…the religious leaders of Jesus\u2019 day regarded God….[chiefly in terms of His holiness] \u201d\u201c [they viewed him as]…a God set apart from His world and separate from everything that might be unclean and messy and unworthy.<\/p>\n
So the emphasis is on the importance of dignified worship, carried out in church buildings with due reverence, awe and majesty which nothing must interrupt or disturb \u201d\u201c the world kept at a respectable distance so that it doesn\u2019t sully what is going on inside the sacred space. The holy must not be contaminated with the unholy, or the spiritual with the material or political.<\/p>\n
But it is precisely this view of God\u2019s holiness that Jesus shattered. He spent most of His ministry out of doors, not in synagogues or temple but preaching to ordinary people, attempting to relate ordinary everyday events to God. He saw everything within that world as having a connection to God such as treasure in a field, a lost coin, a lost sheep, a lost son. And He was born in a cowshed amidst the mess and smell of animals. God, in the midst of the warp and woof of real human existence; the link between holy and unholy, inextricably joined.<\/p>\n