Ezekiel 42:10-14: a reflection

10In the thickness of the wall of the court toward the east, before the separate place, and before the building, there were rooms. 11The way before them was like the appearance of the rooms which were toward the north. Their length and width were the same. All their exits had the same arrangement and doors. 12Like the doors of the rooms that were toward the south was a door at the head of the way, even the way directly before the wall toward the east, as one enters into them. 13Then he said to me, “The north rooms and the south rooms, which are opposite the separate place, are the holy rooms, where the priests who are near to the LORD shall eat the most holy things. There they shall lay the most holy things, with the meal offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering; for the place is holy. 14When the priests enter in, then they shall not go out of the holy place into the outer court until they lay their garments in which they minister there; for they are holy. Then they shall put on other garments, and shall approach that which is for the people.”

In Ezekiel's detailed vision of the temple, there is a careful provision about the priests and their garments. The rooms where they ate the most holy offerings were holy, set apart. And when the priests finished ministering, they were not to walk straight out into the outer court, where the people were, still wearing their holy garments; they had to leave those garments in the holy chambers and put on other clothes before mingling with the people. The holy things were kept distinct, not carried casually into the common.

Notice the care for the holy in this small regulation. The garments in which the priests ministered before God were holy, and were not to be treated casually, worn out into ordinary space as though there were no difference between the sacred and the common. There was a deliberate boundary, a reverence that kept the holy things set apart, handled with care, not carried carelessly into everyday use. The sacred was treated as sacred.

We are not under these temple regulations, but the instinct they cultivate is worth recovering: a reverence for what is holy, a refusal to treat sacred things casually. In an age that flattens everything to the same casual level, it is easy to lose any sense of the sacred, to handle the things of God, his name, his worship, his word, with the same offhand casualness we bring to everything else. This small regulation whispers a different sensibility: some things are holy, set apart, to be treated with reverence and care. Recover a reverence for the sacred. Do not carry the holy things of God carelessly into the common; handle them with the reverence they deserve.

Lord, the priests kept their holy garments set apart, not carrying them casually into ordinary space, cultivating a reverence for what is holy. In an age that treats everything with the same casualness, recover in me a sense of the sacred. Keep me from handling the things of God, your name, your worship, your word, with offhand carelessness. Teach me to treat what is holy with reverence and care. Give me a heart that honors the sacred as sacred.