Sacred Space
“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28 (Introit verse)
I used to preach at the Brighton Railway Mission as a teenager. It was one of those tin tabernacles that sprang up at the end of the Victorian era.
They used to have those big gospel posters outside in day-glow colours, and I remember one Sunday arriving to see “Are you tired of sin? Then come inside.” And someone had added with a felt pen underneath. “If not, phone Brighton 2374.”
The little group who kept the Chapel going loved that building although it was of no architectural merit whatsoever.
Most humans have a strong sense of place. So returning to the place of their birth, or a place associated with their first love; a place of great happiness or a place of deep anguish - these places are more than mere geographic locations.
Through memory and its linked emotions, space becomes differentiated for us, divided by familiar tracks.
Here’s how one writer has expressed it:
“For religious man, space is not homogenous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others.” (Eliade 1959:20)On a Dedication Festival such as today, we are giving thanks for the building itself, but in so doing we are recognising that it is far more than the some of its masonry.
When you look at religious people around the world you can see that there are two important processes going on in sacred spaces: re-ordering and focusing.
Re-ordering is repeating the work of God in creation, bringing meaning and order out of chaos. This is the purpose of the careful structure of Genesis chapter one, a literary masterpiece reflecting God’s cosmic intentions.
So our church is carefully ordered if we can but see. The Baptistry is at the entrance, for Baptism is the sign of admission to the Church of Christ. The altar and cross is the obvious focus – the place where the Gospel is re-enacted. And so we could go on, differentiating this sacred space, re-ordering the world of human things to reflect God’s order for salvation.
There are of course some Sacred Spaces that need no ordering: places and events that produce awe and a sense of the transcendent - the total otherness of a vast universe and the feeling that there is continuity and meaning to human life. And yes, even the feeling that there is a God.
Mountain tops and seascapes; quiet gardens and vast deserts; friends in candlelight; the beauty of music, poetry, art…
Eclipses have always produced an immense and silent Sacred Space that sweeps around the world with darkness, beauty and the numinous in its wake.
But then there are of course the Focused Sacred Spaces, of which this church is one, where the general feelings of awe and transcendence, of longing and loving, and occasionally the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (Otto) - the compelling and fascinating mystery at the centre of life and existence - these feelings find particular focus in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and in the lives of his saints.
This is the sacred breaking into the profane.
For Christians these sacred spaces - these houses of prayer - although they do not fully explain the sacred, nevertheless give shape and form to what we believe to be a Christian explanation of truth.
Many people in our post-Christian society today do not know how to use them. They are unaware of the meaning of the symbols.
They are even in danger of worshipping the created rather than the Creator; they follow the line of beauty in a curve that turns in on itself. Sadly, they miss the living messages of a house of prayer, a gate to heaven.
We live in a culture where people don’t like focus, because it brings responsibilities and duties. The answer to everything is a sort of blurry thing. The revelation of Christ as Lord of Sacred Space necessitates response and an effort to live differently.
A fuzzy sense of awe at an eclipse, will not transform human society in the way that the church has. Christ’s people, however imperfect, have done immeasurable good in the world and still do.
This is the sort of focused, prayer-infused Sacred Space St Mary’s should be, and I believe, is. A man rang me when I was here to book a time that he could bring a group of psychics to ‘feel the remarkable energy’ (his words) present in our church. I hope you continue to support the daily offices and mass. This is at the heart of maintaining the Divine energy of this sacred space, the presence of Christ.
There is one more important aspect of this sacred space. Listen to Mircea Eliade in his book The Sacred & Profane:
“But the irruption of the sacred does not only project a fixed point into the fluidity of profane space, a center in the chaos; it also effects a break in plane, that is, it opens communication between the cosmic planes (between earth and heaven) and makes possible (ontological) passage from one mode of being to another.” (1959:63)Here today is a ‘break in plane’ - along the cosmic axis of this altar and the crucified Christ above.
The altar here is a sarcophagus with relics - the bones of the saints - the place of the dead. Above Christ’s head sits his Mother in Heaven - the place of eternal felicity.
And later as the host is raised along this axis, and as the monstrance is poised above the tabernacle, there is a ‘break in plane’; eternity touches earth and our bodies and souls are fed with manna from heaven. The sublime is made tangible.
We give most hearty thanks today for this Sacred Space, and for all the lives it has touched from around the world and for over a century.
And as again we offer gifts of bread and wine; we offer prayers of thanksgiving and wonder, or sometimes of anxiety, pain, bewilderment; but we remember with faith and hope that
“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28 (Introit verse)
