A Church of Time not Space

(Big thanks To Dan Cooke for the Inspiration on this one)

Sunday one of our worship leaders gave a message and referenced a book “The Sabbath - Abraham Joshua  Heschel” one of his key points was church is a religion of time not space. It’s a very big point, Technical civilisation is a conquest of space, how do we triumph by sacrificing time to create space.

So we build, we tunnel, we develop and construct. The end result being a conquest of space by sacrificing time. Geo-political conflicts exist with a battle for space, not time. Our goal is to gain power by gaining space and without thought we will sacrifice time to achieve this .

Our worship leader Dan’s point was this, Judaism and Christianity are religions of Time. We have significant spaces of worship whether they be a synagogue or cathedral but they are sanctified by time. That is to say the process of;

- remembering God, his promises and provisions

- The keeping of ritual, passover, communion and baptism

- Festivals, Lamentations and Sabbath

All sanctify the believer in the space, so effectively the time spent in worship also sanctifies the space. No space is Holy but is rather made Holy by the process of time.

Which is precisely Herschel’s point.

“My father defines Judaism as a religion centrally concerned with holiness in time. Some religions build great cathedrals or temples, but Judaism constructs the Sabbath as an architecture of time. Creating holiness in time requires a different sensibility than building a cathedral in space: "We must conquer space in order to sanctify time.” (Heschel)

Holiness can only be developed in time. You can take away the Promised Land, and the people of Israel can still be Holy, remove the cathedral or the church and a community can still unhindered find a place of holiness, Time requires Time to master it. It has no other master.

“In the Bible, no thing or place is holy by itself; not even the Promised Land is called holy. While the holiness of the land and of festivals depends on the actions of the Jewish people, who have to sanctify them, the holiness of the Sabbath, he writes, preceded the holiness of Israel. Even if people fail to observe the Sabbath, it remains holy.” (Heschel)

The issue is we don’t function as a Church of time. We become space orientated, regarding the facility, the worship space, the chair, the lights and the entrance. We ponder the graphics the social media, the digital assets and marketing (digital space not time).

While all along forgetting that our greatest Cathedral exists in Time and Sabbath is it’s architecture. Not a Roman Colosseum or a Frank Lloyd Wright House, both these are slaves to time. Sabbath is the grand immovable, unshakable, unburnable architecture designed for time.

Remember the 7th day when God rested, it was the time that was sanctified as holy, not the space. On Mount Sinai the time was special, not the place. The last supper it was the time that was special not the place.

The only way therefore to master time is a complete release from the deafening consumerism of the day and a release of being yoked to toil. Sabbath was never supposed to be legalistic, but rather an experienced reminder of joy, a disciplined reminder of eternity grounded in time, not space. So that we might experience rest, edification and sanctification. Our worship song doesn’t have a space, it sits in time.

We remaster time on a day of rest (sabbath) by learning that time holds Tranquility, Serenity, Peace and Repose. Stillness, Peace and Repose become the heartbeat of a day in time constructed to master time.

Sometimes we need a reminder that “it is done”; “the battle has been won”; “death has been defeated.” These still ring true today as much as they did when Christ and Yahweh proclaimed them. If we are to truly be a church of time then Sabbath and Prayer come from the back-of-house to the front of house and have to sit front and centre. Because God does not sleep or rest we have permission to both sleep and rest.

Prayer requires no space, likewise Sabbath. They are the tools in which a church learns to master time. If we are to champion Jesus then church has to function as a stark contrast to a society obsession with space. We do not need it, it should not be our Master. We are a religion of Time, and the profound thing that happens is when we master time with time, we conquer space and sanctify it as a byproduct of time.

Sabbath (Shabbat) comes with its own holiness; we enter not simply a day, but an atmosphere. It is an intrusion of peace, rest and joy. Designed to sit counter to the noise of consumerism and toil. Free of striving and achieving it is a chance to give thanks and rest and delight. If we at church cultivated a spirit of rejuvenation that fostered a Sabbath experience predicated on celebrating the Goodness and Blessing of God we would champion a counter-cultural revolution.

Yes, your space is special, but only because of the time you spend in it. The time dedicated to praise, prayer and proclamation has sanctified the space. You could achieve the same results at a waste management facility with the same group of people. Time is the elusive perpetual commodity that we will never master, yet we have been taught a way to glorify time with time and so we will conquer space for 6 days but there is something special about the sanctification of the 7th days where we use time to make it holy.

“Creation is the language of God, Time is His Song, and things of space the consonants in the song. To sanctify tie is to sing  the vowels in unison with Him.” (Heschel)