Treasure

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

-2 Corinthians 4:6-7 (NIV)

Jean Preston, by all accounts, lived exactly the kind of life you might expect an English librarian to live. She never owned a car, and took the bus everywhere she went – which was mostly to work. She lived on frozen dinners and bought all of her clothes from mail-order catlogs. She never married, and lived out her life frugally in a very ordinary red-brick house in a terraced row in Oxford. When she died in 2006, at the age of 77, she left behind a few relatives who wouldn’t have thought that there was anything at all out of the ordinary about “Aunt Jean.”

   They would have been wrong, of course. Jean Preston’s ordinary little house contained some very extraordinary treasures. Art experts and auctioneers have recently completed the cataloging and sale of a cache of the numerous works of art Jean had hoarded in her home literally all her life. The auctions made a total of nearly $8 million dollars – around twenty times the value of the little house in which her collection was stored.

    Among her treasures were two paintings by the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance master Fra Angelico which turned out to be the long-missing and assumed-lost pieces of an eight-part altar decoration. They were propped behind the bedroom door, and the art experts only noticed them on the way out.

    In the kitchen hung a nineteenth-century watercolor by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the sitting room, above and electric fireplace, hung a work by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Buried in a wardrobe, presumably because it was too big to fit on Jean’s bookcase, was a rare edition of the works of Chaucer.

    “We often go to fabulous homes to evaluate artworks, but in this case the house was just so modest from the outside, and had very modest decor on the inside too,” said Guy Schwinge of Dukes art auctioneers, which helped with the sale. “It's just rare to stumble across something quite so breathtaking.”

    I like that story, don’t you? I think it’s because there’s something about a treasure hidden in the unlikeliest of places that fires the imagination, that makes you want to knock holes in the walls of your basement or tear up the floorboards of your attic. (Or at least the walls and floorboards of a relative….) The attraction of the story is in the ordinariness of its protagonist. If Jean Preston’s unassuming little house could hide such treasure, well, there could be treasure anywhere. The most ordinary—seeming places could conceal the most priceless of valuables.

    There’s another story of hidden treasure in ordinary places that makes the same point. We call it the gospel.

    There was nothing about the protagonist of that story that seemed out-of-the ordinary either. He was a working-class guy born to a working-class family in a working-class town. If he lived in our time he’d probably wear a shirt with his name on it to work. Maybe he’d bowl on the weekends. He was so ordinary, in fact, that on the rare occasions that he talked about his true nature, his family thought he was crazy. And yet, we believe now that in Jesus, God revealed himself more clearly than he ever has before or since. In him, behind that very ordinary-looking face, hid all the treasures of God’s limitless kingdom, all the might of his unfathomable power, all the depths of his boundless knowledge, and all the stores of his measureless grace. It was, in fact, within the limits of a human body that God made his limitless stores of treasure known to human beings. Jesus showed what faith is by following God’s will up to literally his last breath. And God showed his faithfulness by overcoming human limitations, even death, to open his kingdom and invite us inside.

    But that’s not the end of the story. Not only did God reveal his treasures to us in Jesus: he also gave them to us. He “made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ,” as Paul put it. His power, knowledge, and grace, all the treasures of his kingdom, are given in love to everyone who believes in Jesus. We don’t just learn about that treasure – we are made repositories of it, and can in turn make it known to others.

    But Paul also says, “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Clay jars, so common in his time that at every Middle East archaeological dig today, shards from broken clay jars are ubiquitous. So common that shards from broken clay jars served as the scratch paper of Paul’s day. Clay jars. Ordinary vessels that contain indescribable wealth. You’re like Jean Preston’s house, whether you know it or not. Someone who doesn’t know you and judges only by what they can see might not give you a second look. But there within you, just like you are right now, God has seen fit to place his treasures. In Jesus and through his Spirit he has filled you with everything that is precious to him.

