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The church has been wounded. Last Sunday evening about 7:00 pm, a drunken driver ran his car into the corner of our church, knocking down the columbarium. Some of my time this week has been spent in talking with our insurance company, and with two contractors making estimates for the repair. Then I have also spent some time this week has been spent in talking with our insurance company, and with two contractors making estimates for the repair. Then I have also spent some time thinking about sacred space, and its relationship to the people who worship in it. In the Episcopal Church, a sanctuary is not consecrated--made holy--when it is built; it is necessary to wait until the mortgage has been retired, and the builidng is solely owned by the church. So this sanctuary, which was built in 1965, was consecrated in 1981. It is the third sanctuary that St. Thomas has owned, and whenever people come from other churches to worship with us, as they do at ordinations, I hear many comments about how beautiful it is. I wonder whether it is the location itself, or even the physical building, which is sacred? Perhaps it is the activities we conduct in this building that make it sacred: the prayer and praise, the baptisms, the weddings, the funerals, the celebrations of Holy Communion, the reading of the Bible, the ordinations . . . we do not believe God limits God's presence to consecrated churches. We know God hears us when we pray at home . . . and yet we need a sacred space which helps us focus our attention on God's presence, and helps us open our minds and hearts to God's word. The story of JacobŐs ladder is the passage I would have chosen to explore, in thinking about sacred space. When Jacob had his dream, and noticed how awesome the place was: "this is the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven", he was running away from a dangerous situation. Having tricked his twin brother Esau into selling his birthright, Jacob deceived his dying father Isaac, into giving himself the blessing that Isaac intended for Esau. We may presume he had feelings of guilt; we may presume he was afraid of retaliation from Esau; and we may guess he had feelings of remorse about the family uproar he had caused. One purpose of a sacred space is precisely to be a place where people who feel guilty, or sad, or afraid, or confused about what to do, can come to find strength and guidance. Every Sunday, we pray by name for a long list of people who need God's strength and guidance: we are holding them up spiritually, and serving almost as a connecting link between them and God. What Jacob discovered in his dream, was the same thing: there was a connecting link between him and God, which he saw as a ladder, or more likely as a staircase. Two things happened to Jacob, that often happen to us. The first thing is that he was reassured by God's presence and favor. God said: "I will give you the land . . . I will bless your offspring . . . I will keep you wherever you go . . . I will not leave you" (verses 13-15). That is what we also seek: strength to continue on our path, knowing that God is with us. But then there is a second thing we may not be seeking: a specific message about what we are to do, or what we will face. Throughout the ages, people have wondered what that dream about the angels ascending and descending meant. Just some brief research led me to several fascinating explanations of the angels and the staircase. The first explanation is that the staircase is the wheel of fortune: circumstances change, and the person who is successful, will suddenly be brought low, and the person who is struggling to survive, will be lifted up (Philo). A second explanation is that each step represents a period of history, and the angels are those descendents of Jacob whose sins carry them downwards, and other descendents whose good deeds carry them upwards (Ladder of Jacob). The third explanation is that our sins force angels to come down from heaven, shrinking the heavenly host; while our good deeds efect a cosmic repair, sending angels back up to swell the heavenly host (Levi Yitzak of Berdichev). A fourth explanation is that the staircase is a metaphor for the spiritual life of each individual. The ascending angels represent times when we feel close to God, and the descending angels represent times when we feel alone and find it difficult to pray. This author, Ephraim of Sudlikov, emphasized that the descent always makes possible a higher ascent. The final explanation is that the angels were moving up and down upon Jacob (not upon the staircase) because they wanted to see the man who would become the father of the 12 tribes, and would become a righteous man. This explanation is strengthened a bit by what Jesus said to Nathanael in the Gospel of John: "Truly I say to you, you will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (John 1:51). One of the fascinating things about the Gospels, is the possibility that Jesus is presenting himself as an alternative connecting link to God -- that he is saying in effect, Ňyou donŐt need the sacred space of the Temple, you can find a connection to God through meÓ. In the parable of Jesus we heard today, Jesus seems to be speaking against the clear delineation in his society of who is a good Jew and who is a bad Jew. He seems to be providing a context in which each person can connect to God and gradually grow into goodness and righteousness. The parable of the wheat and the weeds is really an allegory, with each element in the story having a symbolic meaning. The weeds are a plant called darnel, which looks very much like wheat as it is growing, and only becomes fully distinguishable from wheat when it is fully mature. In JesusŐ time, farmers would usually try to cull the darnel out of their fields during the growing season, even though they would pull up some of the wheat along with it. I think a central theme in the teaching of Jesus, can be drawn out of this story. The theme is that good and evil are closely interconnected in our lives, so closely that we who are eager to judge, and to get into that field to pull out the weeds, are prohibited from doing so. Jesus says, let the wheat and the weeds grow together. Not until the end of the age can they be sorted out, and even then, it is God's angels who will be given this task, not us. The reason we humans cannot be entrusted with the identification of evil, is that good and evil are all mixed up inside us as individuals. Think back to Jacob for a moment: he has behaved wrongly toward his brother and his father, yet God has not given up on him, but is, as we say, "working with him". Or think of St. Paul's words: "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, is what I do". Sometimes we act from good unselfish motives, but the action itself is wrong. At other times, we foolishly do what is evil, recognize what we have done, and repent. I don't know whether the drunk driver repented, but he did not run away after the accident, he recognized his responsibility. It seems very likely to me that God is giving us time: time to decide whether we will choose to grow into wheat, or choose to become a weed. A crucial unrecognized part of the parable is the time that elapses between the discovery of the weeds, and the harvest. In allegorical terms, that is the time between each person's discovery of our own capacity to do evil, and the end of our lives. We have choices every day, and over the years of our lives, we have many opportunities to choose the good, and repent of the evil. This is the principle reason we say a confession on most Sundays: its another chance to change and to choose the good. Perhaps, then, the sacred space is a container for sacred time: the time we spend together in God's presence--seeking that connecting link, holding up our loved ones who need strength, being nourished by the sacraments, and above all, bringing our wounds to be healed, and our fears to be assuaged. If this be true, then it is much more important to come to church every Sunday, than you may have thought. Listen again to the story of Jacob's dream, as it is told in a poem by the Rev. Sheila Nelson-McJilton:
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