Sacred Places - part 2

As I continue to consider sacred places, I recall a conversation with one of my pastors a couple years ago about the church building and how it is available to the community. We were discussing whether or not it is appropriate that we lock our church. Shouldn't a church be a place of sanctuary, open to anyone as needed? As I think about times I visited various cathedrals and even Buddhist temples in Asia, there were many cases where the buildings were unlocked all the time or at least during the day for anyone who may want to enter for prayer or worship or quiet time. Are these places sacred spaces? And if so, what makes them sacred?

It seems like a building plan has been part of conversations at my church for many years, as have security issues with our current building. Maybe we subscribe to the idea that a church has some amount of intrinsic sacredness about it, but we also realize that in our post-Christendom society, that sacredness is not as acknowledged as it once was. In the conversation with my pastor, we threw around the idea of a prayer room on the side of a new building that could include some worship elements and be open to the outside while the rest of the building could be secured. I wondered how the room would be used. Would it be respected? Would there be a sacredness about it? And how does that happen?

This leads into my consideration of sacred tangibles. I've also been pondering some images I've seen in the last 5-10 years:

• a stone jar of water where people stop to dip their hands as they enter to worship
• wisps of incense lingering over a book that holds the Scriptures
• a candle lit before prayer
• scented oil dabbed on the forehead of a parishioner
• a string of stones held close as prayers are recounted
• a room that holds icons, a Cross, an open Bible
• wine and bread on the altar

Are these things sacred? Could it be that the water is holy, the book itself is worthy of a kiss, the incense really reaches to God, the flames of the candles release prayers, the oil has healing powers as does the icons of saints, the stones of a Rosary are channels for prayers, a room is a vehicle in which we can meet God, and the wine and bread are the actual blood and body of Christ?

I wonder.

Even though I have had plenty of experience in liturgical churches in my family's church background, strangely, I was raised to doubt the sincerity in the worship practices of those denominations. And as I began to understand what it meant to be Mennonite, I was taught not only to mistrust the sincerity, but actually to condemn most of liturgical practice as idolatry.

Sadly, I was taught that the repetitious liturgy recited or read from prayer books each week were empty words. Cathedrals were full of idols and the parishioners really didn't know the Risen Christ.

My Mennonite upbringing taught me that churches should not be cathedrals. They are merely meetinghouses where the congregation gathers each week. This emphasis was extremely enriching to me as I began to formulate my theology of the Body of Christ. But in many ways, as I later realized, it forsook many of the gifts of the Body and the acknowledgment of how humans learn.

The issue was with the tangibles -- those things we touch and experience with our five senses. The Mennonite Church gradually began allowing the use of symbols or decor in homes, but somehow portrayed it as sacrilegious if used in the church building. There was very little room for the artistic and educational richness in symbols. Everything was pragmatic and concrete. A basin and towel was just that, a basin and towel used to wash feet. They were merely instruments to teach humility. Grape juice and bread -- just food. The elements themselves were not sacred, rather one's obedience in partaking them in the context of the congregation was important.

I'm not sure what people were taught in relation to the Holy Scriptures. I have met people who see their Bible as a sacred part of their life, and, for example, would never think of allowing it to even lay on the floor. They may keep it lying on a table in a special place in their room. Others I know use the Bible more as a reference book. They may have several in their homes in different translations and sizes. While the Scripture may be sacred to them, the book itself is not so much. Are our Bibles sacred? And if so, what does that mean or how should that impact how we treat them?

I recently sat with a deeply spiritual woman dying of leukemia. There were candles lit in her room and a faint smell of incense in the air. She had icons hanging on her door and IV bottles. Her relatives brought her a very special oil and Rosary with very holy stones from the Jordan river in the Middle East. These tangibles brought the woman peace and assurance. She knew she would be healed; there was no question. And so far she is doing well.

When I spoke to Mennonites about how to encourage her to have peace and assurance, they used language like, "she certainly has a strong faith." "We can pray for her to have peace and assurance." "We can only hope that her trust in these things will help her." I detected little to no acknowledgment that the tangibles held any sacredness in and of themselves. It was as if healing centered on faith alone and the physical presence of particular things in the room were irrelevant.

Yet I wonder.

And other images flash through my mind:

• a burning bush around which was said to be holy ground
• a wooden rod that sprouted
• a man struck dead after touching the Ark of the Covenant
• the cloak of a prophet passed on
• a fish that carried a missionary
• the river where a leper was cleansed
• mud on the eyes of a blind man
• a sick woman touching Jesus' cloak
  

There are many others that could be listed. But I'm thinking about how the ordinary somehow becomes sacred and how that affects us both physically and spiritually. How does this happen? Are they merely human constructs? Or are there truly holy places and spaces and things? When do physical realities become sacred?

And perhaps a more important question is, what about our spirituality or faith do we miss out on when we fail to recognize the spiritual realities in the physical?