I
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my strength. – Psalm
(KJV)
It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant... – Matthew 24:26 (NRSV)
What do our places of worship say
about our faith? Do the buildings send messages about what we believe and how
we live out our faith? Are we saying one thing with our buildings and doing
another with our actions? Does this cognitive dissonance have an effect on how
we are perceived by those outside our faith? Does this cognitive dissonance
have an effect on the faith and actions of those who worship and lead worship in
those spaces?
- Sacred spaces need
both transcendence and immanence. We Christian human beings may believe in
the God who came to dwell among us, but we also believe in the God “above
us.” We still behold the hills and the heavens to find our God.
Contemporary society has taught us that God is within us. The sacred may
indeed be within us, but God is always other. We need buildings and
objects that draw our eyes upward and outward; things that are larger than
we are. Small thinking and small-looking spaces remind us of our limits;
Godly space should tell us God is unlimited. Jesus never rebuked the
disciples for wanting to be great; instead he told them what to do to be
great.[1]
Our buildings should invite us into God’s greatness yet reflect the inherent
humility and service followers of Jesus were and are taught.
- Sacred spaces
should be both inviting and invite us to leave. Churches where windows
that are covered or there are small slit windows tell a story of a
congregation looking inward, not outward. A bevy of stained-glass windows
is wonderful, but what do the stories tell us, not only about ourselves,
but also about the needs of the world? What is there in the church to keep
us restless and unsatisfied, seeking to follow Jesus outside the church?
- Sacred spaces should
clearly show the primacy of our faith in symbols. And what kind of symbols
do we believe in? In this age of the corporate logo, how can we best
communicate when our symbols are no longer universal or even understood by
the majority of people? Should we perhaps think not about descending to
the lowest common denominator, but instead about expanding ourselves to
the simplest and most direct symbols: light, openness, colour, geometry,
movement?
- Sacred spaces
should invite us to look inward but draw us to look outward. Architecture
and design can ask us to examine ourselves, but it can and should also ask
us to take the result of that examination outward and make it communal. Sacred
spaces should move us from “me” to “us.” This is a slightly different
sense from architecture that both is inviting and invites us to leave.
That has to do with following Jesus and taking our faith into the world.
Looking inward and being drawn outward has more to do with the communal
aspect of our faith. We need architecture that asks us to be individuals,
uniquely in God’s image, but to know that we are part of a congregation, a
community, a group of persons also made in God’s image, and our worship
spaces need to include singularity and particularity as well as gathering
us into communality.
- Sacred spaces need
flowers, plants and growing things. The ubiquitous dying post-Christmas
Poinsettias and the pots of wilting Easter lilies say nothing meaningful
about God’s growth but a great deal more about the sin of our inattention
and lack of care for our sacred spaces. Rather than pointing up
transcendence, the wilting flowers and dusty leaves tell a story of
neglect: neglect of God’s sacred space, neglect of our being in that
space, and neglect of our own inward searching for the beautiful and the
sacred. Plastic and silk flowers might seem practical, but they get
forsaken just as easily as the real. And, they imprint a false theology on
the senses by their changelessness. During Lent we might explore thorns,
bare branches, twisted and gnarled sticks, or even plain rods in a black
vase to evoke images of our Lord’s lashes prior to his execution on the
cross.
- Sacred spaces need
to be congruent. They need to be cognitively integrated. Dual messages confuse a worshiper. Sacred
space needs to send the same message for different uses. The space needs
to be both comprehensive and intimate, yet integrate those things. The
space needs to tell us how to behave. In Washington Cathedral, tourists
and visitors fall silent as they approach the grand crossing. The space
itself begins to speak. Even children notice a building’s cognitive
dissonance. There are churches that have contemporary chapels for
children’s worship and a traditional worship space for “big” church. Not
surprisingly, the children learn one way to behave in “their” space, and
then have no idea how to behave in the more traditional space of the
church itself. In addition, we neglect children and their spiritual
development if the sacred space they inhabit is dingy, poorly lit, uncared
for, and still has two-seasons-ago altar hangings and fake flowers. A
powerful message is being sent to those children about their value, or
lack thereof. This is an architectural, psychological, and spiritual
dissonance that can be actively damaging, harming the inherent sense children
have for the numinous and beautiful.
- Sacred spaces need
to be clean, tidy, and carefully nurtured. Cleanliness speaks a powerful
message about caring for God’s creation. Dust, dirt, and decay are felt
messages that begin to work on the soul to tell it a negative and unreal story
of God’s care for us. Cleanliness, order and freshness tell our souls a
story of constant renewal and rebirth and that God cares for us in an even
larger and more transcendent way than we care for one another and our
sacred spaces.
The
Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2016
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