    Jean’s father, it turns out, was an art collector. Jean inherited what she had from him. It’s the same with you. The treasures of God’s kingdom aren’t something you obtain on your own. It’s only through your Father’s kindness that you have inherited his wealth. And as people see his glory shining out of your ordinary self, they are moved to give the glory to the one to whom it rightfully belongs.

    That’s where you’re not like Jean Preston. By all accounts, she hoarded what she had. Hid it behind the doors and in the wardrobes of her home. Few of those who knew her, apparently, were ever invited to see the treasures she kept for herself. You can choose to do the same with the treasure God has given you, but he didn’t give it to you so that you might keep it hidden. He gave it so that you might share it with others – with people who otherwise might never know about it.

    As you treat those around you with the love, dignity, worth, grace, and mercy that you have received from God, the treasures he has placed within you come into view. Be sure that you live in a way that makes the treasures of the gospel known.

Monsters

     “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:43-45)

“I'm not a monster.”

     So said Ariel Castro, the Cleveland bus driver who was sentenced this week to life plus 1,000 years after holding three women captive in his house for more than a decade.

     Castro claims he’s mentally ill. He said in his statement that there was “a lot of harmony” in the house where he kept Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and the child he fathered with Berry prisoners. Whatever he may be, he says he’s not a monster.

     The 937 counts to which he pled guilty, including kidnapping, rape, assault and aggravated murder (he forcibly caused an abortion in one of his victims) might suggest otherwise.     

     A line from the first of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Batman Begins, comes to mind. Bruce Wayne is trying to defend the playboy lifestyle he’s living (as cover for his secret identity) to his childhood friend, Rachel Dawes. He says, “Rachel, all this, it's not me. Inside, I am more.”

     To which Rachel replies, “Bruce, deep down you may still be that great kid you used to be, but it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.”

     When it suits us best, we’d like to believe the opposite, I think. What man who walks out on his wife and children wouldn’t like to think that he’s a much better person than that abandonment might lead someone to believe? What woman who neglects and abuses her children wouldn’t like to believe that deep inside she’s really a great mom? What boss who bullies his subordinates wouldn’t like to imagine that he’s a great motivator? What church leader who uses his position to manipulate and control those who look to him doesn’t tell himself that his heart is in the right place? We’d like to tell ourselves that it’s what’s inside that matters: that our hearts are pure, even when our actions might be compromised by fear, or stress, or circumstances, or illness. 

     Jesus won’t let us believe it. Not if we take him seriously.

     In one exchange with the religious leaders of his day, Jesus calls into question the validity of their unhealthy, unbalanced obsession with the Jewish food laws. In the course of explaining his position, he cuts the legs out from under any idea that our actions don’t define us, that we can be good people even if we behave monstrously. The religious people of Jesus day are worried about being defiled by what’s outside them: Jesus calls his disciples “dull” for paying attention to such an idea:

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person...”  (Matthew 15:17-20)

     You see? The source of whatever evil may be evident in our lives isn’t something outside us. Our hearts aren’t pristine, no matter how much we’d like to believe that under all the bad stuff we’re pure, and if only circumstances were different everyone would see it. We do evil because there’s evil in our hearts. We lie, we hate, we steal, we lust, we speak ill of others not because the world makes it unavoidable, but because we harbor those sins in our hearts. Sooner or later they come out of us: out of our hands, out of our mouths, out of our actions. When it happens, it’s not a fluke or a bad day. It represents something of who we really are to all who see and hear.

     “Each tree is recognized by its own fruit,” says Jesus in another place. If a tree’s producing bad fruit, you don’t argue with the gardener who calls it bad. “No, that tree is just misunderstood. If only conditions were better. If only circumstances were different. It’s really a good tree.”

     By what standard?

     The same is true of people: “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” If we speak abusively, we’re abusive. If we speak dishonestly, we’re dishonest. If we speak and act in ways that are evil, then evil is what we are. We may hate it. We may have trouble admitting it. But the fact remains.

     The fruit your life bears doesn’t lie.

