of the Temple and Tabernacle had to be a certain way to, as Hebrews states, be an image of the forms above. Also, it is difficult to provide examples of clearly mandated architecture in Scripture when I am apparently unable to reference the examples that we do have. Perhaps the imagery in Revelation is a clue; apparently the New Jerusalem in which the saints will worship will not be designed for practical purposes only. All structures built by the saints for religious uses or Divine mandate in any part of scriptures were built with significance, not just functionality (even Noah's ark). The early Christian's first Church was the Temple; the richly decorated synagogues were used elsewhere until the great persecutions, when homes were used instead. When the persecutions ended, the cathedrals were built. In countries outside the Roman Empire like Armenia, where persecution ended sooner, the cathedrals were correspondingly built earlier. It is the impulse borne from the Fear of the Lord that seeks to build nouminously, and the fact that that impulse is now gone from fundagelicalism corresponds with our loss of the Fear of the Lord in all other areas of theology, philosophy, worship, giving, preaching, and way of life. The loss is tragic.
I have not given or exposited all the Scriptural evidence for traditional architecture and worship, but I contend that it does exist in abundance; it requires the religious imagination to see it.
Also, the Authority of the Church should be considered. It is no accident that the rebellion of the Baptists against it is reflected in their architecture.
WK
You said what I thought we could come around to, that architecture and music and presumably clerical vestments, etc., are designed to make us feel certain things about God. Now that is certainly a great deal more moderate than stating that in some objective way they please God: the God who makes cloud palaces daily on such a lavish scale doesn't need the labour of our age in polished stones.
I'm sure you're aware that there's a good deal of debate (and internal dissension within the different traditions that you are appealing to). And that makes your comments rather difficult to respond to, because to treat any of those issues in length is necessarily to force myself to ignore some other.
I think we could have a long conversation about Platonic forms and the Middle Ages and church authority, but for the moment let me confine myself to two points (and recommend C.S. Lewis' article "Historicism" in Christian Reflections.
The Temple and Tabernacle cannot serve as a model for Christian places of worship, because they were symbols of a heavenly reality: they were divinely authorized symbols. And symbols of heavenly realities that are not authorized get rather sternly taken to task by the prophets, beginning with Moses. And this is my problem with attempts to symbolize or depict the nature of God or heavenly realities whether that be in liturgy or music or what have you. If God has authorized a symbol (as He has in the sign of the sacraments) we may proceed, as the Israelites could sculpt cherubim on God's command; but if God has not authorized a symbol, where do we get off using it?
The other point is that I wonder on what basis you can assert that the circumstances of our worship are or ought to be designed to make us have certain sensations about God: to impress us in their own way with certain truths about God. It certainly sounds noble; but how is it fleshed out? And that brings you to another point raised by Lewis, which is that icons are supposed to be transparent, and in that sense, bad art is rather preferable to good (I say this as a convinced iconoclast, by the way). It was the means employed in order to the construction of a rather magnificent ecclesiastical structure that sparked the Reformation, you recall.
Josh and I lean more towards icons.
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