back to the future in wales

While in Wales we were taken to St. Fagan’s: the Welsh National History Museum. The centerpiece of our visit was to a restored medieval church that had been moved about fifty miles from its original location.

As part of the restoration the large portion of the whitewashed walls that had been covered by vivid iconographic paintings has been brought back to life.

In addition to the striking graphic elements, all over the walls, the very shape of the church interior is striking. Unlike the many churches with which I’m familiar, there is not a central visual point in the church; instead, the altar is fairly heavily sequestered inside the sanctuary, and there are articulated galleries, which, with their associated wall paintings created many focal points for the worshippers’ gazes.

A brilliant young woman docent, deeply informed about both art and medieval church life, gave us an introduction to the church. She speculated that as there were no pews, and given the interior configuration of space/gaphics that worship might have been akin to what one might experience in some Eastern Orthodox churches today – people coming in at various points in time throughout the span of time set aside for the Eucharist, talking with one another, and moving about the inside of the church, looking at the sacred images.

She pointed out that the images are very powerful, seeming to yield their meaning fully on the first viewing. Using the Mocking of Christ as an example, however, she went through several less obvious levels of meaning that also derive from a meditation on the Mocking of Christ. Then she said, “A generation of people could look at these pictures over and over and together grow in understanding throughout their lifetimes.”

In the Diocese of California we’ve been learning from creative people like Ian Mobsby of Moot Church in London about what the English are calling “Fresh Expressions” of the Church.  This restored church from 1,000 years ago has given me some thoughts about worship in our post-modern world.

We might think about worship that is not focused on the preacher/celebrant. A world that is not ordered by patriarchy/hierarchy, where God is God-with-us, rather than simply above us could use some worship that reflects that reality, that gives people the tools for formation-in-community and aids them in using those tools. This, as opposed to dispensing wisdom and access to sacred power.

We might think about worship that sees theology not as a subject among subjects, where once you’ve “gotten it,” as with the Periodic Chart, or  the quadratic equation, you’re done, and rather something that is full of endless mystery and surprise, where once the grammar of theology is gained, worlds of reflection, meditation, contemplation, relationship and transformation open up.

St. Fagan’s does not represent a paradigm for relatedness with God that I imagine can be brought forward unchanged into our context. What I’m suggesting is that by looking at an unfamiliar pattern of worship we may be prompted to find possibilities for new life that fit our own time. We live in a time where new cosmologies have been and are being dreamed,  theorized, imagined, and where worship still largely references frameworks that reflect a prior paradigm.