on Sacred Space
Recently I’ve been contemplating place, beauty, and sacred space.
Admittedly, my low-church evangelical heritage has not well equipped me for such reflection.
Utilitarian cafa-gym-atorium sanctuaries do little to stir the soul, but reveal much about what we imagine the point of church to be, and how we think about God.
In all our talk of God being everywhere-present we seem to have forgotten that the God of the Bible is often made known in a special way in particular spaces and times.
Last night a friend pointed me to the words of YHWH during the dedication of Solomon’s Temple “Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.” (II Chronicles 7:15).
My theology of place is not well suited to process such a statement, but there it is. The God of the Bible uniquely indwells certain places (Sinai, Tabernacle, Temple) and, worryingly, also abandons them when they are misused.
Over the next week I plan to return to this topic a few times, but this morning I just want to start the conversation.
What, if anything, makes space sacred?
That we’ve been intentional about dedicating it to something and our spirit is more receptive to God as a result? The slow untraceable workings of use and time (like the feeling you get stepping into an old cathedral)? Simply the mysterious ways God has chosen to reveal his presence?
Through the scriptures, it seems that any place that is sacred is a place where God chooses to reveal himself in an extraordinary way. We see this both at the burning bush, Mount Sinai, and the temple. In this day, I think that any place that God has revealed himself to me in an extraordinary way is a sacred place. Any thoughts?
I think that’s fair, though maybe not comprehensive enough. Places we experience God have a sacredness to be sure, but such a definition is a bit reliant on my own individual spirituality isn’t it?
What, if anything, makes space sacred?
My first inclination is to say the gathering of people in the name of Jesus makes a space sacred. As the gathered church is the new temple of the Holy Spirit there’s a reality that declares wherever that gathering occurs as sacred. But I’m with you in coming a new found appreciation for locations that are themselves holy. I’ve been influenced by N.T. Wright’s comments about reconsidering the Celtic idea of “thin spaces” where the veil between heaven and earth is thin, and I’ve begun to wonder if the continual gathering of the saints in a particular place (i.e. the old cathedral) doesn’t, in some sense, wear that veil thinner for that location.
I’ve found Wright’s articulation of “thin places” helpful as well, and at least at first glance I would say that yes, the continual gathering in a place has a spiritual effect that may be hard to perceive or properly define.
What, if anything, makes space sacred?
Nothing! Gnosticism run amok again! Surely the point of what Jesus did was to blow away these connections to space. Jerusalem/the temple was no longer the place that the Passover feast had to take place because he had become the Passover feast. And the reason he says that it is better when he goes and the Holy Spirit comes is so that God’s presence can be everywhere.
Tim, Gnosticism teaches that all matter is evil and that the only thing that truly matters is the spirit and soul alone. Accordingly, your comment is actually quite gnostic. As to the presence of God being everywhere, what Jesus says is that the Holy Spirit shall come upon and into the believers. That’s not the same as His presence being everywhere in the sense that the Holy Spirit is jello and we’re all suspended in the mold. I believe God is ever present, is ever reachable, but Jesus Himself made a point that when two or three gathered in His name, not simply one alone, He became present. Is it possible that there is something to be said about places being sacred by nature of the people communing there seeking to commune with Him? This ties the good creation God made (which is a supremely anti-gnostic statement) with the soul that live enfleshed in that good creation.
OK – fair criticism. I think the point I was trying to make (poorly) was that the presence of God is with people not places. I termed it Gnostic just in the sense that by implying some places are more sacred, by implication others are less so. If God’s presence is with his people via the Holy Spirit, how can this be so?
Tim, not to pile on, but I have to agree that the idea that “the point of what Jesus did was to blow away these connections to space” does seem to stray into a sort of Gnosticism.
That said, I agree that God’s indwelling of his people is a key element here, and one that must be accounted for in any theology of place.
Well now I’m totally confused. I am suggesting that space is neither good nor bad; or it is all good if you like (and to agree absolutely with the creation comment by Preston). But there is no longer a requirement to go to the Temple/Jerusalem to worship. Sacred space seems to bringing back a Temple concept; we are better off worshipping here (the sacred space), rather than there because we are more likely to find God’s presence in the sacred space.
I’ve struggled with how to approach this question when I’m around people I grew up with. When I’m with my parents, I attend a church that has a sanctuary that also can serve as a basketball court when necessary. I understand the thinking, which supposes a good for having a space to reach out to the community and bring them into the church. I’ve seen it work well, I’ve seen it be good, and because of this I don’t have what I would consider a profound theological disagreement with it. I don’t like it, but I don’t think it sin.
However, I have not always been so careful in the distinction, and I have said some terrible things because of it I later had to go back and apologize for. In turn, I have had a lot of push back on one of my explanations for leaning Anglican and attending a very beautiful Episcopal church while at college is because I desire to be in a worship space that is beautiful. Often, I am rebuffed for grasping too much the material. But Christians are materialists. The incarnation made us materialists. We are not physicalists, but goodness do we grasp the material in a profound way. So I desire the space I worship in to communicate that understanding. As I read the book of Hebrews and all the neoplatonic underpinnings that govern it, I see the call to worship as being a reflection of the heavenly realm, that the space we worship in is to mirror that space we cannot comprehend and yet is ever beyond the brush of our hand.
Do I think a space may be more sacred than another? Yes. Imperatively. I think the more a space is prayed in, aloud in heart or through the very moans of the Holy Ghost, it takes on new character, new being. If rocks could cry out that Christ is Lord, I should think the atoms of every single thing somehow resound with the voice of God and, when they feel the presence of someone called according to His purpose, they dance with a joy. It may seem ridiculous, but I think the creation far more connected to the hand of the Creator than we realize. Not in some trite, reductionist sort of pantheistic kind of way. But in a mysterious way, in a purposeful way, in the way that it mattered that God chose the artists Bezellel to be the chief artist constructing the Tabernacle, whose name meant in the shadow of God’s wings, and that he was described as being wise-hearted, or aware of the deepest things of God. There is something important in that. God didn’t want the space He dwelt in to simply look pretty, but it was beautiful with a purpose, which made it sacred with a purpose.
Preston, you’ve given me a lot to think on here, thanks! My initial response is that “The incarnation made us materialists” is exactly right – God is involved with this place and matter more than an overly disembodied post-enlightenment theology had allowed us to imagine.