The Kitchen Table: COBWEBS......

Good Day Sisters!

I admit it: I am a church voyeur. I love wandering into and around the big, old churches that are plastered over every city in Europe like stars in the sky. No matter which way you look at the sky, you will always see stars (on clear nights, obviously) – more often than not, it's the same with churches: glance up at the skyline of any town, large or small, and you will find countless spires pointing to the heavens; wander through the towns themselves, and around almost every corner you will come face to face with the old, imposing, impressive facades of any number of churches.

And so as I travel around I take time most every day to meander through the different towns, and find myself slipping into churches, gazing at altars, admiring stained glass windows. Yet what I'm really doing is looking for God in those often cavernous, stone buildings. They are indeed beautiful to look at, with an amazing sense of history to them – but so often feel more like museums or tourist traps than houses of worship.

Saying that, I found myself wandering through the old city of Munster, Germany, this afternoon. It is by no means the prettiest old city I've been in recently – it was one of the cities heaviest hit during World War II, and a lot of the original buildings were destroyed during the blitzes – but it was interesting nonetheless. There is, of course, the cathedral at the heart of the town – commanding, regal, and worth wandering around. I will never understand how people in the 12th / 13th / 14th centuries were able to build such huge, architecturally impressive buildings without the assistance of all of our modern technology! And yet, nothing we're building today is going to last anywhere near as long as the structures we have inherited from hundreds of years ago…

But I digress. The cathedral in Munster is indeed beautiful, and worth a visit, but it was in another church in that city – just a few hundred feet away from the cathedral – that I was struck with an epiphany – there really is no other word for it that I can find – both about my own beliefs, and about the state of Christianity – in all its forms – the world over.

The first thing that struck me when I walked through the doors of St. Lamperi was the organ. It is an incredible, sonorous thing, hung above the end of the nave, and was being masterfully played as I slipped inside. Everyone in the church was silent, listening to and appreciating the music; when finally the last notes died away, there was a moment of reverential silence, and then an outburst of applause, as everyone in the church got to their feet, clapping their appreciation for the organists and the music. At the altar end of the nave was an entire wall of blue-hued stained-glass windows. It was a beautiful church, and for once there was indeed a lightly reverential feel to it.

As I was about to leave the church, I noticed Him: a plain statue of our Lord and Savior, tucked away under the organ at the back of the church. It really was a very simple statue: Jesus was depicted in His robe, sandals on His feet, one hand outstretched, the other held across His breast. Both hands showed the nail marks, and the one across His chest was, sadly, missing the forefinger. He had no irises – simple blank eyeballs – and yet He still gave me the feeling that He was seeing me – I mean, really actually seeing me. It didn't seem to matter where I stood – up close, a little further away, off to one side – it felt like He was looking right at me. The feeling was so powerful, I nearly fell to my knees right there… Instead, I crept forward and reached up to touch His foot, lightly resting my hand for a minute on His toes, and remembering the story of the woman who washed His feet in expensive oils. Somehow, that story never really held any meaning for me until I saw that statue today.

And so to my epiphany… As I stood there, already feeling profoundly moved by this statue of Jesus, I noticed that His shoulder seemed to be quite thick with dust, and idly thought the church cleaners needed to come by with their feather dusters. Then suddenly I realized that He was covered in cobwebs – big, thick, black strings of cobwebs, like someone had sprayed a can of black silly string at the statue. It was instantly clear that no-one had thought to dust the statue in a very long time – it was a forgotten relic, hidden away in a corner, passed over more often than not by everyone who came through the church.

What a metaphor that was for me, both with regard to the church as a whole, and closer to home, with regard to my own attempts (or lack thereof) to follow Christ. So often, Jesus takes a back burner to everything else going on in our lives, going in our world. I know when I started this job that I had confident plans to attend church every Sunday, no matter where I was or what I was doing – yet in two months of being over here, I've managed to attend exactly two services – and both of those in the first three weeks I was here.

It's not just about attending services, though – although it is, of course, important to be surrounded and supported by other Christians. I brought one of my many Bibles with me to the UK, along with a couple of Bible studies, full of good intentions of traveling with them and doing studies even as I crisscrossed Europe. Also gone by the wayside: reasoned away by the "fact" that I carry so much paper weight with me anyway (over 800 pages of reports by the end of a 2-week trip) that I "couldn't afford" to carry any more "unnecessary" weight.

I stood at His feet today, feeling those unseeing eyes gazing down at me, that shroud of cobwebs bearing witness to how forgotten He has become, and burst into tears… So much sacrifice, a lifetime of scorn and suffering, a painful, excruciating death…. For what?

When I got to my next hotel this evening, I asked the Reception Desk to find a Protestant church service for me to attend tomorrow. There's one in English at 12.30pm; you can bet I'll be in the front pew, begging God to forgive my selfishness and thanking Him for His ultimate sacrifice. And when I get back to the UK next weekend, I'll be printing and laminating the photo I took of that statue, to carry with me – inside my Bible – on every future trip, a constant reminder that He deserves so much more from me than tears at the back of a church in front of a forgotten statue….