Sacred Time and Sacred Place

"John 20 stresses twice (in verse 1 and 19) that Easter is the first day of the new week. John has so ordered his gospel that the sequence of the seven signs, climaxing in the cross of Jesus on the sixth day of the week and his resting in the tomb on the seventh, functions as the week of the old creation; and now Easter functions as the beginning of the new creation. The Word through whom all things were made is now the Word through whom all things are remade. So far from being an odd or isolated supernatural event, breaking in as a sign of what God could do if he chose but normally doesn't, Jesus's resurrection is to be seen as the beginning of the new world, the first day of the new week, the unveiling of the prototype of what God is now going to accomplish in the rest of the world. Mary supposes Jesus to be the gardener and that's the right mistake to make because, like Adam, he is charged with bringing God's new world to order. He has come to uproot the thorns and the thistles and to plant myrtle and cypress instead, as Isaiah promised in his great picture of the new creation that would result from the Word of God coming like rain or snow into the world."

Surprised by Hope pg.238 N.T. Wright

" In particular, the gospels (especially John) and the early practice of the church ( as in Paul) reflect the very early understanding of the church that the first day of the week, the day of Easter, has become a sign within the present world and its temporal sequence that the life of the age to come has already broken in. Sunday, kept as a commemoration of Easter ever since that event itself (a quite remarkable phenomenon when you come to think about it), is not simply a legacy of Victorian values but a perpetual sign, joyfully renewed week by week, that all time belongs to God and stands under the renewing lordship of Jesus Christ."

Surprised by Hope pg. 261 N.T. Wright

"I am of personal opinion that the true meaning of Sunday worship has been lost in many of our churches. In some communities Sunday is revival, the day for the seeker, or the day to teach. Historically Sunday is the day of God's re-creation, the day that promises that God will renew the face of the earth. Historically Sunday worship expresses three truths: It remembers God's saving action in history; it experiences God's renewing presence; and it anticipates the consummation of God's work in the new heavens and the new earth."

Ancient Future Time pg. 169 by Robert Webber

"Jesus does indeed declare that God call all people everywhere to worship him in spirit and truth rather than limiting worship to this or that mountain. But this doesn't undercut a proper theology of God's reclaiming of the whole world, which is anticipated in the claiming of space for worship and prayer. Church buildings and other places where in Eliot's phrase "prayer has been valid" are not a retreat from the world but a bridgehead into the world, a way of claiming part of God-given space for his glory against the day when the whole world will thrill to his praise."

Surprised by Hope pg. 259 N.T. Wright


"It was this freedom of the early church from 'religion' in the usual, traditional sense of the word that led the pagans to accuse Christians of atheism. Christians had no concern for any sacred geography, no temples, no cult that could be recognized as such by the generations fed with the solemnities of the mystery cults. There was no specific religious interest in the places where Jesus had lived. There were no pilgramages. The old religion had a thousand sacred places and temples: for the Christians all this was past and gone. There was no need for temples built of stone: Christ's Body, the Church itself, the new people gather in Him, was the only real temple. ...The fact that Christ comes and is present was far more significant that the places where He had been. The historical reality of Christ was of course the undisputed ground of the early Christian's faith: yet they did not so much remember Him as know He was with them.

For the Life of the World pg. 20, by Alexander Schmemann