The dominion of death
can no longer hold men captive,
for Christ descended,
shattering and destroying its powers!
Hell is bound,
while the prophets rejoice and cry:
The Savior has come to those in faith!
Enter, you faithful,
into the Resurrection!

(Kontakion)

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Bless The Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, thou art very great;
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty:
Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment;
Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain;
Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters;
Who maketh the clouds his chariot;
Who walketh upon the wings of the wind;
Who maketh winds his messengers;
Flames of fire his ministers;
Who laid the foundations of the earth,
That it should not be moved for ever.
. . .
Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created;
And thou renewest the face of the ground.
Let the glory of The Lord endure for ever;
Let The Lord rejoice in his works:
. . .
I will sing unto The Lord as long as I live:
I will sing praise to my God while I have any being.
Let thy meditation be sweet unto him:
I will rejoice in The Lord.
Let sinners be consumed out of the earth.
And let the wicked be no more.
Bless The Lord, O my soul.
Praise ye The Lord.

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One song and we have consecrated both our assembly and the whole of creation.

The Dutch Reformed begin their service with the words: Our help is in the Name of the Lord God Almighty, the maker of the sea, the sky, the land, and all that is therein. (same thing)

Do we need anything fancier, and more expensive, than the whole of Creation, given back to God? "Let The Lord rejoice in his works" -- which includes us."

The song is a door. The door is shut. Everything before the door is put behind us. We are past it. We are past the door together. In beginning together and proceeding we are together, together. This worship is made fancy by our corporate gathering. More people can come and join in. But everything in the room is consecrated to the timeless moment of worship. We worship the God who became man, dwelt among us, and ascended resurrected in our renewed flesh into heaven. We worship our Salvation. We worship our Penultimate Glory. The Lamb of God. "We are his people, and the sheep of his pastures."

Christianity is the Salvation of Creation by the crucified Creator. Christianity not only does not need to be fancy and expensive. Christianity has no necessary holy places, nor holy buildings, nor holy days. The God of the whole earth does not demand it. The God who chose to dwell as a wandering tent, calling refugees to be his people does not.

But the door is closed, and those worshiping ... are a people.

That was the architecture of the service. The Pastor-Bishop gathered the faithful. The Deacon collected the love offering of food, collected from people's abundance and intended that much of it would be redistributed according to need. The One Body, living and loving as one. That same One Body which met in many, many places. A palpable mystery. The Pastor-Bishop took part of the bread and wine and water, and as the Savior's instructions required, broke, poured and distributed it. By the Holy Spirit this meal was a participation in and a making present of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. (Some 'over think' it.)

The doors remained closed during.

At the end of the service ... which was not as simple as all this ... the blessing and the exhortation to go into the world to love and to serve was spoken. Figuratively, or literally, the doors were now opened.

What these doors signify is that in that participation with Christ, by the Spirit, worship is not universally inclusive. Proof:? Not every knee has bowed; not everyone has declared Him "Lord" yet. This is not a Populist thing. Membership requires sacramental death: Baptism.

That was for a long time.

Eventually when church became a more public thing, the doors of wood no longer matched up so well with the "doors" of the act of worship. Originally everyone in the room ate. No one worried about "eating and drinking condemnation unto yourselves" because a proper amount of worry made excessive, or intrusive worry, out of place. Confession and council, prayer together, and prayer privately prepared for entrance through those doors, to that imperial court, to that magisterial table.

The room might have just a center for the Pastor-Bishop to stand. Standing there, raised arms, holding bread, the "place" and significance of that event was clear too all. This act and these gifts were consecrated. Introduce a humble table. Do something, something appropriate, at or to the Table... to show that we all recognize that participation in this remembrance, this making-visible act, that it is penultimate. Make the sights, sounds, touch to be hospitable and select. Do with what you have what you can. The introduction of a table, this slight modification of the architecture, creates its own designation as center. Whether a table or a spread of distributed food, the first Supper was tabled of table like. Table's designate gathering and incorporation. Inclusion. Communion. It also creates a natural representation of the contact with heaven that raising arms does. Many times they go together? Brining the gifts to the Pastor-Bishop, and the gifts being placed on the table form the center of the service, and its space. Its architecture.

