Genesis 28:18-19 And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. And he called the name of that place Beth-el: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.
The Lord appeared to Jacob in a dream, repeated the Covenant of Abraham for him, and added that He would be with him. Jacob’s response was to believe the promise and worship the Lord. And a part of his response was to set up a stone pillar as a shrine, anointing it, and calling it Beth-el (house of God).
It was (mistakenly) believed that certain spots of land were ”portals” into the spiritual world. At that place the invisible, heavenly God met the earthly man. To Jacob, this was a holy place. He set up a shrine for worship to remember with thanksgiving the time and place where God met him. It marked the Presence of God.
Shrines become tabernacles; tabernacle becomes a temple; the temple becomes the man Jesus; Jesus becomes the church, the body of Christ; and the body of the individual believer becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, the very presence of the living God on earth. ”The day will come when true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth,” anywhere, not in any particular holy place.
God appears to us today in the Gospel and the Sacraments. The Gospel makes a time and a place holy ground, wherever two or three gather in Jesus’ name. We may remember a time and place where God met us. Wherever the Lord meets us with His Word of Grace and Promise becomes a shrine, a temple, a holy place, a church. And it is the preaching of the Gospel that makes Sunday a holy day and the church building a holy place. And so we respond to God’s meeting us in the Gospel by “setting up a pillar.” Meaning: support the church for the sake of the Gospel.