Having entered the Temple courts on Monday of Holy Week, before his upcoming time spent teaching the people there for the last time, Jesus drives out of the Court of the Gentiles those who were doing the business of the Law of Moses (selling kosher animals for sacrifices and exchanging foreign money for coins that could be put into the Temple treasury) in that supposedly sacred space. Gentile converts, those who had chosen to join Judaism, could not enter the temple itself (warning signs on the entrances reminded them they'd be executed if they tried) and could only worship/pray to God from a greater distance than Jewish women, who were kept further away than Jewish men. However, for convenience sake, the sacred space they're supposed to worship God in was turned into a marketplace (and a short-cut from one side of city to the other).
Can a church negate the sacred nature of its house? Certainly, among the way happens is: (1) By not making everyone welcome {racism, sexism, class divisions, unwelcome attitude toward ex-cons, those with addictions or questions about their sexuality, etc}, (2) Through a focus on perpetuating the ministry, primarily through emphasizing money, more than fellowship and worship, (3) through a focus on earthly power instead of God's kingdom, typically by making the church a Red Church or a Blue Church, or (4) by failing to be a place of Love and the Fruit of the Spirit (a spirtually dead church). In each case, depending on the severity {a church could suffer from more than one, many do}, the worship done in that space is wasted, for naught.
May God help us to see where we fall short, as a church, of creating/maintaining sacred space, and may God grant us the humility to change.
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