Cheadle Sermon Parashat Tetzaveh 8th Feb.2014
Once there was a guru who wanted to train his two disciples by giving them a practical task, “Take 100 Rps each of you” he said “and use it to fill up your rooms with whatever you are able to purchase. In five days´ time I will return to inspect your work.”
When he returned and visited the room of the first disciple, he saw it had been filled up with rags. That disciple had thought that by hook or by crook he had to, somehow or other, fill up the room, and since rags were the cheapest items to purchase, he had chosen them. The guru was duly shocked.
When the guru came to inspect the second room, he saw that it had been filled up – not only once, but twice and his disciple returned 80 Rps back to him and said, “Guru Maharaja, I only needed 20 Rps to fill the room twice.” He had lit a ghee lamp in the middle of room, along with an incense stick. Light and fragrance were spreading everywhere, from top to bottom, from left to right, from the front to the rear.
The delighted guru said, “You have truly understood. Life is very much like an empty room. It should be filled with the light of knowledge and the fragrance of service, and not with the discarded filthy things of this world.”
Our lives are filled with many things, too often it is rags and other worthless things. To fill our lives with light and fragrance we need to create sacred space. Sacred space begins with the realisation that we are sacred and have the power to elevate our existence beyond the here and now. To fill our lives with light, as in the teaching of the Indian Guru.
In sacred space, people report feeling suspended from their daily routine, time slows down or stops entirely. Awareness expands and we feel at one with others and our surroundings. There is a kind of perfect order to things. Many of us have sacred practices that we maintain alone: hobbies, meditation, prayer, reading, art, music, sports, to achieve the same feeling.
We seem to have hard wired into our brains a drive to separate, define and control our environment. For early man the world must have been a terrifying place, full of creatures that saw him as food. Storms, floods, droughts and other natural cycles could in turn provide great bounty or great suffering; death could fall upon a person at any moment without warning.
The drive to separate the mundane from the sacred, to form places for special events in our lives, or in order to try to control what might otherwise be seen as random outcomes, commenced with the dawn of man and the urge has never left us. This urge to build a scared landscape was also planet wide, with examples of monuments dating to the dim and distant past being located on every continent.
As far away as Australia, amongst the Aborigines, trees, rocky outcrops, waterholes or clearings; anywhere that the ancestral spirits, human or otherwise are associated, sacred space can be found. To enter a site one must be initiated and ceremonies are often held at or near them. There are male sacred sites which are forbidden to women and women’s sacred sites which are forbidden to men.
In Mexico, the ancient Maya revered water for its life-sustaining power, and worshipped Chac, the god of rain. Many areas of Mexico are dotted with natural underground sinkholes-and the Maya believed that some of these sites were visited by Chac himself. As a result, some were designated as “sacred” and kept for rituals, offerings and sacrifices, while others were set aside for bathing, drinking and crop water.
One of the most notable of the sacred springs is Sagrado, this was specifically used for ceremonies and occasional sacrifices; for the latter, men, women, and children were thrown in during drought times to appease the water gods. When archeologists dredged the spring in the 20th century, they found gold bells, masks, cups, rings, jade pieces, and more along with human bones.
According to Buddhist traditions, around 500 B.C., when the Prince Siddhartha was wandering through what’s now the state of Bihar in India, he took rest under a native bodhi tree. After meditating there for three nights, the prince awoke with enlightenment, insight and the answers he had been seeking, which developed into the teachings he went on to spread to his disciples. Naturally, the place where the Buddha reached enlightenment is one of the most sacred sites for Buddhists, and has been a major pilgrimage destination for centuries. Today, a temple complex surrounds what is believed to be a direct descendant of the original majestic tree itself, which sits in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by protective carved panels.
Even the in the UK in Glastonbury Tor we have our very own sacred space. Rising out of the middle of the Summerland Meadows in Somerset, England, is a hill that has long had magical connection. For centuries, Glastonbury Tor (Celtic for “hill”) has been a source of myths: Some ancient Celtic civilizations considered it the entrance to the home of the Gwyn ap Nudd, regarded as Lord of the Underworld and King of Fairies. Whatever the history, the hill is still thought to have spiritual energy, as visitors often report feeling more hopeful and positive after a walk on its slopes.
In witchcraft, there is the idea that during a magical rite some kind of energy is produced by those taking part. In witchcraft this is most commonly visualised as a Cone of Power, and is named such. This is built inside the magic circle, often created by wild and frenzied dancing around the boundary of the sacred space. In this instance sacred space is being used to contain power. As well as containing the power, the sacred enclosure is also called upon to keep out unwanted influences and provide a “psychically sterile” area too.
Everyone in fact does this at one time or another, even though they may not be thinking in such terms at the time. Each weekend large numbers of people travel to watch sport in a stadium that the supporters consider more sacred than almost anything else in their lives, and woe betides anyone who may wish to do things to “their” sacred ground.
“The Sacred Turf” of Wembley Stadium being one of the best known. Look at the passion that was aroused when the plan for the new one seemed to be heading towards the idea of the new stadium being located outside the Wembley site and re-located at the NEC outside Birmingham. It is almost as though the idea of not having the National Stadium based at Wembley in London was sacrilege. Government Ministers lost their jobs over this one.
Unlike the Temple in Jerusalem the Mishkan/Tabernacle had no fixed address, it was erected wherever they made camp and dismantled and carried when they moved on. It became a symbol of Israel’s journey as an ever moving people and of the fact that wherever Jews went the Divine presence went with them. The Mishkan at the centre of the camp defined Israel as the people in whose midst is the space we make for Hashem.
The dwelling of God in our midst is dependent on factors entirely different from the mere physical construction of the Mishkan. Jeremiah Chapter 7: makes it very clear that the Temple is not a force field against an enemy, ethical behaviour and commitment to G-d are needed for the Temple to remain standing. God’s dwelling in our midst extends beyond narrow confines of the Temple, rather it means that his Love and protecting presence will be felt in every aspect of our lives and this depends on whether we will sanctify and dedicate all our lives to the fulfilment of His will.
In all your ways Know Him Mishlei 3:6
There is not an area of life that cannot serve as a way to connect with Hashem. Where ever we are, in Shul , at home, work ,holiday the Mishkan within comes with us. As we heard this morning, the Kohanim dignified the Mishkan with special clothes that served to honour the role they were playing, with the varied uniforms we all wear, as children, parents, professionals, friends we must do the same.
True, we are used to the teaching that God’s presence may be found anywhere; but that does not keep us for needing special, sacred places ourselves, places that serve as agreed-upon meeting places for us to come together for no less than the purpose of experiencing the Shekhinah, the close and intimate Presence of God.
A Bet Keneset is a place where you come to focus upon the experience of being immersed in G-d’s presence. But if the place is devoid of that possibility, it may be beautiful, but it’s not a mishkan, a dwelling place for the Shekhinah; conversely, the shabby rooms of our European shtetl dwelling ancestors were sometimes so full of that awareness that those who prayed there were able to rise above their everyday miseries because of the bliss of that awareness.
During these weeks when we read about the Mishkan we need to move beyond passive listening to actively dreaming about the possibility of dedicating and sanctifying our lives so that we transform the space in which we live into Sacred Space. Once that happens the possibilities are endless.
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