The Sacredness of Space

Sermon

This month I am preaching three times and offering a short series on sacredness: the sacredness of space this week; next week, the sacredness of music; and two weeks after that, the sacredness of people. We have so many exciting events this month—the dedication of the balcony pew cushions, Michael Barnes’ 30th anniversary at Westminster—that it felt right to reflect on how these maybe seemingly ordinarily wonderful things actually point us to a kind of holiness. Or at least it felt right to me!

So then perhaps it is best to begin with what makes something sacred. The root meaning of the word suggests that something sacred is something that is set apart, something that is different somehow. Maybe for us something becomes sacred when we have an encounter with the holy, an encounter that is different from our usual, day-to-day life.

Something that is sacred is something that is transcendent somehow—an experience that moves our hearts or our guts, something that makes us take a big deep breath, something that makes us say, “Wow!” or “Thanks!”

Many of us have had the experience of bringing someone into this sanctuary for the first time and watching their reaction. In the summer of 2020, when we provided space for an emergency daycare for elementary students, Gregg and I took the kids on a tour of the building one afternoon. We came in the back of the sanctuary, and the kids slowly walked down the center aisle and looked up, mouths wide open, eyes taking it all in, everyone quiet as a mouse.

Sacred space has that effect on a person. Now maybe this sanctuary doesn’t do it for you, and that’s fine. Maybe you go to the Columbia Gorge and your heart races at all that beauty. Maybe you’ve been sitting at the kitchen table and in an experience you can’t express in words, God shows up and that will no longer be just your kitchen table. Maybe you visit the 9-11 memorial in New York and are washed over in grief and you know that there is something holy about that place, too, holding the last remains of those who perished on that terrible day.

To call a place sacred is to suggest that something happened there and that something was an encounter that elevated us. In the book of Genesis we read the story of Jacob, of the time he fell asleep with a stone for his pillow, and dreamed of a ladder filled with angels, traveling between heaven and earth. When he awoke, he knew he had been in a sacred space, and he anointed that rock with oil to honor the experience he had of the divine in that place.

Fancy places can be sacred; plain, unnoticeable places can be sacred too. It doesn’t matter so much what a place looks like as it matters what happens there. Still, we create places we think will be beautiful in hopes that the beauty will lead people to the divine. John Calvin, of course, would have none of that. He painted over frescoes and mosaics, claiming them idolatry, and so began the very, very plain ornamentation that pervaded Protestantism for a good long while.

Still—we have a sense that the place where we worship God is sacred, that it invites a certain sort of reverence, a particular kind of behavior even. We don’t swear in a sanctuary. We don’t wear our bathing suits in a sanctuary. We don’t drink coffee in this sanctuary….

So perhaps, with our sense of respect and love for our sacred space, we might feel deep empathy for our Jewish brothers and sisters at Temple Beth Israel, when Sunday night, the building was vandalized and desecrated with anti-Semitic graffiti and what appears to be a failed fire at the doors.

I remember when, in 2001, the Taliban destroyed two massive Buddhist statutes in the Afghani province of Bamiyan. Over 1500 years old, the statues were destroyed because, as the Taliban claimed, they violated Islam’s prohibition against idolatry. At the time, I thought, “Beware when forces destroy art and history.” I hadn’t considered the competing claims of what might be sacred.

In 1984, a group of Carmelite nuns were given permission to remodel a vacant theater and turn it into a convent on the outskirts of the site of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. They intended, in their religious observance, to establish a site for prayer and repentance in light of the atrocities that happened at that place. The Jewish community around the world was outraged. For Jews, Auschwitz was a place where Jewish lives were sacrificed, making it sacred in a different way. The conflict ended when, in 1989, the Pope agreed to have the convent moved.

We read about the destruction and desecration of sacred spaces all the time—the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1963, the work of white supremacists which caused the murder of four girls. The murder of seven people at the Sikh temple outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2012. Church fires. Desecration of mosques and temples.

