Holy Hamburgers

Eating a hamburger within view of the Temple Mount captures for me the sacredness of all of life. Munching on fries while within earshot of worshippers at the most sacred and contested real estate on


the planet..

Is that sacrilegious?

Hanging out and laughing with my son and Charlida (another church member); it felt like we were just as much in God's presence and "at worship" as the Muslims at the mosque; Jews and Christians at the wall...as we ate. It was what Wolfgang Simson calls a church "meating." Holy Church.

"Church buildings ARE sacred," Mark Driscoll says,

"....like everything else."

There is no secular...or spoon.
Or secular spoon, for that matter.

Don't stone me, I am just paraphrasing Tozer:

Everything depends upon the state of our interior lives and our heart's
relation to God. The man that walks with God will see and know that for him
there is no strict line separating the sacred from the secular. ..The Apostle
Paul teaches that every simple act of our lives may be sacramental. "Whether
therefore ye eat...."

Eugene Peterson:

"It is common among people like us to look for ways to free ourselves from
the humdrum, escape as often as possible into ecstasy, devise ways to live
separated from the clamor of traffic and family, associate as far as possible
only with people of like mind, and engage in disciplines and ways of dress and
speech that set us apart from 'the others.' Scripture says:
Forget it."
("Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places", (p. 86)

Madeleine L’Engle:

"There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred; that is one of
the deepest messages of the Incarnation."

And Jesus:

• It's not about real estate, but our real ESTATE, he told a Samaritan outcast(e).
• Mountains are matter; and don't matter. It's about spirit and truth.
• Mountains maintain. Life is missional.
• The counterfeit of worship in "spirit and truth" is inevitably "place and fact."
• We are gnot gnostic.
• Duel dualism.
• Hellenism can get hellish.
• church is people, not place
• There is good reason there is no word for "spiritual" in Hebrew.

By the way, the restaurant is The Quarter Cafe.. Check it out.

Also, someone has suggested that laughing when someone farts can be heartfelt worship...

(that did happen on the last Israel trip, but I won't mention any names...)

Every place I have set foot is holy ground.

The Temple Mount included.

St. Jamie, in an amazing blog post found here,
even found Jesus in the most "unlikely of places":

                                                                                  church.!!

For another take on eating hamburgers in Israel, see this.