Ever since my pastor preached a few weeks ago about sacred space, I have been thinking, off and on, about that topic. Are there certain places that are sacred? Can we come into contact with God (by whatever name God is called) in some places more than others?
Sacred places/spaces are commonly thought to be
religious structures (church buildings, temples, shrines, etc.). Christians are
often told that the church building is the “house of God.”
In the Old Testament, Bethel means “house of God.” Jacob
dreamed of a ladder leading to heaven, and he named that out-in-the-open space
Bethel. It was a sacred space, for he experienced God’s presence there. (See
Genesis 28:10~19).
Centuries later under King Solomon, the Temple was built in
Jerusalem, and it was deemed the dwelling place of God on earth. Thus, it was considered
to be a space more sacred than anywhere else.
In spite of the fact that the first Christians had no church
buildings at all, over the past 18 centuries Christians have built increasingly
elaborate structures and many, including many church leaders, consider the sanctuary
(=sacred space) in those buildings to be where God is met.
When I was a boy, at the beginning of the Sunday morning worship
services, the church choir often sang the words of Habakkuk 2:20: “The Lord
is in his holy temple . . . let all the earth keep silent before Him.”
Looking back, though, the most sacred spaces/places for me were
not in a church building. Sacred spaces for me and many others, such as Jacob,
were out in the open not inside a religious structure. For Moses, it was by a
burning bush. Indeed, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning sensed,
“Earth's crammed with
heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
That seems to be the way it was for Shug in The Color
Purple (which I wrote
about recently). She asked Celie if she had ever found God in church. “I
never did,” Shug said. “Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And
I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find
God” (Kindle, p. 192).
The sacred spaces where I have sensed God “speaking” most
clearly were where I was by myself, mowing hay on the farm where I grew up,
driving alone across Missouri or Kentucky, walking down a street in Japan, etc.
That doesn’t mean that attending worship services in church
buildings was valueless. Far from it. Still, my most important experiences of
God have not been in some sort of “sacred” building or while engaged in some “sacred”
activity with other people.
Those most important experiences have been times of prayer and
have been when alone with God. For that reason, I believe that any and every
place has the potential of being a sacred space. Thus, as I wrote while listening
to my pastor’s sermon,
Where
there’s prayer, God is there;
The prayer place is
sacred space.
Sacred space is abundant when we practice the presence of
God. I certainly can’t claim to have achieved what the 17th-century French monk known as Brother Lawrence called “the practice of the presence of
God.” (His brief book by that name was published in 1692, a year after his
death.)
Brother Lawrence spent much of his life as a lowly monastic
kitchen aide. But he “resolved to make the love of God the end of all his
actions.” Such was possible by practicing the presence of God in whatever he
was doing.
Wherever we sense the presence of God, as Brother Lawrence
did in the kitchen, as Shug did in the fields of purple flowers, as I have done
in various places, all are sacred spaces.
Meeting God in any sacred space, though, is never just for
the purpose of receiving a blessing from God. After Jacob met God at Bethel, God
said to him, “Every family of earth will be blessed because of you . . .
.”
God blesses us in sacred spaces so we can become a blessing
to others, sharing God’s love.
