Sunday, December 04, 2011

Sacred Space Became Obsolete With The New Covenant

Jon at Profane+Faith has an interesting post this morning: There is no sacred place. He says:
Here is what I wanted to write down. There is no sacred place. You can not somehow channel God's Spirit through a certain scale of things, a certain size of building, a certain type of design, or even a certain type of activity there. I believe God is just as up to something in the sub shop, in the mechanic's garage, in the retail outlet, at the editor's desk as he is in a church building. Maybe more so.

I believe you can obliterate every churchy building there is, and the church of Jesus Christ will not be tarnished in the least. When no place is sacred, our faith becomes a profane faith. It is lived out everyday. And the renewing hand of God can be seen in the restaurant, the car dealership, the school.

If our faith is such that a fancy building we visit once a week is letting us off the hook or immunizing us from living out faith where the rubber meets the road, we have yet to come into life-changing contact with the good news of Jesus Christ. Because he is good news in real life, not just for one hour one day a week. And so there is no sacred place.
I agree. We just can't seem to get the difference between the Old and New Covenant. That is a real tragedy because they New is infinitely better than the Old but when we try to function as New Covenant people of God as if we were still under the Old Covenant, we miss a big part of the joy of the new and better covenant God instituted with the blood of His Son. There are so many ways we try to force the Old Covenant practices into our church traditions: a set apart priestly class, ritualism, infant baptism, sacred places and sacred times. These don't bring us closer to God but further away from the glorious life in Christ that is ours by faith.

God is working all around us and it often seems that He is working the most in the places that we recognize the least. Neighbors helping one another, a mother comforting a hurting child, Christians sharing a time of warm fellowship over a cup of coffee. We don't see those things as nearly as important as "church" but I think God is far more glorified in simple acts of fellowship and love than He is in our vain attempts at "worship". There is absolutely a place for intentional gatherings of the church but they should be a part of our everyday lives, not an event to be attended. Check out the rest of Jon's thoughts and leave a comment or three!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great stuff! I have to ask if our buildings subconsciously keep us from those simple ways of godliness that would make our faith look so much more like Jesus.

Arthur Sido said...

Jon, I certainly think it can. Many of the ways that we understand church seem to actually disconnect us from the simple fellowship we see in the Bible, conforming us to a religious model rather than the image of Jesus.

Fred Shope said...

I agree that buildings, etc. are not "sacred" places, but I would take a different direction. I see all of creation as sacred because it belongs to God, and beyond that, every place there is a follower of Christ is sacred space. And yet profane at the same time