Much of scripture is written in a style (chiasmus"), not unlike plays, where the part leading up to the center is a mirror reflection of the part leading away from it. Its a design that uses symmetry. It designates royalty: like statues of lions on each side of a throne. (Think Chicago Art Institute, or, the Metropolitan Museum in NYC.) Half the service is us bringing our gifts and ourselves to God. And the other half is the gifts distributed, partaken, and duly rejoiced over. But on the throne of that symmetry is something that we cannot do. We can't do it. In between the part where we approach God, and the part where the gifts are given by God to us, it the part where everything stands still.

That still point, where movement in one direction turns into movement in the other direction lets us see that it is the role of The Holy Spirit to minister Christ to us. That point in time clarifies for us what is right in front of us -- helping us to see it and understand, and to participate better.

Arms raised, or a table; they also help to make plain, to clarify. A table is not necessary. It does not mean anything in itself. But used in the way described, it does serve the task of clarifying for us what we see and participate in.

Door, table... Wall?

Have you been in a church with an alter rail in front. Maybe those things got started as crowd-control devices. Possibly. (Like the movable lines at the airport and bank.) Can't have the bread tipped over. Line up and line back. Practical.

But since the church building held more people than who were going to participate at the Lord's Table, this third piece of architecture found another meaning -- one not entirely foreign even to "low church" congregations. Raised hands, table, and now railing. All three specified or clarified the distinction of the holy. For a faith that does not allow anything to be more sacred than anything else -- for as Abe Kuyper says, "every quare inch belongs to Christ" -- such distinctions are not casually drawn. But us sinners need God. We who's bodies hang with the weight of the "old man" yearn to approach heaven. Door, Table and Railing are not hindrances! They are not barriers. A barrier would be wrong -- especially in the house of Him who tore them all down. But door, table, railing make sight what we know with our heart! They make visible what is now invisible, but will be wholly visible someday. That which we can participate in Now.

Railings might be small. Byzantine railings were and are waist high. I wonder whether we could think of them as an extension of the Table, in the way dramatized above. The gifts are brought by, gathered and given by the people to God. They enter the railed area. They are consecrated -- as in this Reformed "Prayer of Consecration":

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"Minister: Lord, our God, send your Holy Spirit so that this bread and cup may be for us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we and all your saints be united with Christ and remain faithful in hope and love. Gather your whole church, O Lord, into the glory of your kingdom. We pray in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray,
All: "Our Father in heaven . . . Amen."

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And then out from that special area it comes, to perform its special ministry, to a special people, who finally "go out" to their special service in ALL the world that is God's Creation and the works in which He rejoices -- especially in our praise, thanksgiving and stewardship!

Think of a railing as a HEARING AIDS FOR THE EYES.

The Eastern Orthodox speak of Ikons as being "windows to heaven." The invisible made visable. Ikons are placed on the railing wall. The wall even has doors. In Russia these walls reach great height. But contrary to what might at first seem to be, these high walls (called ikonostasis) do NOT serve to separate. They serve to UNITE!

What door (or song), and table, and railing wall (or ikonostasis) are needed for, is that they help us hold two things in our minds at the same time, WITH CLARITY. In our hearts we come to God. In worship, "We lift up our hearts," for "It is meet and right to give thanks unto the Lord our God." The door, the table and the rail each help us understand and participate better in the bi-directional movements of approach, consecration, and reception.


"Oh Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance. And by virtue of Thy Cross, preserve Thy habitation."







Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 08/09/2002 9:45:11 PM

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I was trying to state that the size of the building or its ornamation was undistinqushable with regard to high/low worship; one could associate either with worship (in the case of one who's blind, mind you) if the settings of each reversed. It would make no difference. Starkman

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This is for Starkman. Everybody else can ingnore it if they want! Starkman, what if the person was deaf, but not blind?

Tom

"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde

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The church-- the house of God. And though some are magnificant and grand, and others humble in comparison; are they all not creations of man?

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Yes, buildings are all creations of man. And yet I do believe even creations of man can be inspired by the Holy Spirit, whether simple and humble or magnificent and grand. And the issue here isn't actually between "humble churches" and "magnificent churches" either. Many liturgical/high churches are extremely simple and humble and many contemporary churches are grand and magnificent in their own way with impressive staging, lighting, and technological additions including giant movie screens.

I currently worship and intern at a very tiny Anglican parish in the outskirts of a farming town near where I live. The church building is very small, old, made of wood, with old wooden pews, a simple altar and and cross at the center. The candles and flowers we put in the church each week are the main "decorative" aspects along with some small stained glass windows from Jesus' life on the side. It is the definition of "humble" and simple, and yet is beautiful in it's own way. Most of the people who worship there are poor and most are migrant farmworkers from Mexico. For them it is a place to be with God in simple but lovely worship, and to be lifted out of the dryness of their daily lives.

Carrie wrote:

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A building is a building is a building, and it isn't so much what it looks like, as what goes on inside.

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I'm not sure that I agree that "all buildings are created equal" actually. I think buildings have the ability to communicate and teach many different things, and it is helpful to pay attention to that when we build a house for the people of God to worship in. I also believe that setting buildings apart for worship, just as we set apart people for God's work, is Biblical and denotes a sense of sacredness which we acknowledge and honor. Of course, this very point is likely a key difference in belief between those of traditional versus contemporary worship styles!

Carrie wrote:

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To say otherwise is like saying that the rich and 'powerful' are greater, or more godly simply because of their income. And that ones meekness is an illustration of their lack of faith or spirituality.

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I'm not clear about your jump in logic in this comment. I don't hear anyone proposing that simplicity or a lack of simplicity is greater or more godly or demonstrates more faith or a lack of it. I personally prefer simplicity, with a few key liturgical/sacramental focal points. Perhaps you could explain this some more?

Carrie said:

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To me it is all about priority. Sure it is nice to build, or worship a structure so beautiful as the cathedral, but isn't it more beautiful to perhaps use those funds, and hard work to better the actual kingdom? Feed the poor for example.

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You've touched on a critique that has been used historically against church buildings in general. I think it is important to realize that "contemporary" churches may spend the same if not more on a building and it's seating/lighting/sound system, etc. as a more traditional building. So the issue here isn't really one of "cathedrals" versus "contemporary churches." It seems you're asking a very different question altogether: whether the church ought to spend money on worship spaces at all. That's a very different kind of question and probably deserves it's own topic heading relating to the use of church funds.

A quick response from me would be to say that both are important and both "build the kingdom" of God in different ways. However, one ought not to come at the neglect and detriment of the other.

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I don't believe that God favors one believer over another, and certainly not because one might worship him in a building that costs millions of dollars, while the other worships Him in his own creation-nature.

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Certainly God does not favor one believer or another...to propose such a thing would be anti-Biblical. Discussing the pros and cons of worship in one form versus another is a very different issue though. We're asking: What is more Biblical? What is more helpful? What are the advantages and disadvantages? What can we learn? And I believe most of us agree that the answers to these questions will vary and depend on the individual themselves and the community and their own needs. To have a personal preference or to argue that one seems more in line with Biblical worship is not to term the other unacceptable to God in any way.

I hope this offered some clarification Carrie.