    That’s not to say that God can’t change hearts: in fact, that’s exactly the business he’s in. It’s not to say that there’s not forgiveness available for even our most monstrous acts. The point is to keep us from kidding ourselves, imagining that we’re good people who just need a little touch-up, a little sanding of the rough spots, a little spackle on the cracks. It’s to keep us from minimizing the sin in our lives. It doesn’t just float on the surface of our lives, like an oily film on otherwise pure water. It bubbles up from deep down, contaminating and polluting. We may tell ourselves and others over and over that we aren’t sinners, that we aren’t evil people, that deep down we’re good and that’s what counts. But nobody’s buying, and we shouldn’t either.

     Nothing but a change of heart can fix what’s wrong in our lives. Not more religion. Not more good deeds. Polishing up the surface doesn’t address the heart problems underneath. All that will suffice is a change of heart, and that only happens when we’re honest with ourselves about who we are and come to Jesus looking to be made right.

     “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us,” Paul wrote in Romans. The Holy Spirit transforms even the worst of hearts. He makes us new from the inside out. How could that be? 

     “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

     We’re monsters, all of us, in one way or another, Grinches all, with hearts too small. And Christ has died to heal us.

     May the love of God transform and enlarge and open our hearts.

     And may we never forget that if we’re not monsters, it’s only because of that love.

Willing

    When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

-Matthew 8:1-4 (NIV)

    He had no reason to hope for a miracle, really. It might have been nothing more than eczema, or ringworm, or any number of skin diseases that today we treat effectively, but what passed for medicine in his time and part of the world had no cure. In all probability, though, the consequences of whatever skin disease he had – tzara’t, they would have called it in Hebrew – were far worse than its actual symptoms. The last word on diagnosis would have belonged to a priest, not a doctor. He would examine the affected skin and render the verdict: tame’. Unclean.

    The Law of Moses was explicit: those who were unclean with leprosy were banished. When Israel wandered in the desert, this meant they were to stay “outside the camp,” on the fringes of society. But urban living didn’t change matters, though perhaps it made them more complicated. Lepers lived outside the city gates, away from anyone except maybe others similarly afflicted. The Law prescribed that they were to adopt a ragged, disheveled appearance and warn off those who might approach them with shouts of “Unclean, unclean.” The Law stopped short of saying that leprosy was God’s judgment upon its victims, but there were enough Bible stories about God visiting the disease on the wicked that certain assumptions were no doubt made, at least much of the time. Besides, being banished meant not being able to participate with the community in the sacrifices and festivals that were the rhythm of Israelite religious life. If a person was not able to observe Passover, or Tabernacles, or the Day of Atonement, how could that person remain in good standing with God as a child of the Covenant?

    How long he had been suffering, Matthew doesn’t tell us: Long enough, maybe, that he had learned to be realistic. People like Jesus didn’t help people like him. Who could blame them? To be near him would be to risk sharing in his uncleanness and in his isolation. To be near him was to risk the loss of social standing and family ties. It was to risk exclusion from the temple rituals and community life. It was to risk losing a wife and children and sentencing them to poverty and dependence. And without shelter, without the protection of the community? It was often enough a death sentence.

    So maybe experience told him that he could expect at best sympathetic looks, and that most likely Jesus and his entourage would run at his approach. But maybe experience had also made him desperate enough to take a step of faith, and that step took him to Jesus’ feet. Instead of staying away from him, he ignores propriety, ignores the Law, and kneels right at Jesus’ feet. And instead of warning him off with shouts of “Unclean!” he cries out to Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean!”

    “If you are willing.” He seems to know, somehow, that with Jesus healing isn’t matter of ability, but desire. He knows somehow that Jesus can restore his relationships with God and with the people he loves. He knows that he can do much more than the priests, who could only examine the lesions and confirm his uncleanness. Jesus can make him clean.

    If only he will.

    And he will.

