Worship Matters - Our Church Building

Last week we spoke about our invocation, “The Lord be with you” and how it helped us begin worship with a biblical prayer, marked the boundaries of who we are, and reminded us that we belong to God. This week I would like to talk about our church building and what it says about us and how it shapes our worship.   

When we worship in this space, . . .

       1.      We are surrounded by the Trinity – the cross, the dove, and creation.

·         We are surrounded in stained glass which features the many oaks in our area, connecting us to the God who creates, YHWH, who commanded us to be caretakers of the earth

·         We have in front of us an empty cross. The cross doesn’t move, fixed in place it reminds us of the historical reality of Jesus’ coming to earth, witnessing to God’s kingdom, and dying and rising again for us and for our salvation.

·         We have the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove – Unlike the oaks and cross, however, the light of the Spirit moves around the sanctuary reminding us of Jesus’ words, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

        2.      We are reminded that salvation is a social miracle.

·         The main part of most sanctuaries is called a nave (Latin navis, "ship") because the vaulting, like ours, looks like an upside down boat, a reference to 1 Peter 3:20 in which salvation is linked to being in Noah’s ark

·         This is a church building not THE church but the building reminds us that the Bible is much more interested in the plurality of salvation –renewed relationships – the bringing together of the near and the far, the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the free, men and women, all together to eat, to serve, to worship. There are no individual lifeboats in the church and social miracles always require a place

         3.      Finally, our weekly altarpieces mark us as a pilgrim people with the Word.

·         We don’t walk through these doors every week to buy something, get informed, or perform a job – we do this every week to worship God and have our lives shaped by His Word.

·         Each week we have that Word preached, sung, read, but also made visible by the artistic gifts of our members– it’s our cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that leads us and helps us remember that truth is more than good, it’s also beautiful