Holy Spaces

'I stood in the room where Nate Saint's wife heard about her husband's death, can you imagine?'

He had goosebumps telling me. I had goosebumps hearing it. Why do some spaces evoke such emotion in us? Why do some piles of bricks and mortar make us feel something?

I've been thinking recently about church buildings. Alistair Begg said, in a message on mark 13, that 'God is no more present inside a church building than he is in the gents toilet...' To which i want to say, 'yes...but.' Yes, God is omnipresent, and nowhere more really there than anywhere else. (how's that for a sentence!) But there is something special about church buildings isn't there?

Why do we whisper in a cathedral? Why does it feel peaceful to sit in an old church building? Why did Moses have to take off His sandals? is there such a thing as a holy place? Sports fans obviously think so. There is something special about Adams Park. The looking Frank Adams stand on the far side, the loomed over old main stand housing the dressing rooms and the club offices. The Valley End with it's once blue crash barriers, and the away end (or the new away end, depending on how old you are!) For supporters of a certain age, there's something special about the carpark at Wycombe General Hospital, because that's where Wycombe Wanderers used to play. (not on the carpark, they've paved over it! Criminally.) 

Yes...but, you say. I know, Wycombe Wanderers are actually, really, spatially present at Adams Park in  a way that they're not anywhere else. God isn't. God doesn't live at church, you know that. But...but there is something special about the building where we meet Him isn't there?

Right now that building is empty, dark, quiet and probably a bit stuffy because, even in North Carolina, no one expects the weather to warm up forty degrees in a week! By 1040 on Sunday morning it will be filling with people ready to worship, and hear the Bible preached. The church has entered the building. 

So maybe it's not so much the places that are special, but what we do there. There was nothing intrinsically sacred about the burning bush, but something sacred was about to happen. God isn't more present in the church building than the gents, or the supermarket, but i don't gather to worship with my brothers and sisters at Walmart. And this applies whether you meet in a thousand year old cathedral, and thirty year old church building or a brand new movie theatre. God is not more present, but you are.

So we need to be careful in our attempts to 'de-spiritualise' spaces. We're not walking out of the Temple marveling at the stones and lattice work, we're just gathering to worship. God is not more present in these spaces, but we are.