The other day, I wrote about the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer. One of the things I picked up was that there were claims of a special experience of God’s presence at the site. One of the questions that has come back in discussion is whether or not God does show concern for specific places and whether it is therefore a good thing or a bad thing to erect costly monuments in such places.
The argument for a focus on places is first, historical, that the church has a long tradition of building cathedrals and basilicas as costly monuments to the glory of God, visible displays of the Gospel. Alongside that, we might consider the recent rediscovery of Celtic Christianity’s emphasis on “thin spaces” where Heaven feels closer.
Then, there’s a Biblical case. Don’t we see as we look at Scripture that God is interested in places as well as people. He puts Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden, he sets his glory on the Temple in Jerusalem. He choses Bethlehem as the birthplace of King David and of Jesus. He plans a new Jerusalem, coming out of Heaven at the end of time. He is the Lord of time and space.
With reference to the historical evidence. It is worth noting that yes, there has been a long tradition from fairly early times in church history of building magnificent monuments. However, what exactly do we mean by “early?” The earliest known cathedral dates only to around 300AD and of course, there wasn’t much scope for grand, open, public gestures until the Church became officially recognised and free within the Roman Empire. For most of the first few hundred years, Christians were content to meet anywhere that was available from living rooms to catacombs. That those impressive buildings drew their inspiration from Roman temples and palaces and that there was also a concurrent, growing emphasis on shrines and pilgrimages perhaps also gives us cause to be cautious about describing the development as positive.
Returning to the Biblical evidence. It is true that Scripture points us to the God who is interested in people and in places. However, again, we need to look carefully at what is happening in those examples. First, we see that those places are linked with specific points in redemption history and connected with particular people and their roles in that history. God is interested in places as well as people but he is also interested in time. Those places were special because of their place in time. It wasn’t just that random places were being selected as special and spiritual.
Second, those places, people and times were significant because they were types, pointing forward to Jesus and the Cross. In Biblical Theology, we talk about God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule. We trace how the Old Testament focused on geographical places, Eden, Canaan, Jerusalem but even Babylon and the desert places can become places where God is present with his people. All of these point forward to Jesus who fulfils all of those themes. As God with us, Jesus brings God’s rule, he is the perfect, obedient man, the beloved Son, the promised seed. Jesus is “God’s people”. Moreover, if Jesus is God with us, if he presents himself as the Temple from which living waters flow and which will be rebuilt in three days, if we are in him, then he is also the place. God cares about people and places because God cares about Jesus, his people and his place.
Third, remember that the New Jerusalem is an eschatological image of the redeemed and victorious church. It is revealed against the backdrop of a new creation where God is present to bless and to rule everywhere. That then is the trajectory, from God meeting specific individuals and giving them specific places to dwell with him to God’s presence through his outpoured Holy Spirit wherever they are and those people of God moving out to fill the whole earth with his glory, making disciples and teaching them to obey Christ.
So, I’m not convinced by the suggestion that we need to focus on particular places Furthermore I see some alarming dangers with that kind of thinking. We risk falling into Prosperity Gospel thinking with its heavy superstition and the high risk of control and manipulation. After all, if we think of places as special, then we are likely to think of the people linked to them as super special too. This encourages a dependency culture. I need to go to a particular place whether that’s Canterbury Cathedral, Lourdes, The Eternal Wall of Prayer, Keswick, New Wine, Spring Harvest or simply the large, successful church in the City Centre. There, through elevated praise, dynamic preaching or the laying on of hands by specially anointed people, I will experience an additional, super abundant blessing. Instead of looking directly to Christ to meet my true need, I begin to look to people, places and times/events to meet my felt needs.
This is why the Reformation was in part provoked by the corruption and manipulation of shrines and basilicas. We have rightly turned away from such things and perhaps we can see them most obviously in modern day shrines and monuments. We may however want to be alert and on our guard in case we have managed to recreate such places in other ways.
Faithroots 