I can now add a yurt to the places I’ve slept...
For Memorial Day weekend, my family stayed a few nights at a campground in Lancaster, PA. We had the experience of camping (e.g., hanging out around a campfire, eating hot dogs and hamburgers and making S’mores) but then we could go inside to three-star accommodations when it was time for bed. It was like a hotel room with a campsite out back. The pullout bed was quite comfortable.
It was nice to get away from the “normal routine” for a few days. To simply brew a pot of coffee and come have a few minutes to sit on the deck outside our yurt in the morning was good. I realize I don’t engage in this practice as much as I once did—and I miss it. There is always some task or responsibility that calls me—and I have a hard time ignoring them to focus on prayer. Ironically, many of the morning noises at this place reminded me of home: Canada Geese (many of whom no longer seem to return to Canada), Mallard ducks, other birdsongs, woodpeckers. But the change of scenery—and removal of "regular responsibilities"—seemed to make all the difference.
As I sat on the deck, I looked upon a small grove of trees near the yurt. I began to concentrate and became aware of so much activity going on that I hadn’t noticed when I first sat down. That little micro-ecosystem was teeming with life! Many different birds were moving around singing their songs and doing what God made them to do. Then I wondered: How many plant species were in just that little area alone? How many creatures are there that I cannot see? As the first line of Gerald Manley Hopkins poem,God’s Grandeur, puts it: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” The question is: Am I “tuned in” enough to notice?
I felt a bit like Jacob waking up from his dream at Bethel (Genesis 28:10-17). Up until that moment in the story, Jacob was too busy doing his own thing (mostly hiding from his twin brother Esau, who last he knew, wanted to kill him for tricking him into giving Jacob both his inheritance and birthright) to be conscious of God. It’s only when he was forced out into the wilderness, on the run, removed from all the noise of his “normal” life, that he got a glimpse of what had been there all along—he just hadn’t taken time to notice.
I started to sing Francesca Batistelli’s, Holy Spirit, a simple tune I often use as my prayer to welcome God’s Presence, saying “Holy Spirit you are welcome here. Come flood this place. Fill the atmosphere. Your glory God is what our hearts long for, to be overcome by your Presence Lord”. On this morning, however, it was the words of the bridge that particularly spoke to me:
Let us become more aware of Your presence.
Let us experience the glory of Your goodness.
A quick survey of Scripture shows that the idea of being aware of God’s Presence has changed over the centuries. It’s interesting I stayed in a yurt—a semi-permanent tent—this weekend. At the time of Moses and the Exodus, God’s Presence was believed to dwell in a yurt, or a tent if you prefer. The Tabernacle was literally a moving Temple for God (see Exodus 26–27 for details on how it was made).[1] It was a pretty elaborate structure that clearly would have taken some work to set up and take down at each stop along the way. It was like the yurt I stayed in this weekend—only on a larger scale, and much more ornate as would befit the place where God’s Presence was believed to dwell.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Joshua likely wouldn’t have thought of God with him personally. Is it possible that in today’s world where so much emphasis is place on God’s Presence with us personally (i.e., “in our hearts”) that we’ve gone to the other extreme? Have we downplayed—or even forgotten—the corporate dimension of God with us. Consider for example: Do you routinely think of encountering God’s Presence when you go to worship on Sunday morning? Should we “go to church” expecting such an encounter?
During the reign of King David, Israel enjoyed a period of stability and prosperity as a United Kingdom (all 12 tribes of Israel together), and the people decided a tent was no longer sufficient to house God’s Presence. Although it’s never clear that God is fully behind this idea, the people insist that God needs a “permanent” home. Discussion of the Temple starts toward the end of David’s reign, but the Temple isn’t built until David’s son Solomon becomes king (1 Kings 6). The Presence of God was conveyed to the Temple with much fanfare.
Unfortunately, Israel’s “golden age” didn't last very long. After King Solomon (and the seeds of division are planted long before that), Israel spiraled into civil war and split into a Northern and Southern Kingdoms—detailed in 1 & 2 Kings. The Northern Kingdom (consisting of 10 of the 12 tribes) was largely wiped out by the Assyrians, leaving the smaller Southern Kingdom (the tribes of Judah and Benjamin) with Jerusalem as capital. A little later in history, the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem and take the best and brightest of Judah (the name for the Southern Kingdom) off into captivity and kill the rest. During that invasion, the Temple was destroyed.
