Why do we gather every Sunday in this sacred space?
Sacred spaces have long been a part of human history. Scholars who study the prehistoric Chauvet caves believe the caves were used for rituals associated with ancient religions, while the site of Göbekli Tepe is considered by many to be the “world’s first temple,” a site that nomadic peoples seem to have used as a sanctuary.
From the time of their enslavement in Egypt, the people of Israel struggled to delineate and maintain a sacred space. As nomadic peoples, they carried the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant and erected a tent for it each time they stopped traveling. Not until Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem did God have a permanent dwelling, but it would be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, who then sent the Jewish people into exile in Babylon.
The prophet Ezekiel would describe a temple with water flowing from it, a promise of a coming transformation, an eventual restoration of the exiles to their land, and the rebuilding of the temple. The water represents God’s blessing upon the people, and a continued relationship with them, starting in their own sacred space. That space – the temple of Jerusalem – would be tremendously important to the people of Israel. They believed that the temple was where God resided and worked among them, the source of all life.
Like the Jewish people in the desert, the Christian community did not have churches, at first. In Corinth, Paul tells us, Eucharist was celebrated in people’s homes, or “house churches” and in the catacombs. The sacredness of these spaces had nothing to do with the architecture – it was the presence, as a group, of the Body of Christ, that made the gathering sacred, along with Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.
Jesus understood very well that, after his death and resurrection, worship would change. His clearing of the temple of money-changers and vendors from the temple precincts transformed our worship, such that sacrifice would no longer be necessary, for God provided the sacrifice, Jesus, offered once for all. From then on, we will bring ourselves to him as sacrifice, not our animals, dying to ourselves, that we might be reborn, dying, in baptism, that we might become his Body and rise with him.
For we are not just a Body, we are a temple, God’s building, and as that temple, we are holy. Collectively, we are a sacred space, called to be holy, that we might one day know full union with God in heaven, when God’s temple will be opened, once and for all, as Revelation tells us.
So… if we ourselves are the Body of Christ, God’s building, is the physical church itself still important? Yes, absolutely! This sacred space is our home, the place we come to feel whole again, to heal our brokenness, to revitalize our connection to the Lord, through prayer and Eucharist, and to be with our fellow sojourners on this journey.
Though we are indeed God’s building because the Spirit dwells in us, in each of us and in all of us together, we can only thrive as the Body of Christ if we gather, if we come together in sacred spaces like this one, to meet Jesus in the Eucharist, to be filled again and again and again with that Spirit, to be one in him, to be at home in him. This unity is the gift of those who foresaw, so many centuries ago, our very human need for sacred spaces where we encounter God, that life-giving water flowing into us, making us one, that it might flow from us to our world.
--OLMC Communion Service Reflection,
November 9, 2021
Image source: Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, Mill Valley, CA (2015), https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4476987152362672&set=a.556998299798922
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