Hate-filled people destroy sacred spaces because they know those places have deep meaning. I would say that for the nonbeliever, Mother Nature has provided sacred spaces, so when 50,000 acres in the Columbia Gorge burned in the Eagle Creek Fire, many felt a deep sense of loss.

In 1943, addressing the House of Lords after the House of Commons was bombed, Winston Churchill proclaimed, “We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.” That thought has stayed with me, through all the church buildings I’ve preached in, through all the tragedies of sacred spaces, through all the possibilities of creating new sacred spaces.

Has this sanctuary shaped you?

When Ellis Lawrence designed this sanctuary, he chose to use the neo-Gothic plan. The sanctuary is in the shape of a cross, reminding us of the centrality of our faith. Everyone faces forward, eyes on the pulpit, as the sermon has prominence in our Reformed tradition.

Extraordinary windows catch our eye as we walk in, then our gaze turns upward to the vaulted ceiling. It’s a big, grand, beautiful space.

We’ve added things over the years. A somewhat unfortunate remodel in the 1950s added some more modern pieces that have never felt like they fit to me. I won’t mention what I refer to as the “Star Trek” clergy chairs. Thirty years ago, the original pew cushions were falling apart and just plain ugly, so an immense project was undertaken to provide something that was both more comfortable and more beautiful, befitting the grandeur of this space. This week, with the pew cushions on the balcony in place, we celebrate the completion of that immense project.

More recently, we’ve improved the lighting and the air ventilation. We struggle still to make this more accommodating for those with special needs, and we have moved pews about to make a more hospitable place for those in wheelchairs. We still don’t know what to do with walkers and strollers.

If, God forbid, this building fell down and we were faced with the question of how to rebuild, I’m not sure what we would do. When Churchill addressed the House of Lords, he proposed that the House of Commons be rebuilt exactly as it had been before. I’ve known of churches that rebuilt exactly as they were. I don’t know if we would do that, but if we had to rebuild, I would insist on better accessibility and closer bathrooms. Ah well. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Beyond architectural tidbits, has this space shaped you?

I think about all the things that have happened in this space. People have committed their lives and the lives of their babies to God in the thousands of baptisms that have taken place here. People have committed their lives to each other in marriage, and not just marriage between a man and a woman, but the marriage of two women, and next week, for the first time, the marriage of two men.

People have dedicated their service as they have been ordained as deacons and ministers and elders. We have wept here, so often—wept as we say goodbye to friends, wept in prayer as we lament the pain of the world and the pain of our lives. We have laughed here and been washed over by some seriously extraordinary music. Now with the balcony pew cushions, angels watch over us as we experience the fullness of life in this space.

All those things cannot help but shape us, I think. But if, God forbid, this space were to fall down tomorrow, what then? Would God still shape us at Westminster?

Let me tell you a true story.

In 2005, Gregg and I moved to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. As we looked for a house, we had some particular needs as I was pregnant and a baby would be joining our family. Sure enough, we

found a house with room for a baby and sure enough, Sarah joined us in 2006. In 2007, we began to hear rumblings that the fire station next door needed to be rebuilt, and that the city would need our house. Long story short, the city did take our house.

I heard from friends that neighbors had set up lawn chairs across the street when the wrecking ball claimed our old home, but I couldn’t watch. That evening, I drove by what remained of the house, now a pile of rubble. I cried and cried and cried. The first house we bought together—gone. The house our infant daughter came home to, gone. The place of laughter and exhaustion and hope no longer was. It was awful.

What I have learned in the years that have followed is that it was just a house. It wasn’t our family; it wasn’t what really mattered. The three of us are still together. We still love each other. We still have laughter and friends. The building wasn’t sacred. It was the people inside it, the relationships forged, the love expressed, that was sacred.

This place is sacred not because of its cross shape, not because of the communion table or the stained glass, but because of Jesus and the ways we live out his call here. It is sacred because of the prayers, the songs, the words and silence. It is sacred because of the saints. It is sacred because of the sinners.

May all our sacred spaces continue to shape us more and more into the image of Christ. Amen.