APRIL 27 2019
WHY THAT CHURCH FIRE?
To everything there is a season,
and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to break down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to count as lost,
a time to keep and a time to discard,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Yes, this is a passage from the Bible. You’ll find it in Ecclesiastes 3. There’s a time for everything, even to read the Bible once and a while.
That same Bible book, Ecclesiastes, its first chapter tells me, “There’s nothing new under the sun”. That, I think, is debatable. There IS something new under the sun: universal pollution, of which plastic is a symbol, and Climate Change another example. Well, perhaps I am wrong here: come to think, there really is nothing new, because pollution is a form of SIN, perhaps the ultimate sin, because it directly affects THE CREATOR. Sin, of course, has always been there: what is new is its universal nature. But Climate Change – the direct result of SIN – IS new!
Yes, there is “a time to be silent and a time to speak”. Today it’s time to speak, to speak loud and clear, to speak in unambiguous terms: POLLUTING IS SIN. To be silent today when the fate of creation is at play is sin, is to discard The Message, which is all about God’s world, which he created to his glory, because “God So Loved the World!!”
I also believe that we are in the home-stretch: now that everything goes global, it’s also now or never. By that I mean that it soon may be too late to change minds. I base that on the very last chapter of the very last Bible book, where a curious text appears. Revelation 22: 11:
“Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy.”
These words suggest to me that the lines are drawn, that the lots have been cast, that minds have been made up, that there’s no turning back once the End appears. Perhaps, by the grace of God, there even may be such a thing as a last minute conversion.
And that brings me to the Notre Dame de Paris.
Nothing happens by chance. I see the fire at Our Lady of Paris, as a significant event, as a symbol of a changing world. The church took 200 years to build: it made unfit for service, in mere hours. Creation took millions of years to develop: we destroyed it in 200 years, mere minutes on the world’s timescale.
Yes, it is tragic; A Human masterpiece gone up in flames; a symbol of old-fashioned, dated, Christianity vanishing forever; a relic of antiquity gone; a work of art, the result of 2 centuries of painful exertion and sacrifice by thousands of the faithful, vanquished before our eyes.
The believers 800 years ago had a long-time line, just as the painstaking artisans in Barcelona still struggle after many decades to finish the Sagrada Familia Basilica designed by Antonio Gaudi.
Why did this fire happen?
Nothing comes about just by chance. What lies behind this disaster? Is it a symbol of the state of Christianity today, which itself, is in total disarray? Is it a foretaste of what is in store for the world at large? Is the rending of the curtain in the Jerusalem Temple, when Jesus died, invalidating the Old Testament rituals, similar to the destruction of Notre Dame de Paris? I think so.
That sign 2000 years ago, in Jerusalem, the very centre of the World’s monotheistic religion, also had a mysterious origin. I imagine that the Priests, on duty in the Temple when Jesus died, noticed that ostentatious opening in that heavy curtain, exposing the out-of-bounds Holy of Holies. Of course the temple warden, the overseer of that sacred building, questioned the staff then present, but all pleaded both ignorance and astonishment that this tightly woven, soundproof, ultra-thick piece of tapestry could be so brutally ripped. (See Mark 15: 38).
That this sacrilegious act was truly ‘an act of God’ and really signaled the end of Temple Worship, and the very start of the world-wide “Christ”-ian faith, was not understood.
I see the fire at the Notre Dame as similar: the end of institutional religion.
Fact is that all of Christianity is at a crossroad. The heaven destination is more and more being questioned, and with it, ‘heaven-resembling’ monuments, such as most church buildings.
It’s no secret that today the Roman Catholic Church has never been so divided. The Protestant portion – its main body being in the USA – has become a political movement, where tolerance is no longer tolerated.
The Notre Dame fire suggests to me that worshiping in buildings made by human hands is a thing of the past. It suggests to me that ALL of life needs a new approach. I also believe that, just as God’s hand was involved in opening up the church’s roof to the sun and moon and stars, so this same hand made sure that the 180,000 bees in three hives on the roof, were spared, protected from the intense heat.
A different era.
When the Notre Dame de Paris was built, all of life was focused on the church: everybody was automatically a member. The clergy saw itself as the “sole servants of salvation”. Latin was the church language and Nulla Salus Extra Ecclesiam – no salvation outside the church- was generally accepted as the real truth.
Also the original designers of the building had a different idea of life than we do, witness the Gargoyles on the periphery of the church roof. These half-human, half-beast demons carved out of stone, were a good indications of the general belief of the populace then: evil was always at the doorsteps.
