In the Old Testament, the Temple was a microcosm, a miniature copy of reality.
We see this in the way it’s structured; it’s built as a copy of the Garden of Eden: a mountaintop land with trees. The Temple is on the apex of a mountain, it’s full of trees (the lampstands and the decorations), and it’s decorated with fruit (all those pomegranates, notice the connection between the Song of Songs and the Temple).
It’s also a model of the world, with layers. We find the ‘sea’ on the outside (the large replacement for the tabernacle’s laver), then an outer court with the altar, then inside the temple, and then into the holiest place with the Ark.
The Temple moves from the chaos of the sea, to the courtyard where sacrifice is made representing the land, into the heavens and then the third heaven in the holiest place. It’s a microcosm of the whole world.
More than that, it’s a microcosm of the whole of reality as it’s supposed to be. It’s a copy of the new creation, or the old creation before it fell at least.
The Church works the same way, except it actually is the new creation (2 Corinthians 5). Not the New Heavens and the New Earth, not yet, but the in-breaking of the New into the Old because Christians are new creation and the Church is the new society. The local church is supposed to be a mirror of true reality, a blueprint for the Kingdom; she’s a microcosm, a miniature cosmos.
As an aside, if the church has deeply hurt you, this sounds like nonsense. Believe me, I understand. We aren’t good at being a mirror, but that means we’ve been terrible mirrors not that we don’t reflect the new creation. I think this concept intensifies how bad it is when churches get things terribly wrong.
This is why Paul is so concerned about ‘order’ in worship (1 Corinthians 12-14), he’s concerned that worship appropriately reflect the reality of the world. It’s as we encounter true reality in Christian worship each Sunday that we start to be reordered—or as I would say ‘restoried’—into people who live like the new creation and then restory/reorder their own worlds (households, initially) into the image of the kingdom.
The worship of the Church teaches us how to live as a new humanity. Partly through repetition and habit, partly through the storytelling of our words and symbols, and partly through the more obvious teaching that lays all this out. As we hear and participate, we are shaped and taught how to shape ourselves. We become Tolkienian sub-creators, ready to rearrange things into the pattern we’ve seen.
Which means getting worship right really matters. Of course I’m fully aware that plenty will agree with me but their vision of ‘right’ will not cohere with mine. It’s a challenge we have to work through. But, even so, it does mean that if we want to reform our communities we start by reforming the worship of the church.
This also means that the material reality of things matters. If all of worship is a story, and a microcosm of reality, then the form of small things matters. It matters if you use one or many cups in your communion, if it’s delivered buffet-style or by human hands, if the bread is torn in front of you or precut. It matters if it’s bread and if it’s wine. The liturgical words used matter.
I turn to the Supper because I always do, but we could say the same about every element of the worship service. Even the notices, I suspect. The question about what the liturgical purpose of something is should be asked about everything we do. I’ve been in churches with a more pragmatic approach that put all sorts of things in a worship service ‘because you’ve got everyone together.’ I’m sure we can all follow that decision-making, but it is to my way of thinking backwards. We start by asking: what should be there? Then we build from there.
This way of thinking will also help us with some of the more controversial things we believe. They shouldn’t be hidden but, to some extent, explicated by the worship service. The difference between men and women, for example, is a vitally important doctrine to stress in our particular cultural moment. Often churches won’t do so; where this is for theological reasons, I might disagree but I respect it, sometimes though it’s because the doctrine is unpopular. I think that’s a mistake; if you believe it then act it out on a Sunday. If you don’t then you probably don’t really believe it. Even if you do, it won’t be ingrained in your people through their gathered worship, and they are much less likely to live their own lives in that aspect of the Kingdom’s image.
If the worship of the Church is a microcosm, and Church is primarily for God, then a lot of what some evangelicals avoid on the grounds of ‘intelligibility’ or because it might be a ‘stumbling block to Jesus’ can come back into our corporate worship. Christianity is really weird, trying to ignore and avoid that does us no favours. Helping your people believe that and live as though it’s true will not only help them withstand what appear to be hostile cultural winds (and not just in the direction I’ve mentioned, there are myriad subtler and stronger winds too), but also be attractive to those who don’t yet know Jesus.
To the average Christian this is an invitation to start to see the story that the Church and her worship weaves for you. Let that story be your story.
To the Pastor there is a stronger challenge: your ‘liturgy’ tells a story even if you’ve never considered this. Is that story a true one?
Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash
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