It’s difficult to estimate how big an impact that had on the Jewish people. While the Temple was rebuilt at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (Ezra 6:13-18) it was never restored to its former glory. Not only that, but the people themselves had been changed by their time in exile. Years spent cut off from the Temple and all that was familiar to them forced them rethink where God’s Presence dwelled and what it meant to be a people with God. During this time, the beginnings of synagogue worship were established. So, while the Second Temple is built, it never becomes the center of worship that the First Temple was.
The Second Temple was expanded around the time of Jesus as part of a massive construction project by Herod the Great. By the time Jesus was alive, the expanded Second Temple dominated the skyline of Jerusalem once more. Meanwhile, God seemingly had been confined to the Temple again, with access strictly controlled by religious leaders called Pharisees—who imposed countless laws surrounding purity and access to God. The Pharisees were allowed to continue their quaint religious practices as long as they cooperated with the Romans. So, in a way, since the Pharisees are puppets of Rome, Rome is ultimately controlling access to God, which presents a problem that Jesus (being himself God) can’t ignore.
In a sense, when Jesus overturned the tables the Temple Courts (e.g., John 2:13-22), it was more than just the moneychanger’s stalls he was disrupting that day. He was disrupting an entire corrupt system of worship. Symbolically, Jesus’s turning over the tables in God’s House represents setting God’s Presence free. (Not that is was ever really confined, but people had come to view it that way.) Jesus also foreshadows that the building, as impressive a physical structure as it was, would one day lay in ruins. The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD as retribution for an uprising by the Jewish people. (Interestingly, Jewish theology envisions a day when a massive Third Temple will be established where God 's Presence can once again dwell.)
In the New Testament, we see God’s Presence back on the move again. This time, God is not carried in a yurt, or confined to a certain physical place where the people have to go to encounter God (Acts 17:24), as hinted at earlier, now God’s Presence dwells in the heart of every believer (1 Corinthians 6:19). God, promises to follow us wherever we go. At the Ascension, Jesus promises his followers he will be with them always, even to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:16-20). No longer confined to a physical body, the Second Person of the Trinity once again is free to reign over Creation. Jesus now has much more freedom of movement than when he was confined to a single human body.
This freedom of movement is further enhanced through the action of the Holy Spirit—the third person of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit—who Jesus promised his followers would come and continue to instruct them, and did so dramatically on the day of Pentecost. Scripture teaches us that the Trinity is not static, but dynamic, always on the move. (We draw it as a triangle, with each Person in a fixed place, but think of it more as a spinning triangle—like a fidget spinner—shown right). The movement of the Holy Spirit is often depicted as wind blowing or breath—or the flutter of dove’s wings. Last week was Trinity Sunday on the church's liturgical calendar, when we ponder the mysterious three-in-one nature of God. The Father and the Son and Holy Spirit sometimes act as three distinct beings, but exist as a unity—e.g., described in John 14—and we who believe are drawn into that relationship. Paul says frequently that Christ is in me and I am in Christ. Ergo, where we go, God goes. Jesus can literally be in any location where one of his followers is located. As Eugene Petersen stated it in one of his book titles, “Christ plays in 10,000 places,” which I’d call a conservative estimate.
Which brings me back to the deck our yurt in Pennsylvania. I wasn’t in church this past Sunday morning, but I was with God; I was in God’s Presence. Now clearly the Pastor’s spouse is not advocating not attending church. Quite the contrary. The witness of Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments is that God often shows up most powerfully when the People of God are gathered together—e.g., Pentecost. Furthermore, I’m a bit dubious of the person who says, “Oh I don’t need to go to church; I experience God out in the world without organized religion.” While I don’t discount the notion that organized religion has “problems,” or that it is possible to have profound encounters with God in isolation, my experience is that, in general, we are most able to discern God’s Presence in the world when we make a regular practice of gathering as a community to worship. It’s as if regular participation in corporate worship tunes our senses to “become more aware of God’s presence,” and “experience the glory of God’s goodness” when we are on our own in the world. Clearly, if God is in all and works through all, then it makes sense God is with me—and with you—wherever we find ourselves. The question is the same as the one Jacob wrestled with: Are we aware enough to recognize it and respond?
REACT TO WHAT YOU'VE READ:
* In what setting(s) do you most naturally feel God’s Presence: In church? Outside church?
* In what setting(s) would you like to be able to “become more aware” of God’s presence?
* In what ways to you “experience the glory of God’s goodness”?
[1]Technically, God’s Presence dwelled in the Ark of the Covenant, which was housed in the inner most part of the Tabernacle (and later the Temple), the Holy of Holies, which only the high priest could enter—and only on the Day of Atonement.
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