Then the choice was brutal: either be faithful to the church and obey its dictates, or face the Inquisition and go to hell. That’s why the church was built as a portal to heaven: that’s why the ceiling in the church was so elevated, prominently featuring God’s angels.
Then there always was the stark choice, heaven or hell, and the church’s message was equally unambiguous: come to church, daily is better, confess sins to the priest, who’s there instead of God, and be saved.
Now, if you were allowed to enter that burned out hull today, the tableau is totally different: Open Sky. The walls are scarred, but access to the open air, to the sun and moon and stars, has been given free reign. After 800 years, God’s sunshine, God’s moonlight, God’s starry twinkling sky directly beams unto the debris now littering the floor where the footprints of some 20 generations of worshipers are embedded. The Holy Ground has been contaminated, just as the earth everywhere has been poisoned by us, screaming for deliverance.
Another church, another fire.
Years ago my wife and I visited Berlin and, in the city’s very centre, there were the ruins of an old church: no roof, open windows like hollowed-out eyes, charred, bullet-pocketed walls: the former Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, left in its war-damaged state: a silent, eloquent memento to what happened during World War II.
It is my considerate opinion that Notre Dame de Paris also should not be rebuilt. It should be left a skeleton, a reminder to the world of our universal WAR against creation, just as that church in Berlin, also located in the very heart of Germany’s Capital City, still is a silent witness to the evil forces of warfare.
Yes, the church should never be rebuilt, in spite of solemn pledges by the suddenly pious plutocrats, who probably believe that this is a cheap way to heaven: after all what is 100 Million Euros when you have billions of that stuff. If there were a call to help the poor – would that same money be forthcoming?
Also, the rebuilding is now in the clutches of the bureaucrats, in spite of billions pledged, these pledges may never be cashed, because the entire process will be subject to all sorts of circumstances, such as safety concerns, design delays, economic turmoil, weather disasters, and clerical infighting.
WHY THE FIRE?
Why the fire in what is known as Holy Week? Nothing happens by chance. The fire was pre-ordained. It was a warning that what happened on Monday April 15 was a prelude to what is coming on a day in the near future when, as 2 Peter 3: 10 has predicted,
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”
Today that mysterious fire signals to me the symbolic end of the ‘building-centered’ Christian religion. It is typical that Billions are pledged to rebuild this temple, while the real task of the church is to seek the lost and to help the destitute, and, above all, to treat God’s creation as holy.
The last thing we need is another building. There are more than 5000 church buildings in France alone that are in a poor state of repair and most of them totally under-utilized: empty all week, except for a few hardy souls, mostly old.
Thirteen Thousand Oak Trees were sacrificed to construct the roof alone of this building: tall, mature, straight trunks of pure wood. Are there still enough of those around in our age of forest’s massacres? Should we even try to find them, at a time when every single tree is needed to combat Climate Change?
From bad to worse.
The environmental news becomes more ominous by the day. Yet the Climate Change deniers are a powerful force. The nation of France is deeply divided, and this has spawned the Yellow Vest movement, objecting to a fuel tax that penalizes especially the less wealthy class. The same is true in Canada where in recent elections those who favor carbon tax have been defeated.
Yes, the news is bad. In ecological terms, things are getting worse faster than anticipated, leaving humanity with increasingly limited options or no option at all. Everyone agrees that there are no quick and easy fixes, so do not expect any truly sustainable fixes to emerge from the political or the industrial mind.
Yes, there is “a time to be silent and a time to speak”.
Today it’s time to speak, to speak loud and clear, to speak in unambiguous terms: POLLUTING IS SIN. It’s time to act, to escape the carbon trap. To not act when the fate of creation is at play is sin, is to discard The Message, which is all about God’s world, which he created to his glory, because God So Loved the World!!
News has a short lifespan these days: two weeks ago Paris. Last week, hundreds killed in Sri Lanka, both involving churches. Is the Lord telling us that Church buildings are becoming a trap?
On Pentecost in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, the church too was on fire: people actually were sporting flames on their heads, signs of the presence of the Spirit.
Then the church had no buildings. From there on, for 400 years, the church grew and grew without any buildings, simply house gatherings.
Why that church fire? Is that a sign that the time for church buildings is over? Back to basics? Back to house churches? Back to neighbors inviting neighbors?
Why that church fire? Lots of questions.