    Matthew says it so quickly and economically that it’s easy to miss. It’s right there between Jesus saying “Be clean” and telling the man to go show himself to the priests. You have to be paying attention to see it, but it’s important so don’t miss it. The man isn’t made clean the instant Jesus says “Be clean.” There’s something else that Jesus does first, very small but very significant.

    “He reached out his hand and touched the man,” Matthew says.

    And with that touch, a millennium and a half of Jewish religious law is turned on its head. The Law says that to touch an unclean person is to share in his uncleanness. You can’t “catch” being clean, but you can catch being unclean. Jesus’ one action here grabs that belief, shakes it by its lapels, slaps it a couple of times in the face, and leaves it lying bewildered and embarrassed on the ground. “That may have been the way things used to be,” Jesus seems to be saying. “But there’s a new sheriff in town now.” When Jesus touches a person, however “unclean” he or she may be, that person is clean.

    Jesus is able, and more than that, he’s willing.

    No one who has ever come to Jesus – you and I included – has come as anything more than an unclean leper hoping for a miracle. We come on our knees, believing that he can make us clean if only he will, and discover to our surprise and delight that he is absolutely willing. Uncleanness doesn’t scare or shock him, whatever form it may take. It runs from him, retreats from his touch, and leaves us new. Whatever your particular form of uncleanness, whatever it is that stands between you and God and the people you would love if only you knew how, Jesus can make you clean. Even if you’ve spent your whole life running from him, or even if you’ve tested his patience time and again. He can make you clean.

    And, maybe more amazingly, he’s willing. Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, he is willing to make you clean.

    All he asks of us is what he asked of that leper: “Go, show yourself…as a witness to them.” Nothing speaks more eloquently of God’s power than the testimony of a life changed by Jesus. He asks us to display ourselves for the benefit of others who need to be made clean, too, but wonder whether Jesus might be willing. Your own experience might assure someone that he is.

    There are all kinds of reasons why he might have told that leper not to tell others what had happened to him, but I think I’m safe in saying that those reasons probably don’t apply to us. As you show others your changed life, your new status as someone made clean by Jesus, it would be good if you mentioned his name. People need to know, see, that “church people” aren’t clean because we’re good or religious or whatever. They need to know that we’re only clean because of Jesus.

    Because he loves us.

    Because he’s willing.

Distraction

     Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

-Hebrews 12:1-3 

In retrospect, Stephen Amaral probably should have known from the beginning that something was amiss.

     Might have, too, if he hadn’t been paying close attention to...well...a miss.

     Stephen, from Crossville, Tennessee, was minding his business a couple of weeks ago when a woman who lived nearby approached him and asked if she could swim in his pool. Stephen, a little surprised, said yes. He was even more surprised when he saw that the woman was not dressed in the traditional way for swimming.

     Nor was she dressed at all, for that matter.

     After she splashed around for a while, she asked Stephen if he would mind helping her towel off. He was unselfishly willing to do so, and even went the second mile to help her again after she decided to go back in for another dip.

     All told, Stephen sat by the pool supervising his neighbor’s natatorial escapades for about 20 minutes. 

     Which was plenty of time for her boyfriend to enter Stephen’s house and steal about $1200 worth of his stuff.

     Reports are that Mr. Amaral is working with a sketch artist to find the thieves. So far he’s been able to tell the artist that he’s pretty sure the woman had a face...

     The media have been having a pretty good time with this story, at Mr. Amaral’s expense. But it’s not entirely fair to laugh at him unless you’ve never found yourself distracted. You can laugh if you’ve never turned your eyes away from something valuable for the sake of something pretty or exciting or interesting in the short term. It’s how people lose families for a quick fling, or careers for momentary, illicit gain, or friendships over one selfish act. It’s how people compromise principles and values and lose reputations. 

     It’s how people let their faith slip away.

     It’s the story of the human race, a theme that runs through our history. It certainly runs through Scripture:

    Judas betrays Jesus for a handful of silver.

     Jonah runs from God’s calling and mission for a quiet life of safety and ease.

