Bored by the Sublime

While looking for a Google Image of the church doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, I came across an interesting piece by an Evangelical pastor named Tim Challies: “When the Best Part is the Door.” It’s a rather bland and uninspired piece of blog-writing bewailing how boring life is sometimes. It’s a “devotion” that never once mentions Jesus.

But the first couple paragraphs are what I found illustrative:

If you have ever visited Wittenberg, Germany and have taken the time to tour its famous Castle Church, you may have made the same observation I did: The best part of the building is its doors. Castle Church is, of course, the spot where Martin Luther chose to post his Ninety-Five Theses. Centuries later, King Frederick William IV chose to commemorate the event by commissioning a beautiful set of bronze doors inscribed with Luther’s words. And, though they’ve been refurbished in the years between, they hang there still as the city’s foremost landmark.

Any tour of the cathedral begins with the doors. Once the tourists have gazed at them for a time, snapped the requisite photographs, and heard how Luther inadvertently sparked what we now know as the Protestant Reformation, the tour leads inside. And the inside is rather uninteresting by comparison. There are a few sculptures high up on the columns and a number of graves embedded in the floor, including Luther’s. But in most ways it is just another of Europe’s innumerable cathedrals without much to distinguish it from all the others.

As Pastor Challies is not of our tradition, I suppose it is understandable that he seems to neither know much about the Castle Church, nor care. First of all, the church is not a cathedral, but rather the private chapel of the Prince Elector of Saxony, Frederick III (The Wise) - who began construction on the “new” Church of All Saints in the castle in 1490. Frederick courageously protected Luther and changed the course of world history because of the courage of his convictions and masterful statesmanship. And one of those “boring” graves in the church is his (with the others being both Luther and Melanchthon, as well as Prince John the Steadfast - yawn). Luther is buried under the church’s pulpit, and it was here, in 1547, where the occupying conqueror Charles V, at the surrender of Wittenberg to the Roman Catholic imperial forces, stood and refused to exhume Luther, reportedly saying that he doesn’t make war on the dead. There are original paintings by both Cranachs - the elder and the younger. And the “ho-hum” statues include: Nicolaus von Amsdorf, Caspar Cruciger, Johann Brenz, Urbanus Rhegius, Justus Jonas, Georg Spalatin, Johannes Bugenhagen, Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther. In defense of Pastor Challies, he probably has no idea how significant these men are. So he was bored.

There is a 19th century addition to one of the towers of the Castle Church with the shape of the crown of the King of Prussia topping it. The words “EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT” are inscribed on the tower just below the “crown” and the gargoyles. It is a striking sight that dominates the view of Wittenberg. The things that were said in this place changed the world. And the things that were, and are said, in the Castle Church, and in our own churches, likewise change eternity. This is indeed a sublime reality worth pondering.

I was privileged to visit the Castle Church with my wife and a group of pastors and their wives in October. Unlike Tim Challies, I did not see the famous doors first, but entered the Castle Church through the main doors - and I will never forget the elation of being inside and seeing this! My own response could not have been more different. Since the age of seventeen, I had read about this place, and there I was, more than forty years later, taking it all in with my very own eyes. I am not ashamed to admit that my heart was racing, and I was gawking at the sight.

And, of course, there is so much more to see in Wittenberg. It was beyond extraordinary. All of it.

How sad that Challies was so bored. But then again, he is of a different “tribe,” and maybe he simply has no interest in history.

But there is something else that is at play here. It is revealed in his sentence: “But in most ways it is just another of Europe’s innumerable cathedrals without much to distinguish it from all the others.” Imagine being so jaded to consider a wondrous medieval structure (it’s not a cathedral) to be “just another,” implying that you have seen so many medieval churches and cathedrals that the wonder and awe are lost on you. See one, and you’ve seen them all. Yawn. Imagine considering the timeless testimony of ancient European churches and cathedrals with the same slack-jawed insouciance as one might have looking at a Taco Bell in a strip mall.

My dear wife coined this phrase as I read Challies’s article to her: “bored with the sublime.”

In a humous take, a comedian on a late-night TV show famously explained about being next to a fellow air-traveler who was annoyed that the wi-fi (a brand new feature) wasn’t working. The comedian thought to himself, something along the lines of, “You’re sitting in a chair in the sky!” For thousands of years mankind had only dreamed of what we now consider so ordinary as to be annoyed with it. He said, “Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.” I remember a flight to New York in the 1980s in which the pilot could not land because of traffic, so he circled around the Manhattan skyline: the Twin Towers, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building - shimmering in the night sky, seeming so close I could have touched them. It was magnificent and burned into my memory to this day. Through it all, I heard the condescending drone of a couple of bitter older ladies complaining (honking!) about the detour - oblivious to the magnificent scenery that delayed us a mere five minutes. No-one today will get that same experience. And as many times as I have flown, I will admit it is still a thrill to leave the ground and traject into the heavens. Imagine the generations that could only daydream about human flight!

