But that misses the point of what the incarnation is all about, really. The idea of holy ground is a topic that you'd think would make perfect sense - you go somewhere to find God. God holds court somewhere, and it is the job of humanity to tread very carefully around sanctified ground. But that implies that there is a place, or multiple places on earth, where the presence of God is more fully manifest or realized. There is a place you can go, somewhere, that the holiness of God is not just more fully felt, but more fully is. If you're looking for God, you can literally find him there. Now, is he everywhere else as well? Maybe. But not absolutely. And that's the issue right there, which is that if there is a place where God is, then there are places where he is less. Those places where he is less would be the vast, vast majority of places. And that' the trouble, isn't it?
We are people who have a lot of trouble finding God. He isn't as easy to track down as we might want. For a lot of time, experiences of the numinous are rare, and few and far between. That is, the dreadful mundanity of life really shows itself early. So much of life is taken up with general, bland mundane activity, and very little of that is rapture and bliss of encountering the divine. It's like it is with everything else, too. When you get married, everyone is in their absolute finery, they look terrific, they are eating great food and dancing the night away. Will this be every night of your marriage? No, it won't. It won't be any night of your marriage, really. But the deal with your marriage is that you carry the finery and majesty with you for the rest of your marriage. Because you carry your spouse with you.
When you get married, it's not the party that makes your spouse special, rather it's the spouse that makes the party special .And you can test that, because you've been at weddings that weren't your own, and nice as though they may have been, they didn't fundamentally change everything about your life. Your own wedding did. There's a good chance that your spouse may very well have been your plus one at those weddings that you attended, but even though you and your spouse both attended the wedding, it wasn't a life changer to the extent that your own wedding was.
And that's the key. The act of being present at the wedding ceremony isn't what makes it important. The location, the food, the party, all of that is nice, but it's not what makes it important. What makes it important is that it's your wedding. And that makes everything about it special, and the fact that you bring your spouse home from that wedding is what changes your life. So, holy ground, as described in Scripture, isn't where God lives, but it's where Moses encounters God. But from that point on, God goes with Moses, throughout his journey from Egypt all the way to the holy land. Part of what is so profound about the story of the Exodus is that God liberates the people of Israel from slavery, but not because Israel is where God lives. It's clear that he is operating right the way through the book of the Exodus, whether the Israelites are in Egypt or not. This is true to the text, unless you think that someone else was parting the Red sea, turning the Nile to blood, and causing darkness and hail in Egypt. It seems pretty clear that even though Moses meets God up on the mountain at the burning bush, it's not as though God stays or lives there. God is present everywhere.
Like Moses, we tend to have certain spaces set aside in which we can experience the divine. Churches, cathedrals, monasteries, these are places set aside for that purpose, where our spiritual batteries can be recharged, where we have time and space for God to speak without interruption. But this is for our benefit, not for His. It's not as though he's bound by the doors of that space, and that you will only find him there. Rather, it's a situation in which, like at the mount of transfiguration, you can see and experience Christ with astonishing clarity, but then he goes down from the mountain with you.
Peter wanted to stay up there, where there was clarity, where there were Moses and Elijah, where there was a voice from the clouds and where Jesus was dazzling in his divinity. But when the prophets were gone, and Christ looked the same as he did before, he came down from the mountain with his disciples and continued his ministry alongside them. As said before, that's the nature of worship as a Christian. Where you can see God with clarity is great for you, but don't forget that there's nowhere that he isn't.
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