Peace,
~Empiress



Edited by - Empiress on 08/11/2002 7:00:14 PM

• Pagan Classical Greece presents "ideals" that seem perfect, but lack the individuality of persons. It then compares humanity to an ideal in a picky point-by point way. Worse than a perfect roommate. And it presumes that perfection can be scaled to any size--any size temple--all the while keeping the steps in exactly the same scale to the rest of the building, even if people can't step that high.
• High Gothic cathedrals, while gorgeously, impressively beautiful, treat the materials as secondary to the overall masterful plan. (Very un-"organic" in this respect.) Similar to how the plan is designed by using material-dominating technologies, ambiguities are glossed over in an impressive, authoritive-seeming way; and human scale and practicalities of how space is used to actually come together as the church--the Body of Christ--takes a back seat to demonstrations of heirarchy of one class over another, and an awe-inspiring dwarfing of humanity to the ediface of institutional structure. They demonstrate that the transcendent dominates the imminant.
• Dispite how you can never count on any two Byzantine churches being alike--any more than two stones would be, or that the base of domes would even be truly round--any more than everyone would show up at church at the same time; Byzantine churches have divisions of space that still flow into each other, mimiking how the space is used by those coming together to be "one." The scale of the building's details remains human in size no matter what the size of the building. The biggest designs differ from the "look" of the smallest as the windows in the upper story progress down to human siaze, increasing in number to do so if necessary. Doors remain "human" to enter. Etc.

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"The Ethos of Liturgical Art" (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY: 1984), Chapter 12: pp. 231-264.
----------------------------------------
1. Worship, art and technology
2. The asceticism of art and the art of ascesis
3. The ethos of ancient Greek and Gothic architecture
4. The ethos of technology in Byzantine building
5. Religious "naturalism"
6. The "passage" to the hypostasis of the person through iconography
7. The last hope

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I HOPE THAT SOMEONE ENJOYS THEM.

. . . the structure of Christian worship originates in the worship of Judaism, primarily in its synagogue variation


'No one studying the pre-Christian forms of Hebrew worship and the prayer of the Church,' writes Oesterley, 'can fail to notice the similarity of atmosphere or fail to see that both are cast in the same form.... In spite of all the differences they are undoubtedly one and the same type of worship.'


Thus, for example, if such things as the blessing of the name of God, praise, confession of sins, intercession and finally the glorifying of God for His work in history-as elements set in a definite order and relationship-if these constitute the normal structure of the prayer of the synagogue, it is to be noted that the same elements, in the same order and relationship, make up the structure of early Christian prayer. W e have here a dependency of order, not simply a similarity of separate elements, but an identity of sequence and of the relative subordination of one part to another, which defines from within the liturgical significance of each part.


'The early Christian communities,' he wrote, 'continued and preserved the traditional form of synagogue worship to which the people who made up these communities were accustomed.... So that when the time came for the creation of an independent Christian worship it was only natural that it should be influenced-both in form and spirit-by that traditional worship which was so close to the first Christians.'


. . . the charismatic gifts did not exclude 'rule' and that an Ordo, in the sense of a general structure, was indeed adopted by Christianity from Judaism.


. . . If in spite of this newness Christians continued to regard Jewish worship as a norm even after the rupture with Judaism, we also have evidence to show that this norm did not contradict the newness of Christianity, but on the contrary had to include this newness within itself in some way, had to find its 'level' within this newness.


. . . From the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles there is no doubt that Christ Himself and His disciples not only did not reject the Temple and the synagogue, but took part regularly in the traditional worship.


But another motif runs just as clearly through the whole of the New Testament. Over against the old traditional cult Christ set up a new one-'in Spirit and in Truth' (John 4:23-4). The religious community which He formed in His disciples was not only united by His teaching, but also had its own 'rule of prayer' (Luke 11:1) and its own cultic assemblies. There is evidence also in the Book of the Acts that Christians already had their own exclusively Christian worship alongside their participation in the traditional Hebrew worship. This included Baptism, the Eucharistic breaking of bread, and common prayer. In fact it was precisely this worship which distinguished them outwardly from other Hebrews. The Christian community could be entered only by way of the Baptismal washing; one could be a member only by participating in the Eucharistic assembly and in the common prayers of the brethren. Although in its outward forms this independent Christian worship clearly derives from specifically Hebrew ' Prototypes,' no one would deny its newness in relation to the cult of the Temple and the synagogue.


