The Extensions of Sacred Space
For a little more than the first decade of my life, I lived in the house on the north-west corner of the intersection of Oak and Fifth streets in Yutan. No matter how far I go in life, how many places I live, or what happens to that specific property, for some part of me that will always remain my starting point. There is a sacredness to that place. Some of my most important developmental years were spent there. I have lots of memories of that place. It will always be important to me.
But many places have earned a sense of special significance to me: the house my family moved into after our first house where my parents still live, the floor in Neihardt where I lived my freshman and sophomore years of college, the apartment I lived in after that, and the house I live in now. All of these places mark a different, but important, time in my life. They were resting points, homes, when I was there, but now I look at them as places of change and growth. Because a home is the one static place in a life full of movement, the motion of our lives are reflected upon them after we leave. Sometimes we don’t even have to leave. Sometimes simply thinking about it is enough.
Gilgal was not the home of the Israelites, but it became a place of significance after they renewed the covenant there in Joshua 5. Throughout the first 6 books of the Bible, many places are named for a significant event that happens there. The lay of the land was woven with stories of the people, important cultural memories were labeled on the map. Place meant something and history mattered.
This particular place, Gigal, marks an important transition. The people move from being sojourners feeding on the bread of heaven, to people of the land. They have found their way to their homes. Though the conquest was only beginning at this point, they had security in the knowledge that this place would be their new home. Of course, what followed was littered with violence and sin, the conquest was never completed in the way they had initially planned. However, we don’t need to advance the story too quickly. For now, they are sitting at Gilgal. The covenant is renewed. They have a future and a home. They have a sacred place to call their own.
One unfortunate reality of modern religious belief is that a sacred place is chosen not due to the significant history of a community, but rather for the sake of finding the best real estate available. In the process of building a church, people will try to find a place where many people are located. High traffic areas bring in more visitors and get more engagement. Prominent places in town or along highways help churches to get noticed. And if you can’t find good land, pick cheap land so you can easily afford to pay for the property. While this isn’t necessarily true of all churches, most places of worship now are built on land that is not chosen because it already means something, but in the hopes that it will mean something to someone someday. Sacred space isn’t based on importance and memory but on market value.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is important that we put churches in places where they will reach people. However, if churches are sacred space, what do we do with all the places that are so sacred to us outside of churches? Perhaps, churches don’t have a monopoly on sacred space and holy ground.
Most Bible historians will agree that the Bible gives a few different perspectives about where God is most appropriately worshiped. While the Southern Kingdom of Judah held that Jerusalem was the best place, the Northern Kingdom had their own preferred places at Bethel and Dan. In the time of the judges, the Tabernacle traveled around, so different places throughout the land would become the sacred place throughout the year. In the New Testament, the Samaritan woman at the well claims that her ancestors worshiped on a mountain there, while Jesus says that the time is coming when believers will worship in spirit and truth. Spirit and truth don’t seem like a place, but they are used against a place. Maybe in some ways, the faithfulness of worship makes any place sacred.
I remember a sermon that an interim pastor preached at my hometown church while I was growing up. He described his father hitting him when he did wrong, but how that changed at church, when one lady told his father that they didn’t do that there. From that time on, church became a safe place for him. A place where he didn’t need to fear getting hit for messing up. I suspect many people have a similar feeling about church. It is a safe, holy, protected place. But why shouldn’t that feeling extend to other places? When I was young, I was afraid of monsters and other evil creatures stalking in the shadows of my bedroom at night. This is true for many kids and followed me wherever I went. However, one day, my maternal grandmother reassured me that angels were protecting her house and no bad things could be there. For whatever reason, that was enough to convince my trusting childish brain. She didn’t tell me that there was nothing evil in the world that could hurt me. She told me that we were safe there. Angels were watching over us. We were on holy ground.
We can bring our assurance and confidence beyond the walls of the church building. We can carry our filters on language that might hurt others with us beyond worship. Church isn’t the only place where we should be nice to people because church isn’t the only holy ground. God appears to us at our homes, beside quiet streams, on mountain tops, and everywhere else we can sense the glory and love of God impacting our lives. God can make any place significant, any place holy.
Wherever God appears to God’s people is holy ground, whether that be a church, a house where a Bible study meets, a church camp, or simply a restaurant where people meet to talk about God. Furthermore, places become sacred to us when they hold the memory of our lives from a particular time. The place we were when we received the best news of our lives or the place where we parted with a loved one have a meaning that lingers in our hearts. God brings together our past, present, and future, in ways that our feeble memories cannot. In God, we can see how our pasts are real and affect us in significant ways. God brings our personal and family histories to life, creating sacred space that we can enter to learn something, to root and ground ourselves in our story of navigating change in the past so that we can face the changes to come.
