Out of the Box

The scriptures referred to are 2 Samuel 7:1-14a, Ephesians 2:11-22, 3:14-21.

I was watching my granddaughter at church one day and she pulled out some of our children's books of Bible stories and I was reading them to her. When I told her that Jesus died on a cross, she looked at the one over our altar and I quickly added, “No, not that one. We have that to remember what he did for us.” But I didn't want to leave the story there so I said, “But Jesus didn't stay dead; he's alive.” Her eyes got big and she said, “Where is he? Outside?” And suddenly I'm trying to adapt the very sophisticated theology of God's omnipresence in the world and Jesus' presence in our lives to the level of a 4 year old.

It's hard for humans to think outside the confines of their own experience. We are physical beings living in a physical world. Even when we acknowledge the spiritual side of things, we tend to think of God as, say, a man with a long white beard, sitting on a literal throne, surrounded by clouds. As adults we might recognize these images as metaphorical but children might not. And the idea of God being located in a specific physical place is not alien to them.

It wasn't to the Israelites either. Now it made sense for pagan religions who made idols of stone or wood to build them houses to live in and function as shrines. Yet despite their unique conception of a God who cannot and should not be depicted, the Israelites did tend to locate him in space, specifically the sacred space of the tabernacle, a portable sanctuary. Part of this was the fact that it housed the ark of the covenant. It was called that because this box contained the the tablets of the 10 commandments Moses received on Mt. Sinai, the core of the covenant or agreement God made with his people. The lid, adorned with two sculpted golden cherubim, was called the mercy seat. (Yes, it looked almost exactly like the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Good job, propmakers!) God would meet with Moses there (Exodus 25:22) and thus the tabernacle was called the Tent of Meeting. The people understandably thought the invisible God dwelt between the two cherubim. (2 Kings 19:15) Consequently the ark was variously called God's throne, with the idea that God was seated on the wings of the cherubim (Isaiah 37:16: 1 Samuel 4:4), or alternately his footstool, with the idea that heaven was God's throne. (Psalm 132:7-8; Isaiah 66:1) When the people were wandering through the wilderness, the ark was a mobile reminder of God's presence. It was carried into battle during the conquest of the land of Canaan.

In our passage from 2 Samuel, David has finished the conquest of the land begun under Joshua hundreds of years before. He has gone from being king of Judah to king of all Israel. He has captured Jerusalem and made it his capitol. He has brought the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem but it is still in a tent. Just as David is enjoying rest in a house of beautiful, aromatic, and durable cedar from which he can rule the land, he wishes to build a fine house for God to rest and do the same. But God says no. God will build a house for David. He means, of course, a royal dynasty. David's son will build a physical house for the Lord but God says he will establish a throne and a kingdom for the house of David that will last forever. Later David says that the reason God did not let him build the temple was that “you are a warrior and have shed blood.” (1 Chronicles 28:3)

Some people have doubts about everything in the Bible, including the fact that David ever lived. Some skeptics have thought him to be the equivalent of Britain's King Arthur, a legendary figure. But in 1993 and 1994 archaeologists found a stele, a stone erected by the king of Aram to commemorate a victory over the kings of Israel and Judah (2 Kings 8:28-29). It mentions 8 Biblical kings and the House of David. Most archaeologists accept this as evidence David did exist.

Why did they doubt this? Besides the general tendency of secular scholars to assume that, unlike most other ancient documents, the Bible is false until proven true,  there is the disappearance of the Davidic dynasty. In 586 B.C. the Babylonians destroyed the temple built by Solomon and either took or melted down the ark of the covenant within it. And ever since they took the Jews into exile in Babylon, there hasn't been a king of the House of David on the throne. The king at the time of the fall of Jerusalem, Zedekiah, was captured and taken to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. His sons were executed before his eyes and then his eyes were put out. He was put in prison in Babylon, where presumably he died. The remaining king of the House of David was Jehoiachin, Zedekiah's nephew, who had been deposed and taken into exile earlier. Zedekiah had been appointed in his place as a puppet. The last paragraph of the book of 2 Kings tells us how, in the 37^th year of his captivity, Jehoiachin was released from prison and allowed to eat at the table of the successor to Nebuchadnezzar. Which makes it sound like there is hope for a future king from the line of David.

And indeed a descendant of David returns to Jerusalem after the exile. Zerubbabel was a leader of some kind, possibly a governor of Judea for the Persians, and he laid the foundation for the second temple, but he is never called a king, nor are his descendants. By the time of Jesus, under Roman occupation, there were people of David's bloodline but the royal dynasty was that of Herod the Great. Herod was chosen by the Roman senate as King of the Jews, replacing the kings descended from the priestly family that led the Maccabean revolt. Herod's family were Edomites who converted to Judaism but the Jews never really accepted him as one of them.

So you can see the reason why people were so excited about Jesus. Here was a descendant of David, who was also healing people like the prophet Elisha. Surely he was the the Messiah! Which in popular belief meant that, as David drove out the Philistine oppressors of Israel, the Messiah would drive out the Romans. What they never suspected was that Jesus was not there to make up for a lack of a holy warrior but for the lack of a holy space where God dwells. Jesus is not replacing David so much as the presence of God, symbolized by ark of the covenant which was missing from the second temple.

This is the significance of Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the temple. Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” His critics took this to mean Herod's renovated and expanded temple. But John's gospel tells us he was talking about his own body. (John 2:19-22)

The temple was thought to be the place where God dwelt on earth. It was where humans met with God. Once a year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, the place where the ark was supposed to be, and would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice for the sins of the people. But ever since the first temple was destroyed there was no ark, just empty space. In place of God's presence there was a void. Jesus came to fill that void in the world.

