Cathedral

This is Burgos cathedral -- the oldest Gothic cathedral in the Iberian peninsula, I believe, dating from the 12th century.  It is amazingly ornate; a beautiful and complex, soaring achievement of art and architecture.

I love cathedrals!  There is something so awesome about entering a stone building, and having the arches (supported by huge stone pillars) draw your eyes upward, what is it, nine or ten stories up to the roof?

(This is St. Eustache, the cathedral in Paris where Louis XIV received his first communion) In the evening, the ceiling disappears into darkness; voices and music echo in an unmistakeable way, and to hear an organ play, it feels like the building has a voice.  These places of worship have been here, in some cases, for 800 years or more.  It is impossible to enter, for me, without being awestruck.

And yet, there is a complicated side to these amazing places.

You may notice in this picture, from Santo Domingo de la Calzada, that the chancel area of the church is fenced off from the rest of the church.  I tried to imagine what it might be like to lead worship from behind a fence!  (there may be several reasons for such a fence, few of which I know).  You might also notice two prominent statues lying in front of the chancel, basically in the middle of the church.  Many cathedrals have such monuments to patrons, royals, wealthy donors who enabled churches and chapels to be built.  Again, there may be many reasons for these -- we do similar things in our own churches, after all -- but it does make it seem clear to me that these magnificent buildings do more than honor God!

I also notice that Mary and Jesus periodically are shown wearing crowns.  Again -- there is good theological backing for this, but I can't help feeling a bit uneasy.   Is this an attempt to legitimize and normalize the power held by royals and nobility?  "Look, Jesus is crowned; this is normal and good and has divine authority."  Is it an attempt to show that Jesus is the REAL king here, that royals and nobles only hold a temporary and subordinate authority?  Maybe both.

What worries me is that I suspect that God does not aspire to the kind of power and control and privilege that earthly royals (be they kings and queens, political figures, or the very rich) hold.  I suspect that God's power and authority is different, a profound challenge to the way we order our world, and that putting a crown on Jesus' head in some important ways sends just the wrong message.

That said, I reckon ALL our messages, ABSOLUTELY ALL of them, are mixed.  Cathedrals with royal tombs?  Crowns on Mary's head?  Flags in church?  Remembrance processions in church?  Taking an offering, having a minister preach -- it's all mixed.  We do our best to honour God, but we are constantly tripped up by our limitations, our hangups, our own mixed motives, even our passionately held beliefs.  God is beyond all our attempts to understand, and to some extent challenges them all.

Occasionally, though, we limited human beings are able to come up with something that, complex as it may be, comes close enough to take your breath away.

Dave