Tag Archives: sacred space

Dwelling in Sacred Space

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When I read Mircea Eliade as a college student, one of the first things I learned from him was the importance of sacred space, of a designated space being the center of the world. The designation might seem arbitrary in that it could be any space, sort of like Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin planting a pole in the ground and proclaiming it the North Pole. But once a space was designated as sacred, it truly was sacred ground and treated as such. Although the sacred space could be anywhere to begin with, there is a tendency to see certain landscapes, such as tall mountains and luminous lakes, as more likely to be considered holy space than others.

The early humans who designated sacred space didn’t have any notion of confining God to a certain spot. They instinctively knew that God is everywhere, but they also felt the need to focus. Solomon shares the same insight in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem when he says: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! “ (1 Kings 8: 27) Although the Israelites knew that God is everywhere, the temple was a focal point for Jewish piety. The Psalmist exulted in dwelling in the temple with God and longed for it desperately when torn away from it when taken into exile. I have the same sort of experience with the churches I worshiped in while growing up and with the Abbey Church where I have worshiped for more years than I can count. During the Eucharist, I keep getting the sense that the Abbey Church has become the center of the world as the bread and wine is consecrated. Not that the abbey is the only center of the world. There are countless more. As a practical matter, it is much easier to appreciate the fact that God is everywhere and act accordingly when a particular place is entered at a specific time to focus on God. By practicing decorum and reverence in a designated place, we are more apt to practice decorum, and reverence elsewhere.

Stemming from the insight of early humans and Solomon that the Temple cannot contain God are the various prophetic critiques of misuses of the temple for personal advantage of one sort or another. Jeremiah, for example, warned against trusting in words such as “This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord.” (Jer. 7: 4) Hosea insisted that God preferred mercy to burnt offerings. (Hos. 6: 6) Jesus’ act of driving out the money changers was a climax of such prophecies. In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus then heals the blind and the lame, (Mt. 21: 14) suggesting that such healing is much more in line of what the temple is for than changing money to keep the sacrifices going. Matthew’s placing of these acts of healing seem out of context, but they allude to an odd incident when David attacked the Jebusites and took the city. The defenders taunted David by saying that even the blind and the lame would be able to stop him. (2 Sam. 5: 6) David was believed to hate the blind and the lame as a result of the taunt, but it is more likely that David hated the able-bodied defenders who taunted him. One could say that Jesus was fulfilling David’s conquest of Jerusalem by healing the blind and the lame. In the end, nobody is going to stop Jesus.

John adds that Jesus implied that he himself is the Temple when he said that if the Temple is destroyed, he can rebuild it in three days. (Jn. 2: 19) St. Paul and St. Peter famously extended the human temple to everybody. St. Paul said that each of us is God’s temple, (1 Cor. 6: 10) and St. Peter said we are all living stones “built into a spiritual house.” (1 Pet. 2: 5) Jesus was a particular person who lived on earth at a particular time and place, but he has extended his sanctity as a temple to each of us, not least the blind and lame whom he cured in the temple. In his climactic teaching in Matthew, Jesus said that what we do and don’t do for the “least” of people is done, or not done, to him. (Mt. 25) Peter adds depth to this teaching by reminding us that Jesus was the stone rejected by the builders which has become the cornerstone. (1 Peter. 2: 7) God continues to build God’s house, God’s temple with stones rejected by those who would build human culture.

Just as sacred space can be, and is, anywhere and everywhere, everybody can be, and in fact is, a temple of God. We should treat ourselves and each other accordingly with decorum and reverence.

On Being the Temple of God

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The brief story of the widow putting two small coins into the temple treasury, the only coins she had to live on, has often been touted as an edifying story about sacrificial generosity. I’ve come to seriously doubt that Jesus intends us to see it that way. Yes, the woman is generous and one can think of her many successors who built St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York with their hard-earned pennies. But just before the woman comes with her two small coins, Jesus has castigated the scribes who “devour widows’ houses.” Moses and the prophets constantly championed the widows and orphans, and yet a person who is supposed to be championed is instead devoured by the system. What Jesus knew and the poor widow didn’t, is that the temple was a lost cause; it was going to be destroyed.

But Jesus also knew that the temple was a holy place. Hence his fury that it had been turned into a den of thieves. When Jesus was a child, he knew that the temple was the place where he should be about his Father’s business. (Lk. 2: 49) Religious anthropologists know very well that there is a human need for sacred space, space that focuses one on God and makes one feel closer to God. Hence the devotion of the poor widow in Jerusalem and the widows and other people with meager resources donating towards the building of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. was a shock to both the Jewish and Christian communities and both communities had to build their traditions out of the ruins. After all, the first followers of Jesus also worshiped in the temple when it was still extant. The Jews recreated their tradition by embodying the Temple sacrifices through their daily practice developed in the Talmud. As for Christianity, John, in his Gospel, quoted Jesus as saying that if the temple should be destroyed, he could rebuild it in three days, meaning, as John goes on to say, that Jesus was referring to his body as the real Temple. (Jn. 2: 19–21) The author of Hebrews picks up this theme. By being the once-and-for-all offering for sin, Jesus has replaced the temple where sin offerings were made, with his own body. (Heb. 9: 24–28) For Christians, then, the temple has been replaced by Jesus as the focal point, the sacred space. But if Jesus has entered the heavenly sanctuary not made by human hands, as the author of Hebrews says, then where does a Christian find holy space?

Over the centuries, many church buildings have been built to fulfill this need, some of them overwhelming cathedrals, others storefronts. For me, one of the most moving entries into sacred space was a modest building, unadorned except for a cross strategically placed so as to be hard to notice, with a worn linoleum floor inside. But this is where a small group of Christians had worshiped for years in East Germany. These people had spent their whole lives giving up two small coins in their worship of God.

But, as the Risen Jesus revealing himself in the breaking of the bread shows, Jesus, is not only the true Temple of God but he makes all of us into the Temple that is His Body. That is why Paul, in line with John and the author of Hebrews, says that we are made the Temple of God by and in Christ. (1 Cor. 3: 16) Just as Jesus is the Temple by giving his whole life, we are part of the same Temple when we give all of our lives to God and neighbor. That is, the temple of God is everywhere as is the case in the Book of Revelation, where there is no temple because the Lamb has become the Temple. (Rev. 21: 220 At St. Gregory’s, it strengthens our prayerful focus on God to have the abbey church to go to several times a day, just as it helps to have set times for prayer to help us cultivate an attitude of prayer at all times. When we had a couple of weeks when we couldn’t pray in the church because the furnace had broken down, I missed the sense of focus the church gives us. But it is at least as important not to imprison our prayerful focus on God in a church space, but to keep the walls permeable to the rest of the world so that we are always in God’s Temple because we are God’s Temple. As the true Temple, Jesus broke bread at an inn just as we break bread at the Eucharist in the church.

See also: God’s Kingdom in Two Small Coins