‘Humpty, I called out. Does a building we worship in have any effect on our worship?’
I didn’t ask him whether it is appropriate for a monarch or president to live in a palace. I didn’t ask him whether a chairman or CEO should have a better car than any of his subordinates. Nor did I ask whether a church organist should be content with a harmonium rather than a four-manual masterpiece by Harrison.
But I did put it to him whether a church should be just a barn or the best building in the village. Humpty held his peace. He had just been talking over with an architect his ideas on extending his ageing cottage. Humpty is no slouch when it comes to bricks and mortar.
It made me think. Instinctively, when we worship, we wish to give God the best. That is how we have hugely impressive buildings in East Anglia when the wool trade made the country prosperous. Blythburgh with its angel-roof and soaring splendour exemplifies the fruition of this instinct. The fact that it stands in isolated splendour following the movement of people from the land to the industrial centre does not alter the aspiration and the achievement. Thousands of church towers and spires point upwards in silent tribute to a Maker and Redeemer. We need words like ‘awe’ or ‘majesty’ to describe them.
If giving God the best is the rule of worship, then we have to ask how this rule applies not just to the building we worship in but to the songs we sing and the scripts we follow.
Taking part in worship need not require excited movement or threadbare language. It does require careful consideration and imaginative input. Previous generations found their way to a dignified type of worship in the Book of Common Prayer, with its little used today General Thanksgiving and its Litany. This is not to say that the worship of earlier ages was perfect. It is merely to say that worshippers then did the best they could and bequeathed their texts and their notation to us.
Of course, there is always the danger that the tail will wag the dog, that a form of worship will become a container with little inside it. Of course, the inclination of the heart is more significant than the order followed by a worshipper. But the form of worship is more than a decoration. The form – that is, the building, the vesture, the music, the words – is an incarnation, not just a dress. If we enjoy the benefit of a superb building, an enduringly beautiful text and music, we have to work with them rather than ignore them.
Humpty was making off with a roll of drawings under his arm. I’ll have to wait to get his answer. He’s up to something. Is it to be a barn or better?
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