High Church--Low Church (part 7)

Third Thursday of Advent

I am amazed at how complex this High Church--Low Church series is turning out to be. I thought it would be about a three part series. We're now on part 7, and we have barely gotten into it. 

One distinction of high church from low church is the glass. Low church sanctuaries usually have clear or clouded uncolored glass. The glass is nothing to notice. This goes along with the underlying low church understanding that the visual distracts from worship; whereas, high church understands the visual as enhancing worship. 

With the rise of the great Gothic Cathedrals of Europe in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries came the use of stained glass art not as just a worship enhancement but as a worship form. The cathedrals themselves were, and are, architectural marvels. The high columns, pointed arches, and flying buttresses made it possible for the cathedrals to distribute the weight of huge stone domed ceilings so as not to collapse. I have entered most of the great Gothic Cathedrals in Europe and many neo-Gothic churches in the U.S. When you enter, you're immediately impulse is to gaze upward. The arches point up toward the heavens. The stained glass windows go high as well. As you look upward, you feel lifted upward. The sound of choirs rings upward as well, giving voices an ethereal, angelic quality. 

Back to the glass. The anonymous medieval craftsmen who stained the glass and the artists who put the pieces together to form the designs and the pictures knew that the glory of God was light and that light could shine through stained glass to create a richness of color like nothing seen before. 

The stained glass also told the stories, the Bible stories. For the illiterate common folk of the middle ages listening to a service in Latin, which they did not understand, the stained glass windows were their Biblical education. Old Testament stories would be pictured in the glass on the left side; New Testament stories, on the right. Spectacular abstract rose windows would adorn the front and the back. Unlike churches in modernity, which are all too often membered by one socio-economic class, the Gothic Cathedrals brought the entire town together in worship. 

The church I grew up in, Ardmore UMC in Winston-Salem, had stained glass windows depicting Bible stories. As I listened to interminably long and utterly boring (for a child) sermons, I gazed at the stained glass, One showed Jesus bowed before a man holding a large clam shell full of water. Another showed a two columned tablet with the Roman numerals I to V going down one side and VI to X down the other. In subsequent years I learned that Roman numerals were not invented till long after the time of Moses. Another showed a medieval knight on a white horse carrying a white banner with a slender red cross on it. The Crusaders were much more popular in those days than now.

Stained glass has become something of a lost art. Modern stained glass is usually abstract, designs rather than pictures. It still lets the light of God and, shall I say, the colors of God to shine through. I am very proud of my old church, First UMC, N. Wilkesboro, for remodeling their beautiful chapel with, among other improvements, stained glass windows.

In the next part of this high church--low church series we will finally get to the worship service itself. 

Faithfully,

Christian