Psalm 48

Our experience of God is closely related to our experience of place. This may strike you as a "pagan" notion, but consider scripture. For example, in worship yesterday we read Psalm 48.

The first part of the psalm praises the LORD in God's city, noting both the geomorphology (it's a mountain), the location (the far north), and the function (a fortress and temple) of this city.

¹Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised

in the city of our God.

His holy mountain, ²beautiful in elevation,

is the joy of all the earth,

Mount Zion, in the far north,

the city of the great King.

³Within its citadels God

has shown himself a sure defense.

The psalmist recounts how other kings fear this city which God establishes forever. The armies of the world cannot conquer the city of God!

⁴Then the kings assembled,

they came on together.

⁵As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;

they were in panic, they took to flight;

⁶trembling took hold of them there,

pains as of a woman in labor,

⁷as when an east wind shatters

the ships of Tarshish.

⁸As we have heard, so have we seen

in the city of the LORD of hosts,

in the city of our God,

which God establishes forever.

Selah

God is worshiped in the temple in this holy city!

⁹We ponder your steadfast love, O God,

in the midst of your temple.

¹⁰Your name, O God, like your praise,

reaches to the ends of the earth.

Your right hand is filled with victory.

¹¹Let Mount Zion be glad,

let the towns of Judah rejoice

because of your judgments.

The psalmist urges us to walk around and admire this city that we might give witness to God to the next generation.

¹²Walk about Zion, go all around it,

count its towers,

¹³consider well its ramparts;

go through its citadels,

that you may tell the next generation

¹⁴that this is God,

our God forever and ever.

He will be our guide forever.

This psalm (and many others) point to a God who is deeply related to a particular place. The geomorphology, location, function, and holiness of this particular place point to God. The Bible affirms that our experience of God is closely related to our experience of place.

Clearwater Forest

The goal of Christian Education is to help children and adults become disciples of Jesus -- to become a people that seek and follow the way of God first in their lives in the world. Our goal is to nurture holy souls within a holy community.

Will our children will become disciples of Jesus Christ?

Places form communities. We need holy places to form holy communities. We need places set aside from the dominant rules of our secular society; places that are different, places that are somewhat remote, that are special.

We need special places to know God.

Last weekend families from my church enjoyed time in a special place -- Presbyterian Clearwater Forest. We stayed in two lodges and ate in the dinning hall. We canoed, boated, swam, hiked, walked, biked, played games, prayed, worshiped, did crafts, took naps, and tried to sleep while the loons called.

Holy places are set aside to experience the Divine.

More important than what we did is how we did these activities together as families with other families and as a church with other churches.

Holy places are unlike other places in our lives.

Presbyterian Clearwater Forest is helping to form Union Presbyterian into a special, yea, a holy community.

Holy places form holy community.

Eruvin

I just read this fascinating article on Slate about eruvin. I'll let you read it first before I briefly reflect on what this might mean for The GeoTheo. Click here.

Interesting, huh?

These lines aren't marking the boundary between the sacred and the secular; they are marking a place for the Sabbath. We are accustomed to think about the Sabbath as a time period, but here is an example of the Sabbath as a geographic boundary.

Does your own sabbath-keeping have geographical boundaries? If you make a point of going to church on Sundays, are there also places you avoid? I'm not always successful, but I avoid commercial places on the Sabbath. We avoid the grocery store, the movie theatre, and even the gas station. I like to spend time at home on Sundays after worship, or perhaps go to a public park or playground with my son. Places that are easy on the soul, and don't make demands on my attention, are good places to be in rest.

If each day of your week had a map, would your Sabbath map be different?

McCormick's Place

Place is powerful. Places are important. McCormick needs to find its place.

I will soon be attending the 2012 McCormick Theological Seminary Commencement, Board meeting, and Alumni Council meeting. During these meetings there will surely be much talk about “sharing the vision” and the “telling the story”. Sharing and telling the vision and story of McCormick will be offered as a way to increase recruitment and donations to the seminary.

The elephant in the room; however, will be place. McCormick has a long history of moving locations. Founded in Indiana, it has institutionalized itself in several places and buildings across the American Midwest. Many alumni remember fondly the campus on the North Side of Chicago. McCormick now finds itself in a relatively new and expensive building in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. (Learn more here). The surprising announcement made several years ago that the seminary was putting the new building on the real estate market, and other subsequent announcements concerning the selling of other real estate owned by the seminary, have produced copious amounts of confusion amongst alums. Is McCormick going under? What is the future of McCormick? Anxiety about place has become anxiety about McCormick’s future.

Rest assured -- McCormick is not going under. It continues to have a sizable endowment. The Board, President, and other leaders within McCormick are making the right financial and strategic decisions that will not only keep McCormick a going concern, but will have McCormick become a recognized national leader in theological education for the emerging cross-cultural Church.

However, I do not believe that McCormick can truly find its feet until it finally resolves its sense of place. McCormick has to be more than a story and a vision for it to be an embodied community. It cannot tiptoe around this incarnational issue forever. We need bones, sinew, muscle -- living breathing beating flesh -- before we can be a community of our Risen Lord. We need concrete, steel, glass and stone before we can be more than just a good idea. We cannot treat our current body like a commodity.

Easier said than done. Yet there are some significant ways in which McCormick’s location have already granted McCormick unique opportunities. McCormick is not a neo-gothic campus in a leafy White suburb. Being located in Chicago, and in the South Side in particular, gives McCormick access to thousands of churches and religious communities. These communities are flush with innovation and vision. McCormick has strong relationships with Chicagoland congregations, and McCormick is creating innovative ways to serve Chicago’s large Christian communities and their leaders. While location and place have been problems for McCormick, location and place may well be its saving grace.