Moments of calm

We have a collection of village churches. You know the ones, most produced by a company called Department 56, that can be integrated among other village pieces to create a holiday scene, particularly in December. The collection got started innocently enough. We had been to Europe and upon our return, we discovered one of the smaller of the Department 56 collections was the “Alpine Village.” So we picked up the church, a train station, and three other pieces. The idea was to put them at the foot of the Christmas tree.

It wasn’t long before our village collection ballooned to the top of the stereo cabinet and, after we moved 15 years ago, the burgeoning village found itself on a length of tables tastefully covered in sheets of indigo felt. Trees, people, mountains, and streams tell a Christmas tale of your making. I put aside my part in assembling the village some years back and Terry has taken it on with relish.

But the churches have taken on a life of their own. Terry began collecting them for me as I got further and further into my ministry. So we have churches of all types and from all places. They come out right after Thanksgiving too and line the shelf under the windows in the family room. When one of my colleagues visited the house and saw the array of worshipful buildings he teased, “And those are all of the churches Gretchen has served.”

Indeed, in about 17 years, I served in one way or another eight churches. My work was as an interim pastor or, at least, a temporary one. It’s not what I had in mind when I started out in this second career, but, apparently, it’s what God wanted me to do.

Whether I had become a pastor or not, I had always been drawn to the beauty of church space. I have learned that it is not all to my taste and as I have evolved in my own thinking I have found that the space is less important than the mission and ministry of a particular congregation. Still, having grown up in an absolutely beautiful church in St. Joseph, Mo., I was drawn to dark wooden pews and intricate stained glass. That’s what was necessary for me to worship fully.

Ironically, my experience as a pastor changed all of that. In fact, it was a few years before I began my seminary studies when we went on one of those European trips that the change began. I found myself awestruck by the magnificent cathedrals there and even the somewhat smaller rural churches. It is difficult for me to understand how they were constructed over 1,000 years ago with spires and vaulted ceilings, great artistic murals painted high above so that the only way one might fully appreciate them is to take a seat in the pews below and lean back to try to take it all in. The rose windows in places like Notre Dame in Paris, beautiful stained glass, took my breath away.

But as beautiful and wondrous the construction of those buildings may be, they are just buildings. We never found a quiet one in which we could sit and meditate. They were run amok with tourists snapping pictures and talking in street voices in their various languages giving me the sense of the Tower of Babel rather than the place where Isaac laid his head on that rock, dreamed a dream, and declared that “God is in this place!” I didn’t feel God there. I found myself wondering how many construction workers may have fallen to their deaths in those medieval times and how many of those cathedrals were built at the order of a king or an emperor desiring to highlight his own commitment to God and the necessity of his subjects to do the same. They were just tourist attractions for so many who would walk past the donation box as though it didn’t exist assuming that the building was there just for their own edification.

Likewise, back stateside, my feelings about what was conducive to worship began to change. I understand that worship place of choice varies dramatically among people. Some are drawn to the churches in which they were raised and, in fact, never leave them either physically or in spirit. That’s just the way God intended it to be, they think. Some people, like I used to be, are drawn to sanctuaries with lots of stained glass and at times of the day when the light filtering through is projected as rainbows on a wall across the room. Some are even picky about their stained glass: they want biblical interpretations pictured in that glass. One church I served had at least three or four triptychs of biblical scenes all with a very

northern European-looking Jesus portrayed in them. On my last Sunday there, one of the congregants who had been a member there since birth and was now well into her 80s shook my hand and said, “I don’t know where you’re going next, but you’re not going to find a place with such beautiful stained glass windows.”

Of course, they weren’t that beautiful to me. They were a hindrance to the work of the church not only because of what I deemed erroneous interpretations of Christ, but because of the money that had to be poured into them for maintenance. I could appreciate them as art, but not as worship. Several times I followed through on the opportunity to remind people, young and old, that “Jesus didn’t look like that.” No one else seemed to be bothered by the fact that the children were being raised to believe he did.

No, what I have come to desire more in terms of my personal worship is a smaller, more chapel-like sanctuary. Not all of those are created equal either, but I have fond memories of a small church I served in the middle of South Dakota that had the obligatory dark wood pews, yet the comparisons to bigger city or even rural churches ended there. I found myself drawn into that place day after day when no one was around and just quietly sitting, praying with my eyes wide open, beseeching, lamenting, praising, smiling, relaxing into God’s arms. When folks gathered there on Sunday morning (150 would comfortably fill the place), and I found myself on the chancel leading worship, I could even worship along with everyone else (too often preachers are too busy working that hour to actually worship), undistracted by the intricacies of stained glass but

sometimes distracted by the whoosh of batwings as one of those critters would decide to swoop just above the crowd and back into a dark hole in the ceiling. Christmas Eve candlelight worship was more beautiful than any stained glass I have ever seen.

There are always those in the church whose primary interest and spiritual gifts fall into the arena of building maintenance. I give thanks for them to the extent that they are moved by the Holy Spirit to put their time and talents into that work but always with an eye on God and not on maintaining a building to the envy of other worship spaces in the community. Buildings are expensive to maintain and the more ornate the décor, the more money needs to be poured into them. That means less money to care for the homeless, the addicts, the tired, the poor, the hungry – whether they are right down the street or begging at the door or somewhere in another part of the world which we do not understand. Christ calls us to care for those strangers. He never mentioned anything about maintaining a building and, in fact, referenced how easily a building can be destroyed. The love of Christ cannot.

This year I have been deliberate about keeping Christmas decorations at bay until after we have celebrated Thanksgiving, an American holiday set aside to thank God for the bounty we possess. But after that, I have to admit that I will be looking forward to contemplating the village and all of those churches from around the world. Dusk is a good time to do that, when the timed lights inside each building light up and give the impression of activity, of human beings inside each one.

There are some grandiose churches in that mix, but my favorites are the smaller ones, the ones that remind me of that quiet worship space in Fort Pierre, South Dakota, unremarkable in terms of human expectations but quietly humble in the provision of a place to truly worship God.

 

 

“Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” – Matthew 27:38-40

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