     David sacrifices his friend Uriah - and potentially God’s favor - for Bathsheeba.

     Esau trades his inheritance to quiet a rumbling stomach.

     It runs all the way back to our origins. It’s why Adam and Eve would trade the food with which God would have sustained them forever for a piece of fruit that looked better, somehow, in the moment. 

     They got distracted. They lost sight of what mattered. They believed the lie that they could have what they wanted right then and the good gifts God wanted to give them at the same time.

     Recall, for a moment, Peter’s experience in a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. Wind and waves raging around him, unable to get to safety on land. When he sees Jesus walking toward them - on the water - he can’t wait for him to get to the boat. He asks for Jesus to tell him to come out on the water, believing that if Jesus says he can, he can.

     Jesus does, and Peter does.

     Right up until Peter starts to notice the wind and water more, and pay attention to Jesus less.

     It’s not that we consciously choose to give up something valuable. Often we just get scared, or tired, or excited, or sad. We find something that offers comfort, security, or happiness. And we fail to imagine the potential cost.

     “You of little faith:” that’s how Jesus rebuked Peter for his moment of doubt, and that rebuke should sting us, too, every time we fail to trust God enough to take his hand and walk where he tells us we can walk. Every time we fail to believe in Jesus and stay in the boat, or try to walk on the water without keeping our eyes on him.

     The writer of Hebrews changes the metaphor to running a race, but the same realities apply. As we run the race through life that God has marked out for us, there will be things that hamper and entangle us. They’ll distract us. They’ll slow us down. While we’re paying attention to them, while our attention is diverted, our lives will be pillaged of everything that is really good, really valuable, really important. The only option is to throw those things off, to shed them like - well, like Stephen Amaral’s neighbor shed her clothes. But that’s exactly the problem: if human nature tells us anything, it’s that the things that threaten us most are sometimes the very things that most easily distract us.

     So it can’t be just us, with white knuckles, gritted teeth, and our own will power. Our faith is about much more than our own vigilance, our own ability to lock into what really matters with laser-like focus, ignoring the distractions. We don’t have the wisdom to figure out what’s really valuable, nor do we have the ability to shut out the distractions. So it boils down to a person: One who has run the race already, and who was able to avoid the distractions and be faithful to what matters. 

     Jesus’ faithful life, unmarred by wrong turns and attention lapses, unwavering even in his own death, is credited to those of us who put our trust in him. So it’s no wonder that the writer tells us to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus...”

     Fixing our eyes on Jesus. Not on all those pretty, interesting, exciting things that might distract us. Not on holding all those things at arm’s length. Our problem, probably, is that our minds and hearts aren’t focused enough on Jesus. We don’t dwell on his words, his actions, or his faithfulness. So it’s no wonder that we’re so easily distracted.  

     To me, the best thing about Stephen Amaral’s story is what happened after his guest finished swimming. Mr. Amaral told police he invited her to church.

     I doubt Mr. Amaral watched her swim for 20 minutes, waiting for a chance to invite her to church. But, at some point, it seems that maybe he remembered who he was. Or who he wanted to be. At some point, it seems that he remembered Jesus. 

     Maybe our attention has already been diverted, and that’s the best we can do right now, too. But that’s enough. Remember Jesus, put the eyes of your heart back on him, throw off what’s entangling you, and run with perseverance from here on. 

     And look with suspicion on neighbors who come to swim in your pool, sans suit.

     On second thought, maybe “look” is a poor choice of words there....

Tabernacle

     But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel...

     At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

     Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

-Hebrews 12:22-29

I remember the tabernacle model in Sunday School.

     It was a scale (?) model of the Israelite tabernacle from the Old Testament that fit on a large table. It was made of popsicle sticks, plywood, cloth, modeling clay, and so forth. Everything was there: the altar, the basin, the table of shewbread, even the Ark of Covenant in the Most Holy Place. Tiny priests and Levites were bustling around the courtyard. The teacher could reach in and take something out of the model, pass it around, and let us hold, say, the Ark of the Covenant while she told us about it.

