Religions conflict has been a concept that, while it certainly hasn’t dominated the American news agenda, is on the forefront of conversations about the Middle East. A new article in The Economist gives a brief overview of a few of the holy spaces on earth that have inspired almost as much strife as they have worship. What we’re offered here is more description of what seems to be an all-too-common phenomenon of religious groups fighting religious group, mostly because of physical space.
Granted, many of the issues informing the conflicts in the Middle East also deal with political borders, the simple concept that space or a physical place can be more or less sacred based on history or tradition or mandate almost idolizes space above the true object of worship: Christ.
A family I know went to visit an Australian museum built as a sort of monument to Steve Irwin after his death. They said that, while it certainly was beautiful, the devotion with which visitors approached statues of Irwin and stories about his life was almost religious in nature.
The same can be true about how we approach our churches. Surely, we view our sanctuary’s with a sort of reverence, but what happens when the building receives more thought and devotion than Christ? Is the church still part of the Church, or is it another building erected as an establishment for the purpose of social gathering?
In Ephesians 2, Paul writes, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22 ESV).
There’s a lot of building images in that passage, but the only physical space in which God dwells is you. And, that dwelling place is established by God, just so that we remember it’s not by our own work that we were saved.
Each of us will always think of certain places and spaces as sacred, but rather than think about how lavish or special a specific place is, allow that place to remind you of Christ.
Two things come to mind with your post.
Ezekiel wrote down his prophecies as the Isarelites were forced into exile at the hands of the Babylonians. For them, God dwelled within the Holy of Holy Places of the Tabernacle; that was the literal dwelling place of God. Ezekiel was the High Priest who could enter that place on the Day of Atonement. Many of Ezekiel’s prophecies and visions teach him, his nation, and us readers that God is not confined to one building, one place, one nation, one people. We learn through Ezekiel that God – and by divine mystery, Jesus and Holy Spirit – dwells in all the earth, in the heavens, and in His people. God does not dwell in temples built by humans, as Stephen says to Sanhedrin in Acts.
The other thing this brought to my mind are the great cathedrals of Europe (or, for that matter, the great Megachurches of America). We have these grand structures that reach to the heavens, yet they seem so empty now. Does God dwell there? He is, after all, omnipresent. Yet God does not need our temples. He does not need our megachurches. He does not need our sacrifices.
He desires our heart.