Some Sunday Service Musings

The church Jeremiah and I attend here in Oxford was built in the beginning of the twentieth century, and it could easily be older. The building was constructed of old grey stone with beautiful stained glass windows, and the interior architecture nods to the romanesque, with beautiful rounded arches and a high vaulted ceiling. Sunday services feel more weighty in such an environment.

Of course, the church has had to be updated over the years to meet the needs of the congregation. A projector screen has been tastefully installed in the front of the church, above the steps up to the altar. Speakers, tastefully matching the white plaster of the columns, ensure the sound quality is consistent throughout the building. It's a bit unsettling to see, for lovers of traditional architecture such as myself. Nevertheless, when one is absorbed in the sermon or singing a hymn, particularly during the late service, when the screen is rolled up and the choir and organ have replaced the guitar and microphones, it is easy to forget the year, to feel a connection to earlier times.
Whenever I get in an old church like ours, I (admittedly irrationally) think of monastic communities. Today, I wondered what it would be like to be part of such a community during the "Dark Ages," during a period of danger, turmoil, and uncertainty--also, during a much quieter period, a time of far fewer distractions. And it occurs to me, that all our technological advancements--and for that matter, all of the beautiful church architecture produced over the centuries--are truly just the trappings of the life of a church in its period. For, no matter how much the human race jubilates over its advances, no matter how rapidly technology progresses, no matter how our worship spaces transform, we will never invent a new way to commune with the Lord. Life today is superficially extremely different from what it was a thousand years ago--not surprisingly. But the fundamentals have not changed. We humans are still sinful. Our lives are still uncertain, brief, dark, but marked by moments of startling joy and brightness. And we still can be in a relationship with the Lord.
As social media continues to shape our interpersonal interactions, scholars and students of human nature speculate as to how it will affect our relationships. My very rudimentary opinion is simply that technology cannot replace real, interpersonal interactions. They can change how those interactions take place, and they can interfere with them, but they cannot replace them. They are just tools. The most important parts of human life do not change with technological advancement.
Our relationship with God is a far more extreme example of this situation. Before this mystery of the Supernatural, we all must stand stripped of our worldly wisdom and the conveniences of our civilization. And that, in itself, is a great mercy: that in our attempt to make sense of a world impossible to define by sheer materialism, we must live by faith, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."