And I do think it is a problem for all of us who live in the wealthy western world, surrounded by technological wonders that our forebears from the days of Frederick the Wise could never imagine. Oh, the things we take for granted! As G.K. Chesterton quipped: “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

It is most apparent when we consider how churches - even many of our own confessional Lutheran churches - reflect this being “bored with the sublime” when it comes to our worship. For unlike our Evangelical brethren (actually, they stole the word “Evangelical” from us…), we believe that a miracle happens at every Divine Service: the miracle of the Mass, the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in space and time. We do not confess a spiritual or a symbolic presence. We believe that when the Words of Institution meet the elements of bread and wine, Jesus is miraculously there in His flesh and blood, bringing heaven to earth in our material realm. But how sad it is that instead of childlike wonder, the urge to gawk in awe that Christ is present, we yearn for the casual and the informal, for having a someone plant his or her buttocks on the chancel floor with toys to put on a kids’ show in the middle of the Divine Service, or we have pastors in street clothes (or God-forbid sports jerseys) cracking jokes and urging people to high-five one another. How sad indeed when people are “bored by the sublime” and desire rock music and dancing girls to cut through the Sunday humdrums at our altars.

For that’s what the irreverent, anti-liturgical church-growth cancer is: boredom. I have lost some members to that kind of you-know-what over the years: the archetypal big-box non-denominational, Pentecostal church that convinces people that they are prophets with esoteric spiritual gifts, and who manipulate people with emotional supercharged pop music. One of my former members said this very thing to me: “I need upbeat music so I can move my feet.” Well, she did. She moved her feet right out the door of our “boring” church, opting for fun instead of the sublime, entertainment instead of the profound Word of God. She walked away from the Gospel proclaimed, the Holy Sacrament, the comfort of holy absolution, and the Real Presence of our Lord. She was bored. Bored with the sublime.

I had another family leave years ago, and the mother said that her preteen daughter preferred the “fun church.” That is a direct quote.

In His love and mercy, God gives us sublimity in the ordinary: miracles in the midst of the material, His Incarnate Presence in an otherwise ordinary human body and in otherwise ordinary bread and wine. Even with distorted minds squinting into the ruins of a broken world, we see glimpses of His goodness, truth, and beauty - and we can experience these things in our day to day lives to the point where the transcendent coexists with the ordinary. In the words of a sublime hymn by Paul Gerhardt (TLH 25) that did not make the cut to appear in LSB: “I will sing my Maker's praises / And in Him most joyful be, For in all things I see traces / Of His tender love to me.” But we are trained by this world’s prince to become bored by the sublime-ordinary, by the Incarnation, by the miraculous. And this boredom leads to things like soaring rates of divorce, increasing illiteracy, nihilism, addictions, and the juxtaposition of packed stadium seats and empty church pews.

It is easy for us pastors to forget the enormity of what is happening at the altar. We are in charge. We have to think about what comes next in the liturgy. We are worshiping and conducting worship at the same time. As the celebrant, I don’t have the luxury to gawk in the Presence of the Lord, as much as I might want to. But at the same time, being a poor, miserable sinner standing at the high altar with the presence of Jesus is a privilege that never becomes “just another.”

I remember my field work pastor virtually collapsing, kneeling on the prie-dieu in the chancel, after the last person communed. He was exhausted, but not physically. I saw his face because of where I sat. Nobody in the pews could see it. He taught me about the tremendum without saying a word. It is the same awe that came upon Dr. Luther as he said his first Mass.

I am reminded of a passage from Bo Giertz’s Hammer of God, the last page, 336 (translated by the sainted Rev. Hans Andrae - by whose kindness my wife and I were among the very first to read this stirring passage in English):

“In the same manner also, he took the cup, thanked God, and gave it to his disciples.”

He lifted his hand in blessing over the old silver chalice, while reading the Words of Institution. The sun hit the gilded brim making a flashing light-spot on the inside of the chalice so that the wine shimmered blood-red with rays of rubies and gold.

“… saying: Drink ye all of it. This cup is the New Testament in my Blood, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins.”

While reading the Words of Institution and making the sign of the cross over the chalice, he noticed that he started to tremble. This mystery always became overwhelming, when he stood next to it. Today he saw almost a revelation. It was as if the shining silver bowl with the wine was transformed into a heart, created out of the shining substance from some celestial glory, filled with a blood that was pure and atoning, eternal and divine—and yet as warm and living as the warmth in a fellow human being’s hand.

This shining heart was the center of all life. The sun and the worlds circled around it, the variegated scenarios of all history moved around it in billowing fluctuation, and the seraphs worshiped it in wide shining circles. It had been shining from the beginning of the world, its light penetrated the darkness of the morning of creation, and the trees in Paradise sang its praise with billowing branches. Then darkness came upon the earth, an angry sea of twisted limbs rolled forward with intertwined bodies in violent wrestling, the air shaking from curses and cries of agony. The sky was filled with red, flickering clouds, and the inescapably just retribution appeared like a sword between the clouds.

Then the shining heart descended over the storming sea like a setting sun. Like the sun going down, it was immersed in the black waves, which hissing with rage threw themselves over the bright edge of the chalice. The Holy Blood was poured like streams of gold and ruby over the dirt and the unclean rags in the rolling mass of agonizing humans.

Then the miracle happened. As the wave of a mighty wind washes away the sand from a large stone slab, likewise the blood and the dirt were washed away. Individual people appeared, set free from the rolling mass, and rising slowly they looked in amazement at the chalice that in a new glory had risen out of the black depth, now standing as a bright rock in the midst of the waves. The sky above was high and clear, the sun shone, and the angels sang: It is finished.

May we never lose that sense of the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary, especially us, brother pastors! May we First Evangelicals, pastors and laity alike, never become so jaded as to lose our sense of awe and reverence at the mysterium tremendum and instead fall for the temptation to whore after the world’s counterfeit allurements.

May we never be bored by the sublime.