What can a burning church do?
comment left in a theological discussion forum
This time, for instance, a church is burning by the Seine.
The spire leans and falls. The gathering crowd gasps; a lull
in their singing, someone’s pained murmur. An atheist
tells CNN that Paris is not Paris anymore. The roof caves in.
Durruti said the only church that illuminates is one that’s burning.
What could be seen in the blaze? This week, in Louisiana,
three Black congregations prayed for what’s left
when the smoke has cleared: a laptop, still whole in the wreckage,
full of Greater Union history, a ledger, pages curled, that holds
the many names of members lost to memory. Before the stones
can cool in Paris, the questions begin: leave the undone structure
untouched? Cover the open wound of the roof with a skylight
or stained glass?—My friend the priest collects donations, fills
little envelopes for Greater Union, St. Mary, Mount Pleasant
Baptist. How many envelopes arrive? And how many bombs
planted by hands like mine have scythed apart brick and mortar?
On the news, pictures of the chapel before the fire, full of light.
What can a burning church be? Not much. Maybe Christianity
began with a torn veil, a grace leaking out—not long before
we built our Babels with their buttresses and ornate windows.
Easter arrives and with it, the world over, processions
of breakable people proclaiming He is risen indeed.
This is how they end the brief uncertainty of Friday’s dying
God. A burning church can claim a life, can get deep enough
in the lungs that God goes out in a puff of smoke. What
unknit the veil if not his brow, unknitting at his final breath?
And what unknits my heart if not these smoldering sanctuaries—
these central chasms which mean safe, or, just as often, set apart.
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