The history of Christian worship does not begin as the simple continuation of the traditional cult with the inclusion of a few new elements. It begins rather with a situation which can best be described as a liturgical dualism. It is a participation in the old cult and at the same time the presence-from the very beginning-of the cult of the new. Let us stress again that the newness of this new cult comes not from non-Hebrew sources (it is Hebrew both in form and spirit) but consists rather in its new relationship to the old traditional cult.


. . . 'In the Temple and from house to house....' It is just this liturgical dualism which constitutes the original basis for Christian worship, its first 'norm.' The study of the early Christian lex orandi must begin with the discovery of its meaning; and of course its meaning must be sought in the faith of the first Christians.


They experienced Christianity as the beginning of the 'Lord's Day,' toward which the whole history of the chosen people was moving. 'So then let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus Lord and Messiah' (Acts 2:36). But this means that Christianity, was for them-as 'Hebrews after the flesh'-not a new religion to which they were converted through a rejection of the old (as pagans were converted later on) but the fulfilment and ultimate perfection of the one true religion, of that one sacred history of the Covenant between God and His people. That newness in Christianity which the early Christians felt so keenly was for them (as Hebrews) not something new in the sense of something completely unexpected, but precisely the fulfilment of what had been promised, the coming of what was expected. Everything was contained in the words 'Jesus is the Christ,' 'Jesus is the Messiah.' But for this reason also the newness of Christianity could not be felt and experienced in any other way than in relation to the old, to that which it was fulfilling and consummating, to that which it was renewing. The Church is the New Israel, Judaism renewed in the Messiah and spread through all mankind; it is the renewed Covenant of God with His people.


Where is the essential difference between this new cult and the old? We have already said that from a purely formal point of view the new cult-Baptism and the Eucharist- was derived from the Jewish tradition. It is not in form that we must seek its absolute newness. This newness is found rather in its content: in the fact that these liturgical acts were connected wholly and exclusively with the fact of the coming Of the Messiah and the events, of His messianic ministry: His preaching, death and resurrection. We have just said that in the light of their faith in the accomplished coming of the Messiah Christians experienced the 'old' cult in a new way, saw in it a meaning which was hidden from the rest of the Jews. But even looking at it in this new way the old cult could only be a prophecy of the Messiah, a figure of the Messiah, an affirmation of the need for His coming; it could not be a witness to the Messiah as having already come, or a manifestation of the messianic Kingdom now coming into being. By its very nature and purpose this old cult revealed and proclaimed a doctrine of God, the world and man which in a way provided all the 'conditions' of the messianic faith, all the 'premises' for the coming of the Messiah. One thing only it could not give-the affirmation that what had been announced in the past had now become a fact. just as the Scriptures of the Old Testament found their 'key' in the apostolic preaching of the Word, in the kerygma of the messianic community so the 'old' cult needed to be fulfilled in the new, and only in and through it did it receive its true significance, a significance hidden from those who thought they were preserving and expounding it.

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Every time we see the formless given form - the child playing with modelling clay, the potter throwing a pot on the wheel, the cook kneading the bread - we see a living icon of the Creator's work.

Every time we see a work of art, a painting a sculpture, every time we hear a musician sing or play, we see an icon of how God expresses Himself through His creative act. He is in His creation just as an artist is in the work she creates.

Hearing the song we also hear the singer:
contemplating the creation we are contemplating the Creator
- even when we do not recognise Him.

www.arimathea.co.uk/matter.htm

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The beauty
of Creation
is God's signature
on His work.

http://www.arimathea.co.uk/matter.htm

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