Sacred Space¹

Humans are amphibians … half spirit and half animal … as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.
—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

I love that Lewis quotation, partly because it sums up so neatly who we are as Episcopalians and as Christians. We're neither/nor; we're both/and.

I offend and startle some by saying that, in a sense, we are far less cerebral and spiritual than many other Christian groups. What I mean is this: In many other traditions, worshipers are asked to pray silently, to imagine things, and to do things "in their spirit." I used to be part of a church where we would sing many songs about bowing our heads, getting down on our knees, and even, occasionally, about prostrating ourselves. If anyone had actually done any of that on a Sunday morning, it would have created quite a stir. We were supposed to (in the words of the pastor) "kneel in our spirit."

The Episcopal Church, like most liturgical churches, is incredibly active and incredibly physical. We stand, sit, kneel, bow, and cross ourselves. People carry things around. We light candles. Many of us will not simply sit down when we first enter the room—we bow first. And we bow again as we go up those steps to get to the place where the lectern is. We get in a line and walk up to the front of the room. We eat and drink. People wear special clothing of several different types. If you have never been part of a church before and wish to join, someone will put water on your head. If you are sick, someone will make the sign of the cross on your forehead with oil. In a couple of weeks, with great ceremony, we will remove all the decorations from the room, only to bring them back in a couple of days later. (As a relative newcomer to the Episcopal Church, I was astonished on my first Easter morning when someone started an enormous fire in the back of the room before anything else happened.)

All of this gets back to the C.S. Lewis quotation: Unlike the angels, we are both spirit and flesh, and it makes sense to get both the spirit and the flesh involved in the business of worship.

What's Holy?

We wouldn't prefer it, but using a common coffee mug for Eucharist in place of a special chalice would not seem like a sacrilege. But is it OK to use the Communion Chalice as a candy dish?

I've been to conferences where a cafeteria table was used as an altar, but is it OK to use the altar for a craft project?

If you were horrified by the idea of the chalice as a candy dish or the altar as a craft table, that's your sense of the sacred kicking in. There's nothing wrong, really, with either candy or craft projects, but the chalice and altar have been set aside for something different. (That's the root meaning of sacred.) In a sense, they belong to God's service now. Find something else to fill with candy.

Where's Holy?

In the Old Testament, the Temple was arranged as a series of concentric courtyards. There was the world outside. The first real "temple" item was the "court of the Gentiles," which anyone could enter. Inside that, an area for ritually clean Jews. Inside that, an area for priests. And at the center of the whole, the "holy of holies," which only the High Priest could enter, and only once a year.

For more than a thousand years, Christian church architecture has echoed that arrangement:

• Narthex is the outer vestibule. (Historically, it was the place where the unbaptized and those who needed to do penance could listen in on the service without actually participating.)
• Nave is the room where most of the people gathered. (The name really does refer to ships, possibly because the roof beams look like inside of a ship, turned upside-down. We're all in the same boat.)
• Chancel is the place for the altar and the people who have special responsibilities there. In some traditions (and in our own if you go back a few centuries), the division between nave and chancel wasn't just a low fence; it was a solid wall. (Sister Nadine mentioned the other day that it's quite recent for women to be allowed beyond that dividing line.)

The point here is not that God's presence is limited to one location. It's always been possible to pray in a fishing boat or workshop or family home. The point is rather to say something about the "otherness" of God. For a human being to enter His presence isn't quite like walking into a classroom or an inn.

Sanctuary

All this talk of holiness (especially the part about the wall between the nave and the chancel) emphasizes the strange, unwelcoming nature of God's presence, but there's also the "still, small voice" heard by Elijah (1 Kings 19:12). That's the other side of "sacred space." I like the way the movie A Series of Unfortunate Events defined "sanctuary":

Sanctuary is a word which here means a small safe place in a troubling world. Like an oasis in a vast desert or an island in a stormy sea.

---

¹I'm supposed present a teaching on February 25 at our weekly Lenten Preparation session. This is the first part of that teaching.

²By the way, if you are new to the Episcopal Church, the best way to figure out what to do is simply to watch the priest. And don't get too obsessed with it. Nobody will notice if you don't cross yourself at the right moment.