When making our aesthetic decisions about our church building, we have to remember that simplicity is an aesthetic value. We have to remember that less is more. Some want to say that if one’s good, then two’s better, and that more is more.
Balance is always difficult. Some have adopted simplicity as a moral value, and have wound up insisting on more of it than the Bible insists on, and for the wrong reason. But nevertheless simplicity remains an aesthetic value, which is why an odd religious group like the Shakers could wind up producing beautiful furniture. They went there for the wrong reason, but they got there – at least with the end tables. Others have adopted difficulty as a moral value, and they have produced some very impressive (and overdone) results.
We want our worship of God to be reverent, joyful, balanced, harmonious, scriptural . . . and simple. But when you set yourself to such a goal, you soon discover that it’s complicated. Keeping it simple takes discipline and work.
We have known from the time of Aristotle that “spectacle” is an aesthetic temptation. Decadent cultures are sensate cultures, and they want distractions. They want to be impressed with things like the halftime at the Super Bowl—which for a thoughtful person resembles something from Dante’s third circle.
We want a sanctuary where the Word resides, and where the people of the Word gather to hear it. We want a sanctuary where the sacraments are administered, and where the people named and shaped by the sacraments gather to partake of them. Having done so, we turn to face each other in fellowship and then we head out into another week, seeking to replicate what we have done here in the course of our lives there.
We worship, so we go out to serve. We love, so we go out to love. We sing, so we go out singing.
As we build the sanctuary we want one that houses not only what we are doing, but one that houses what we ought to be doing. And what we ought to be doing is worshiping God in gladness and simplicity of heart.
So let the stones cry out.