Building Plan and Symbolism (Pt 1 of 2)
17 June 2008 - 15 סיון 5768 by Huw
We continue with our serialised posting of Rick Fabian’s Worship at St Gregory’s, by permission of the author and the publisher.
Visitors entering St Gregory’s may find the church strikingly arranged: the altar table stands in an open space before the entry doors, where people gather chatting before worship. Icons of dancing saints circle overhead. Rock sculptures rise in the garden opposite. Candles and crosses occupy a platform to the right, in the middle of the building. Beyond these, empty chairs stretch to a large raised seat at the far end, where once churches predictably stationed the altar.
In fact our arrangement reflects an ancient plan underlying most liturgical church buildings today, only more obvious here—and used here, as anciently, to enhance congregational participation. The plan originates with Jewish synagogues. Our floor plan derives from L. Bouyer’s analysis of Syrian Christian synagogues and Roman basilicas (*), adapted with an eye to early Byzantine practice as described by T. Mathews in The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy (1971) and R. Taft’s The Great Entrance: a History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Pre-anaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1975), and early Roman and Reformation practices as described by C. Buchanan (*). Mathews refutes Bouyer’s conjectures about Byzantine building usage, but does not contradict his basic thesis about historical church orientation. St Gregory’s represents a very early form of this traditional synagogue plan, such as Jesus probably knew. This plan was familiar to Christians in both east and west during the first four centuries. Instead of following Bouyer’s proposals for modern compromise, we adapt his early formats themselves: the resulting plan accommodates popular processions, dances and other congregational participation better than any compromise we have seen.
Christians continued the worship scheme of many Jewish synagogues, which complemented worship at the Jerusalem temple, and climaxed with a procession after the prayers of the people, synchronized with the temple sacrifice that day: the entire service of readings and sermons thus focussed on sacrifice. Although this sacrificial focus disappeared from Jewish buildings after the temple’s destruction, it endured in Christian churches. But whereas Jews had processed to the synagogue doors, facing the Jerusalem temple where many hoped the Messiah would come, Christians climaxed their liturgy by processing to the table where they knew the Messiah’s presence whenever they remembered his sacrificial death. For more on this, see C. Dugmore, The Influence of the Synagogue upon the Divine Office (1964). A later section of the present work will also deal with the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
Despite the separate origins of synagogue and table prayers, the Christian liturgy is one unified service in two parts, on an single Jewish plan, and not a pastiche of two unrelated services, as some historians infer. St Gregory’s building plan focusses each part by gathering people around the lectern and table in turn. Yet the table, vested throughout the service, focusses and unifies the entire liturgy, which is full of Christ’s presence at all times — no less in the gathering, readings, sermons and prayers than in the eucharistic meal.
Both Jews and Christians adopted the plan of imperial Roman town government halls (called basilicas after the Greek title for the emperor, basileus). These featured a throne in the apse for the military governor or magistrate, with icons of the emperors posted in front of him, and a space before this where petitioners knelt and shouted, “Kyrie eleison!” (Sir, show mercy!), hoping to attract his attention. Christians seated their bishops on this throne, thereby creating logistical and symbolic problems for all later centuries. St Gregory’s seating plan sets a presidential chair in the apse, but with the people’s chairs close surrounding it. Monastic choirs throughout east and west evolved similar arrangements, which are therefore called “choir” seating.
This plan features seats surrounding a raised platform (bema) with a preacher’s chair (”Moses’ seat,” Matthew 23:2) and chairs for deacon and cantor, joined by a runway (solea) to a raised lectern (ambo) backed by a tree-of-lights (menorah) and screen. In synagogues the menorah and screen recalled the Jerusalem temple; here our screen is a screen of Ethiopian crosses with their customary cloth streamers. On the raised platform and runway we welcome new members and celebrate marriages in the midst of the congregation. Beyond the screen of crosses stands the table for celebrating Jesus’ eucharistic meal, within a considerable open space where the whole congregation can process, stand and dance — and feast at parish suppers, too. Our choir sit and move with the congregation, or stand wherever they can sing best, using whatever instruments they need.
San Francisco architect John Goldman designed St Gregory’s building to receive the artistic gifts of local people and the ethnic richness of the whole Christian missionary world. A large mosaic by visiting Moscow artists crowns our entry doors, which a New Zealand Maori carver in our neighborhood made; likewise our font, tower crosses, and architectural ceramics present the work of local sculptors. Iconographer Mark Duke’s extensive murals dominate both chambers of the building. Smaller icons, crosses and censers come from the largest eastern Christian church, in Ethiopia; our embossed offering plates, from Christian Egypt; our hangings and vestments, mainly from west Africa — where they are in daily secular use, as all Christian vestments originally were. These west African bubus, of inexpensive stuff richly tie-dyed and free of symbolic ornament, were made to serve as human clothing. By contrast, many modern vestments look like donned curtains or upholstery because that is what the fabric was designed for.
Colorful ceremonial umbrellas from the ancient churches in south India and Ethiopia move through the church in every procession. At the building’s focal point directly behind our altar table hangs a rubbing from an ancient Chinese stele honoring missionaries and monks from the Church of the East during the eighth century Tang dynasty: this rubbing is a gift from the church in China today, with whom our diocese enjoys a longterm prayer partnership. Our altar table vessels are contemporary California ceramics or pewter replicas of Byzantine treasures. Musical instruments include drums from Africa and Mexico, Ethiopian sistrum rattles, and an American harpsichord. We welcome contributions from the greater ecumenical world as well: for our aumbry, a Shinto household shrine now houses consecrated bread, wine, and sacramental oils for baptizing and healing; Buddhist bells from Tibet and Japan mark our liturgical silences; our presidential chair is a Thai elephant howdah. Elephants, of course, are not used outside Eastertide. (*)
