If We Are The Body

Every time we enter a church in Italy, I find myself comparing it to my home church in Pennsylvania. I think St. Paul's UMC is a pretty large church, but it would easily fit inside most of the churches we've seen so far in Firenze and Roma (not counting St. Peter's Basilica, since it's the world's largest church and could hold a football field and then some).

Also, I think St. Paul's is very nice and homey, but it looks super plain - both inside and out - compared to Italian churches. We don't have any carvings, sculptures, priceless paintings, or ornate decorations at St. Paul's (with the kind of exception of the stained glass cross behind the alter; laughable next to the glasswork in Italian duomos).

I've noticed looking at these duomos and basilicas week after week that I have a very hard time imagining myself actually attending church in these churches. And people do that. These buildings are art museums six days a week, and houses of God one day (in my mind, at least). Each time I walk into a church, after taking in the incredible view, I find myself struggling to comprehend what it would be like to sit in these pews every Sunday, listening to Pastor Ron, surrounded by the one of the greatest collections of wealth in the world. I can't process it.

I wonder about the congregations of these churches. What is it like to attend services in a building hundreds of years old? What is it like to sing hymns in a room visited by thousands and thousands of photo-happy tourists every other day of the week? What is it like to listen to a sermon while sitting only a few paces away from the final resting places of greats like Galileo and Michelangelo? Of saints and popes?

I can't imagine it.

And then I get to thinking about how the congregations of these churches must relate to each other. In my church, we have a youth room with comfy couches, coffee, games, TV, laughter. This would be so out of place in a gold-encrusted tomb where no one speaks above a whisper and guards wait to confiscate the cameras of those who dare use a flash.

In my church, we play games in the gym, eat meals in the kitchen or the courtyard, mill around talking in the hallways and pews after services. Can you do that in a basilica? Where do you fellowship in a museum? How can you "do life together" in a century old crypt?

I love visiting these churches for their historic and artistic value, but they seem so fake, gaudy, overdone, wasteful to me. I can't force myself to believe that these ancient museums are houses of God when they're so foreign from everything I love and believe.

It's a surreal experience each time, but each time it makes me appreciate a little more summer Sunday mornings in the sanctuary with my St. Paul's family and winter Sunday nights in the auditorium with my h2o friends.

It's hard to see this and think "home church."