     Now, there’s a life-sized Tabernacle model that you can have brought to your church. You can actually help set it up and then walk around in it. I would have geeked out over that back in Sunday School.

     What I didn’t understand so well back then was the purpose of the tabernacle. A tent for God to live in? Why does God need a place to live at all? And if he’s going to have a place to live, shouldn’t it be nicer than a tent? Should we be carrying tents for the Almighty to bivouac in everywhere we go?

     That’s probably where my Sunday School teacher would ask someone else if they had a question.    

     We were taught that God, in fact, doesn’t need a tent to live in. I know now that the tabernacle was set up as it was, with God cut off from everyone but the high priest, to remind the people that, though their God by his grace lived and traveled with them, he wasn’t to be trifled with. If you came into his presence, it had better be with the right clearances and sacrifices. God remained separate, apart, and other, hidden by a heavy veil and smoke. The tabernacle made it clear that, despite his grace and compassion, God and human beings were very different, and very separate. 

     There’s a whole book of the New Testament, Hebrews, that’s all about how in Jesus things are different. It shows how Jesus came to endure what human beings have to endure, that he was made “fully human” in order to help us deal with the temptations we face. It goes on to say that Jesus is our high priest, but that he has “gone through the heavens” instead of into the Most Holy Place of a physical tabernacle. He “serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being.” Instead of serving in a tabernacle that is “a copy and shadow” of heaven, Jesus “entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.”

     The point is the same as the point made by the tabernacle and its sacrifices in the Old Testament: God wants to live with his people, but either he needs to be separated in some way, or the people need to be made holy. Through Jesus, we’re made holy. We can “draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”   

     All that being the case, I think too much of church life might be taken up with building a tabernacle, so to speak.

    I wonder sometimes, in our concern to create moving worship experiences that help people to feel close to God, if we haven't fallen victim to the temptation to build new tabernacles. They're different, to be sure: no altars or shewbread or high priests in ornate clothing for us. The tabernacles we've built are characterized by good lighting, professional video and sound, and music that pushes the right buttons. Polished preachers and worship leaders are our high priests, their office-casual wardrobes replacing ephods, turbans, and robes. 

     We've decided, somehow, that it's up to the architects of our Christian tabernacles and their priestly staff to bring us into the presence of God. Some do it with elaborately-choreographed liturgies. Others do it with just the right style of music, or with well-produced drama, or with eloquent preaching. Others do it by looking for biblical proof-texts for every act of worship, expecting that in so doing they’ll also find God’s approval. The point is always the same: to bring participants closer to God in some way.

    The writer of Hebrews reminds his readers of one of Israel's extra-tabernacle worship experiences, when they assembled as a nation before God at Mt. Sinai at the beginning of the Exodus. Then he says that, for us, life is like that. Except more. We're assembled with the angels. We've come, because of Jesus, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the city of God himself. We live in the Most Holy Place, in the presence of God himself. We’re in fellowship with those whose names are written in heaven. We’re part of a kingdom that’s eternal, immovable, and no tabernacle human beings can build has anything to do with God’s presence with us. Because of Jesus, God lives with us. He’s near. And we can come before him with boldness and expectation. 

     That’s the problem with the tabernacles we build: they leave the impression that we need them in order to get close to God. And in doing so they cheapen the work of Jesus. They also can suggest to us that the part of life that’s really important - the spiritual part, where worship takes place - is at those human-made tabernacles when we “feel close to God.” And that, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth.

     To live in the Most Holy Place is to live in the presence of God. To walk the streets of his city. It’s to know that, whatever our feelings at any particular time say, we can come before God and find grace and help. It’s to know that whatever we say and do is done and said in front of him. 

     And, knowing that, we should be thankful people. And that’s why and how we worship.

     I’m thankful for time to gather with my church. But I don’t need them to come near to God. All I need is Jesus. 

     He’s all the tabernacle we’ll ever need.