Back to the Sanctuary

You remember the cries of indignation: "YOU KIDS! NO running in the sanctuary!" It's a cry which has been repeated generation to generation for reasons unknown to both the offended crier and the little runners. There has never been, to my knowledge (and i ran in the sanctuary plenty of times) any satisfactory explanation as to why one needs to avoid running, laughing, chasing and generally being like a child, in the sanctuary. Didn't Jesus tell us that if we wanted to be part of His kingdom, we'd need to become like little children? Then why is little-children-ness such an offense to the place where grown-ups say they worship God?

We have bird sanctuaries, plant sanctuaries, animal sanctuaries. In that sense, a sanctuary is a place set apart for a particular use--protecting that thing for which the sanctuary itself was set apart. That is an interesting concept when you come to think about the "sanctuary" of a church building: is it set apart for GOD because He needs a place to be preserved, kept safe like an endangered lizard? Is He in need of our protection? Will He somehow be diminished by laughter or running?

Is it, instead, a sanctuary in the sense of a "holy place" because is it set apart for worship of that God? And then, if that follows, what sets the sanctuary apart? The dim lighting? The stained glass? The intention of grown-up people (who may snore through a "worship service") to "keep the sanctuary quiet/holy/set apart/somehow different from the fellowship hall" in an attempt to create some religious, man-made sense of "holiness"?
Or is it merely that children laughing and running is objectionable to old people who don't like the noise? Or does the very joyousness of it call to the child within them and make them wish they could run and laugh but their long cultivation of a religious spirit quashes that posthaste?

Really--What makes the sanctuary holy? Scripture tells us to "sanctify (set apart) the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to tell the reason for the hope that is within you." So if i can make my heart God's own sanctuary, if by the presence of His Holy Spirit i am indeed a partaker of that tiny spark of shekinah that once lit the night sky for the Israelites or blazed forth from the Holy of Holies--does that mean i can't run or do anything undignified or well, unsanctuary-like? That sounds even more complicated and restrictive than "being ladylike" (another little-understood but often-wielded sword of words used on young females until recently. Now all we care is that we girls can assert ourselves and knock down the nearest lecherous male individual. Ah, the benefits of women's liberation!)

So. If i am unsanctuarylike, then am i somehow disrespecting the indwelling Holy Spirit? Or is that putting the holy chicken before the sanctified egg? If God is large, capacious and capable enough to inhabit the praises of His people, to fill all of heaven and earth with His glory--does that mean that i am sanctified even if i laugh like a horse in the sanctuary? IS the sanctuary me or is it that nice stained-glass place?

The point is, God is perfectly capable of handling Himself in any venue--warehouse, street corner, forest, jungle--and He needs no "holy place" in which to be worshiped. He is worthy always, in all places, of all worship.

So let's consider why the sanctuary, the holy place (obviously a holdover from Old Testament times) was even considered a holy place when God's presence was really in the next room?
Perhaps that is the answer. For the Israelites, God was ALWAYS in the next room. They were safe from Him in the holy place, the sanctuary. They could worship Him and love Him but never, never, approach His holiness--except for the hight priest, once a year, with a rope tied around his waist so that they could drag his cold body out of the holy of holies in case he'd somehow blown it. They knew full well just how powerful His holy fire was, how completely consuming He was, how they could be vaporized by a breath of His mouth.

And yet when Jesus died, He ripped everything open. He made sure that the curtain separating that place of sanctuary (for humans, both holy to and yet safe from, the very God they worshiped) from the Holy of Holies, the place where God's shekinah glowed and flashed, was torn top to bottom, just in case anyone who might yell, "Don't run in the sanctuary!" didn't clearly see that "This is the LORD's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."

He wanted everyone to know that "the sanctuary" was no longer a place where you could safely worship the God in the next room. No, God was HERE NOW. He was with us, and the sanctuary, the holy place, was now was being moved from a physical location in Jerusalem to tabernacle within a bunch of rowdy humans, tax collectors and former prostitutes included, who had no better sense than to whoop and holler and sing and dance for the very joy of the Lord who bought them with His blood...even in those "holy places" where they were told not to run, not to whoop and holler and dance. God was no longer waiting in the next room.

The business of religion, as Capon would put it, was over. Finished. The new order was one of absolute running and shouting and leaping and praising God, breathlessly expectant every moment that HE was going to do something GREAT! As we all know, this was not at all to the liking of those who sorely missed religion itself. They quickly brought back the concept of sanctuary as the place where we must pretend God is more present than somewhere else--especially not in us who are His: that would mean that all the controls would fade, all the offerings might falter, in short, that all bets were off...there'd be no reason for anyone to do anything except out of crazy love and gratitude.

That is exactly what the tearing of that curtain from top to bottom meant.

God is no longer in the next room. He no longer waits for us to try to make ourselves acceptable, trembling lest we get it wrong and die from His holiness. He is now no less holy; it is simply that He has now invited us into that next room to be with Him. He's knocked a fatal hole in religion, no matter how those in the narthex may cry out, "NO RUNNING IN THE SANCTUARY!"

No longer in the next room, He is Immanuel, the God who is with us. So RUN in the sanctuary! For if you are His, you ARE the sanctuary. And He is there with you. He loves you and longs for you to run, crazy with love and gratitude, into His open arms. He's ready to swing you around and around and say, "I have loved you with an everlasting love!"

Far more fun than not running in the sanctuary.