The people didn't need a new David. Remember how God wouldn't let him build a temple because he was a warrior? They didn't need a warrior. They had warriors: the zealots. People like Barabbas. People like his comrades, who were also crucified on Good Friday. The zealots rebelled in 66 AD and the Romans burned the second temple, never to be rebuilt. In 132 A.D. Simon Bar Kokhba was declared the Messiah by Rabbi Akiva and led a revolt that once again was quashed by the Romans. Violence was not the answer, nor were the Romans the real enemy. Jesus correctly identified the enemy: the evil in our hearts that give rise to things like greed, arrogance and murder. (Mark 7:20-23) Violence doesn't and can't make that better. We need a change of heart.

The Bible says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself....” (2 Corinthians 5:19) “...in him all the fullness of God lives in bodily form...” it says elsewhere. (Colossians 2:9) Jesus is God among us. That's what we need. God here, living with us. A God we can meet with, talk to. A God who will accompany us through whatever conflicts and troubles we encounter and protect us with his presence. Jesus came to replace the ark and the temple as the place where heaven and earth meet.

But Jesus no longer dwells among us in bodily form. At least not as he did in the first century. Throughout the Old Testament God promises he will dwell among his people. (Exodus 29:45-46; Leviticus 26:11; 1 Kings 6:13; Ezekiel 37:27; Zechariah 2:10) But not in the way he did during the time of the ark and the temple. And not exactly as he did in Jesus. In Isaiah we read, “For thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy, 'I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.'” (Isaiah 57:15) The way to get the evil out of our hearts is to let God in.

Paul tells the Ephesians that he prays that they may be “strengthened with his power through his Spirit in your inner being that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith....” Through the Spirit of God who empowered Jesus in his earthly ministry, Jesus comes to live in our hearts. Since God is within us, we, like the ark of the covenant, are to serve as God's presence in this world. As Paul writes, “...your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you...” (1 Corinthians 6:19) He returns to that idea in today's passage from Ephesians. He speaks of being “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

We look at this world, the suffering of people, especially at the hand of their fellow human beings, and we ask: Where is God? Why is he not acting? But if we understand the divine plan laid out in the Bible , the question rebounds on us. Where are we, the people on whom God has poured his Spirit? Why is not the church, the body of Christ, acting?

It is, of course. The church builds and run schools and hospitals, homeless shelters and feeding programs; it hosts 12-step programs and grieving groups; it helps in disasters and advocates for the most vulnerable. But not all who call themselves Christian are acting in love toward others. As of 2010, 2.2 billion people, 31% of the world's population, claim to be Christian. That should be enough to make this world better. Why doesn't it?

I am reminded of what President Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” It works the same in the church. I think too many people in church are focused almost exclusively on what God can do for them and hardly at all on what they can do for God. Thus the churches viewed as successful in the world's eyes are those that entertain churchgoers during worship and emphasize feeling good about yourself and bettering your material and financial circumstances. They turn God into a vending machine: insert tokens of faith and push the buttons to get what you want. And if you ask me at least part of the problem we have with people leaving the churches is that that it was easy to believe that “feel good” gospel when times were good and harder now that times aren't so good.

The megachurches do not emphasize what Jesus said about being a disciple of his, ie, disowning yourself, taking up your cross daily and following him. (Luke 9:23) The Christian life is less like winning the lottery and more like being soldiers on a mission. Remember the Israelites took the ark of the covenant into battle. We are to take the presence of God in Christ into the battlegrounds of everyday life. But our weapons do not include violence or coercion. David couldn't build a temple because he shed the blood of others. Jesus' blood was shed by others and as Paul says, “...you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” Paul is talking about the Jews and the Gentiles but it is true of any two groups at odds with each other. Jesus came to bring peace to a conflicted world as well as to our conflicted hearts. And as the body of Christ we need to work for and bring that peace to others.

The ark of the covenant brings to mind the TARDIS on Doctor Who. It is the Doctor's vehicle for traveling through time and space, disguised as police call box from the 1960s, a blue telephone booth. The feature that strikes everyone upon entering this blue box is that it is much bigger on the inside. It is a paradox. Just so, the Jews knew that Yahweh was not just their tribal God or the God of their land but the creator of heaven and earth. So they had to know that God could not really fit between the cherubim on a 4 foot by 2 foot box, nor even in the grandest of temples. What was inside was bigger than the outside led you to believe.

And if God is in us, that means what is in us is bigger than us. How is that possible? God is love and real love can't be contained. Love overflows. Love takes you out of yourself. Love enables you to do things you didn't realize you could do. I had a coworker who fainted at the sight of blood. Even his own. He passed out when giving blood at an event our radio station was sponsoring. So when he found his girlfriend on the floor of their bathroom one night, blood all over the floor, and he managed to get her to the hospital, we knew it was real love. And sure enough, they married, and have a son who is going to college. They send me a family newsletter every Christmas. Love is power. Love enlarges you.

You could look at our mission as taking the love that everyone has—for themselves, for their family or friends, for the people who they like and the people like them—and encouraging them to enlarge it. Make the circle of those you love bigger. Make it encompass those who are unlike you, those who disagree with you, even those who oppose you. Is that hard? Yeah. Can you do it? Not by yourself. Contrary to the popular saying, God does give us more than we can handle: more than we can handle by ourselves. But as Paul said, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13) We can handle anything through the big God who lives in us and works through us. As Paul says, “By the power at work within us [he] is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20) You know what that means? We need to expand our imagination. We need to think bigger. Jesus said we would do greater works than he did. (John 14:12) Let's get on that! There is a void in the world where God's presence should be. Jesus came to fill it and now Jesus works in and through us. We are his body. We are temples of God's Spirit, “a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7) What's stopping us?