Mark A. Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center at American University
Washington, D.C.
September 3, 2000

I Kings 8:1-13

¶ Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, before King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the city of David, which is Zion. All the people of Israel assembled to King Solomon at the festival in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month. And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests carried the ark. So they brought up the ark of the LORD, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent; the priests and the Levites brought them up. King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the ark, so that the cherubim made a covering above the ark and its poles. The poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary; but they could not be seen from outside; they are there to this day. There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses had placed there at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the Israelites, when they came out of the land of Egypt. And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD. Then Solomon said, “The LORD has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.”

Acts 7:44-50

“Our ancestors had the tent of testimony in the wilderness, as God directed when he spoke to Moses, ordering him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Our ancestors in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors. And it was there until the time of David, who found favor with God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands; as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? ¶ Did not my hand make all these things?’

I. INTRODUCTION

Today we heard two lessons about the place in which God was worshiped in ancient Israel: the tabernacle and the temple. These passages of Scripture challenge us the way in which we approach God, the ways in which we understand our faith.

THE TEMPLE AND THE TABERNACLE

The Tabernacle

The Tabernacle was the tented, movable sanctuary of God that the Children of Israel carried with them throughout their wandering in the Wilderness. It was constructed of cloth and in the middle of it there was the Tent of Meeting–where the Ark of the Covenant was located.

The Tabernacle was not used solely while Israel was in the wilderness–it remained with the people for another few centuries while they were in the land. It was the sanctuary of God for the people of God.

In fact, so central was the place of the Tabernacle in Jewish worship that when the Temple was built it was very controversial. For the place of worship in Israel had been mobile and now would be fixed. Worship would be centralized in one city, at one place. The Ark, and with it God’s presence, who had moved throughout the land, and throughout the people, was now in a fixed structure, a building.

The Temple

The “House of God”

So what about the Temple? Was it wrong to build it? Listen again to these words we heard earlier from 1 Kings:

And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD. Then Solomon said, “The LORD has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.”

“the glory of the Lord filled the House of the Lord”

So the Temple was not just human folly. The Temple became the place of Worship of the God of Israel. The House of the Lord. A sense preserved in Jesus’ teachings when he refers to the Temple as “my father’s house.” So the Temple was a good thing. A place for all to worship the God of Israel. But with so many things, the difficulties are not with the ideas, but with how we use them.

Theological Consequences

But there were theological consequences to the construction of the Temple. There was now a much stronger connection between the King and the Temple. This led to a theology we call “Royal Theology”–the idea that the King was the instrument of God’s rule on earth. This is, by the way, where we get the notion of Divine Right of Kings. In addition, the existence of the Temple had political consequences. For if the Temple were the House of God, and the Temple was in Jerusalem, then Jerusalem would be protected because of God’s presence there. In fact, Jerusalem survived a couple of near disasters from hostile enemies that served to back up this idea of the Inviolability of Zion.

Now was it the building of the Temple alone that accomplished this? No. But it became much easier for the people slip into complacency. It became a lot easier the thing that God, now resident in the Temple, had been domesticated. Safe for human consumption. Here to back us up when we need it. It’s a lot easier to stop working when you think you’ve got it all figured out.

The Prophets and Corrective

But the Jewish prophets would often provide a much-needed corrective to those who thought they’d gotten it all figured out. The prophets spoke out against the idea that Judah’s fate was secure merely because the Temple dwelled therein. Listen to these words of the prophet Micah:

Mic. 3:9-12 ¶ Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say, “Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

For Micah, the Temple, the presence of the Dwelling place of God is not enough if justice and equity are absent. And hear these words of Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 26: 2-6: Thus says the LORD: If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to heed the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently — though you have not heeded — then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.

Shiloh was the location of the Sanctuary, the Tabernacle. It had been destroyed previously. And here Jeremiah is telling us that this House of God will suffer the same fate as Shiloh, because the people have not walked in the ways of God’s law. “Do not trust in these deceptive words: This is the Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord!”

It is not enough to put God in a box.

HOW WE PUT GOD IN A BOX

Thank God, we don’t have that problem, right? No, we never run the risk of putting God in a box, do we?

The “God Box”

Taylor mentioned to me that the title of this Sermon was amusing to her because, she said, this building is often referred to as the “God Box.” That is a telling point. We often do think that somehow, God is more present in churches, synagogues, and houses of worship than elsewhere. We feel that these places are somehow “holier” than other places.

And such a feeling makes it much easier for us to put God in a box. For if God lives in church, then he doesn’t hang out much in my apartment, or my dorm, or my classroom, or my office. “Religion” is that thing that takes place in that building over there–”life” is what takes place everywhere else.

Part of the problem has to do with language. The word “church” more often than not the word means the building. The Greek wordekklhsia means “assembly” and is itself a translation of the Hebrew word qahal, which was the word for the desert assembly of Israel–the same assembly for whom the Tabernacle was the place of worship. So, our concept of church as a building tempts us to think of God as present in a building rather than in the people who make up our community of faith.

