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The first half of this chapter deals with letting go of holy objects and holy spaces. One rule at play is that you can let go of what is holy, but only to move on to something holier (Mishnah 1). You can sell an aaron kodesh to buy a sefer Torah — because a Torah is holier than an aaron — but the transaction can't go in the other direction: you can't sell a sefer Torah to buy an aaron kodesh. (Although, as we'll see in Mishnah 2, there are loopholes…)
Another case of letting go comes if there's the ruins of your shul in your area. We must treat the ruins of a shul with respect — we can't use the ruins as a shortcut to walk through, for instance. At the same time, we intentionally leave it in ruins — not, for instance, tending to the weeds that grow there. We want people to both recognize the shul's holiness but also leave it in disrepair, out of the hopes that the community will be moved to fully rebuild it again. (Mishna 3)
From here, mishnayot 4 - 6 discuss the Torah readings for various days of the week and year. Is there a connection between the two sections of the chapter? Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said that the Mishkan is sanctification of space; Shabbat — whose rules are introduced in parshat Vayakhel alongside the Mishkan — is sanctification of time. Perhaps the framing of this chapter is similar: The shul and the holy objects are sanctification of space; the Torah we read in shul is how we mark the sanctification of time in that space.
There might be one more level too. We're flowing through both space and time constantly — moving from one day to the next, sometimes trading our holy objects and experiences for other ones along the way. In all that motion, are we sure we're only moving upward?
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