Altars. I have been dwelling especially on empty altars on and off for the past several weeks.
Altars are the place where the symbols and words of God through Jesus meet us. They are to be sacred places and spaces. And more and more of them are empty. There are many reasons for this happening now in this time in which we are living. One is a lack of those who are called to serve at these altars. Another is a lack of people attending the space around them. Covid had us create our own altars in our own homes so that we still had a space to worship. Now, entering a church building to attend the space around them is not important nor, in some cases, possible, for many who came before. Throughout history they have been places of destruction and re-creation; places where God and Jesus have formed and reformed our understandings of faith.
Biblically I would offer you these examples. All have different events that precipitate what is going on. Exodus 34; part of a larger event that is happening with the people of Israel. The consequences are severe. 1 Kings 19; where politics and power have come against the might of God. This chapter shows the consequences of ignoring the power of the altars of God. And then, Mark 11; where the whole structure around the altar is being desecrated and Jesus has come to clean house and restore the altar and building to its proper place and usage. And all of this happens again and again.
In the 1500s, the Church underwent a massive cleaning and re-creation. In the space of 100 years, three former monks and a trained lawyer upset the whole structure. This was the Protestant Reformation lead by Martin Luther, Menno Simons, John Calvin and John Knox. Jan Hus, another priest, was the forerunner of this in the early 1400s. The Church held a massive rummage sale said Phyllis Tickle. She, a major Christian author and theologian, claimed that we are having another one right now. And she said this before she died in 2015, well before Covid. I was privileged to hear her more than once and she was a major exponent of the Emerging Church school of understanding. I commend her book on "The Great Emergence".
We are still doing just that. Emerging. With old altars and new ones. Old church buildings and new ones that exist only virtually. How we worship and what altars we use is a work in progress. So, where is your altar? Pr.Scott