What Would Jesus Do?

What other ways do we put God in a box? What other ways do we think we can own God? We often put God in a box with our theology. We like to have simple expressions of what we believe–creeds, formulations–because they give us access, they are convenient, portable, and they give us a sense of security. But we need to be careful.

Sheldon’s In His Steps

Over 100 years ago, a man by the name of Charles Sheldon wrote a book called In His Steps. The book was written as a novel, but it was really a religious tract. It detailed the story of a small town in the Midwest that underwent a radical transformation. The pastor of that town came up with the notion that before a person did anything, they should ask themselves “What would Jesus do?” I know–I thought it was a recent thing, too. In the course of this novel, the lives of everyone in the town were transformed. It worked great in the novel. And in fact, it is a useful test to ask ourselves, “Well would Jesus do this?” “Would Jesus flip that guy off for cutting me off?” “Would Jesus cut in line at the bookstore?”

But there is a way in which WWJD can be putting our faith in a box.

The Trouble with WWJD

An imperfect Question

The Trouble with WWJD is that it is an imperfect question.

For, one of the first questions a person might reasonably ask is: which Jesus? I mean, whose Jesus are we talking about? Are we talking about the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, or the Jesus of John? Do we know enough about Jesus to give us a full picture?

Even if we say that we will rely solely on the Gospel accounts to give us our picture of Jesus, the picture is incomplete. For example, some decisions that we make, cannot be answered in this way: “Would Jesus take the Rock Creek Parkway or drive straight up Connecticut?” “Would Jesus order the diet or the regular soft-drink?” “Would Jesus throw a fastball or a curve?”

But on a much more serious level, there are questions which cannot satisfactorily be answered using our knowledge of Jesus. For Jesus did not address, or even face, decisions that we make today. Would Jesus support cloning research? Would Jesus support free trade agreements? What would Jesus think about genetic engineering?

Not enough

There are simply no answers to questions such as these. There is so very much that separates us from the worldview and experience of a First-Century Palestinian Jew. The simple fact of the matter is that we cannot use Jesus’ life and example for every decision we need to make. It becomes necessary for us to go beyond the box that we have put the question in.

A Danger of “Putting on and Putting Away”

And this leads me to my next point. WWJD is all too easy to print it on a t-shirt, or a bracelet, and put it on your wrist, and to put it away–out of your mind. Like the book that coined the phrase, it’s easy to put the sentiment back on the shelf.

As we ask ourselves “What would Jesus do?” we can wonder: “Would Jesus wear such a thing?” Can we picture Jesus wearing a bracelet that says “What does the Torah require?” No–because Christ so internalized the requirements of the Law of God that he was its living witness in the world. We, too, as disciples of the Anointed One, if we are to go beyond the box, must also internalize our Master’s instruction that we be his living witness in the world.

Paul’s Admonition

Paul, like the Hebrew prophets before him, knew the difference between internality and externality. He reminded the Colossians:

“In [Christ] also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.”

The Covenant of Circumcision is one of the most important signs of the Covenant between God and Israel. But listen to what Paul is saying–the spiritual circumcision of the heart that matters. As we are told in Deuteronomy 10:16 “Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer”. Now are Paul and Deuteronomy telling us that the outward signs of the covenant are worthless? No–but they are not the ending point.

We need to bear this in mind when we are faced with a question that we cannot readily answer from the facts of Jesus’ life. In order to go beyond the box, we need to have these words written on our heart.

THEOLOGY

So in our faith journeys, we set up constructs for ourselves. We build temples and churches and cathedrals and chapels where we can “meet” God. We coin phrases, write hymns, sing songs, write scripture to know God. But these are the means–not the end. Any God who could be contained in a Temple is not worth worshipping. And any theology that could be summed up in 4 words or less is no theology. Listen again to those words of St. Stephen from the Book of Acts that we heard earlier:

Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands; as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? ¶ Did not my hand make all these things?’

CONCLUSION

So, am I telling you to get rid of your WWJD bracelets, necklaces, t-shirts, etc.? Am I telling you never to worship in buildings? No, of course not. I am not asking that. I am asking that you not let your faith end there. The structures in which we worship and the structures by which we understand the nature of God and the message of Christ are important. But we must remember that these are the vehicles on the journey–not the destinations.

Do not be content to wear your faith on your sleeve alone. Wear your WWJD bracelets and t-shirts and inscribe the words on your heart as well. Do not be content to build for yourselves temples to contain your faith alone–build temples in your hearts that your faith may live in the world.

To paraphrase the words of the familiar song we heard earlier: “Lord, prepare us to be a sanctuary–a sanctuary for you.”

May the Grace and Peace of the Lord our God be with you all.