Our Box for God

November 15, 2015

Hebrews 10:11-25

I’ve always had a problem using nice things.  When I was in college my sister sent me a set of paints from Russia, where she was studying.   

Having never used tubed paint before, and certainly never with cyrillic lettering on it, the paint seemed too special to use for just my ordinary artistic dabbling.  I wanted to take painting classes to learn how to use them.  25 years later, I finally broke out the paints to use with my daughters.  We had the best afternoon, squeezing the tiny tubes and mixing our own colors and experimenting with different techniques.  It didn’t matter at all that our art wasn’t perfect or technically correct because our experience was full of beauty and joy.

I think we often do that same thing with God.  We think we have to be perfectly clean or put together or sin-free before we go to God.  We think the circumstances have to be perfect - our minds calm and our hearts full and ideally a flickering candle nearby. And we think what we bring before God has to be Worthy — important cares, unselfish desires, unequivocal joy - not the mundane pieces of our lives.  

I’ve been thinking about this human tendency a lot lately as we’ve been telling some of the big Old Testament stories in our Godly Play classroom.  

We began our year with creation.  All things were created by God and God called all things good.  Nature and creatures were formed out of an abundance of God’s love and they were created for perfect intimacy and connection with God.

And then came Abraham and Sarah, the Father and Mother of the Great Family more numerous that the stars in the sky and the grains of sand in the desert and of which we are all a part.  They came so close to God and God came so close to them that they followed God on a journey that would lead them through the desert and into an entirely new land.  As they wandered, they discovered that God was not there, or there, or here.  But “all of God was everywhere.”

Many generations later, the people found themselves in slavery in Egypt.  But God heard their cries and led them safely and miraculously to freedom.

Now they could go where they wanted and do what they wanted.  They were free.  But they weren’t sure what to do with their freedom.  And so God gave them the 10 Best Ways to Live.  10 ways to love God and other people that all rested in God’s great love for them.

The people loved the 10 Best Ways so much that they wanted to carry them with them always as a reminder.  And so the people created a box called an ark to keep them in and covered it with gold.  It had poles on the sides so the people could carry it with them wherever they went.

But the people felt like they couldn’t just go up to something as precious as the 10 Best Ways.  They felt like they had to be ready.  And so they placed in front of the ark an altar of incense that they could walk past and smell its aroma.  But still, it felt like it wasn’t enough.  And so they put a table in front of that with 12 pieces of bread representing the 12 tribes of Israel and a lamp stand with 7 branches called a menorah.  Now they could walk between the table and the menorah, past the smoke rising from the incense, and approach the ark.  But they felt like it still wasn’t enough.

And so they built a tent around all these things to keep the place set apart.  Inside the tent they made a space called the Holy of Holies for the ark.  They covered the roof of the tent with precious material.  But still they felt like it wasn’t enough.

And so in the courtyard outside the tent they put a big altar covered with bronze for making sacrifices and a huge bowl of bronze for washing themselves before entering.  But it still wasn’t enough. 

And so they built walls around the whole thing - the tent and the courtyard - that marked the whole place as special.  Now only the priests could go in (and of course they were only men).  The priests began to wear special robes to get them ready to go inside.  The whole thing, the tabernacle, could be rolled up and brought with them wherever they traveled.

But when the people finally settled in Jerusalem, they wanted to build a permanent holy place.  And so they built a beautiful Temple of cedar trees and stone with even more layers of complicated approachability.  Now only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies and only on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year. 

They had wrapped God up in a beautiful, shiny box and put God safely away to be brought out only on special occasions.  Just like my paints, this package was so significant and special it wouldn’t be bothered except for the most undeniably holy and sacred times.

But when I tell these stories, it always feels somehow sad to me.  Like a slow disintegration of their family story of origin of being beloved creations of God, intended for communion with their Creator.  A gradual abandonment of their family discovery that all of God was with them wherever they went.  Rather than recognizing God as part and parcel of their very existence, they had God safely stowed in a certain protected place for certain important people at certain important times.

Or at least they thought they did.  Of course they couldn’t really confine God to that box.  That plan was fraught from the very beginning.  God was so much bigger than the Ten Best Ways at the start.  And as much as they (and we) might think we can control God that tends not to work as a long term plan.  As much as we might not believe ourselves to be God’s beloved creations that doesn’t make it any less true.  And as much as we may want to keep God in one place that we can point to and understand, all of God is still everywhere, huge and mysterious.

Our reading from Hebrews today proclaims that Jesus took that special box from its high protected shelf and ripped off the packaging.  Now the covenant God makes with us isn’t chiseled in stone that we can hide in a gold ark.  It isn’t even written in stone on paper that we call a Bible and try with the best intentions to protect.  God’s endless love for us is indelibly written on our very hearts and minds.  Each one of us is invited to burst through the fence of the tabernacle, turn over the altar of sacrifice, brush aside the curtain guarding the Holy of Holies, and throw open the ark.  To open our paints and start using them to color all the nooks and crannies of our being.  We are invited - just as we are - into the presence of our living, loving God, who wants to be part of every piece of our lives - the messy, the painful, the mundane, and the utterly unfit for consumption.  

I wonder how your understanding and experience of God might expand beyond whatever box you have created?