A few weeks ago I posted that God is revealed where God is hidden. God is revealed not only in our religious structures, but outside of them as well. However, I think that this revelation, and perhaps the nature of revelation itself, is just a bit more radical than a passive revelation as that post suggests. What we see in the sorties of how God interacts with the Temple in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament is that God is not only revealed outside of the Temple, but God participates in its destruction and rebuilding time and time again.
What we see in the Exodus and thereafter is that God does not need the Temple to reside with the people. After freeing the Hebrews from captivity, Yahweh instructs them to build a tabernacle which served as a portable place of worship. Today this does not seem all that revolutionary. The spread of Christianity in the US has a rich history of the use of tents that were raised in order to promote the westward movement of the faith. These tents were also part of an Awakening in traditional church establishments that promoted a levelling function of personal experience with God rather than the need of a hierarchy to legitimate one's faith. Truly, in both cases, God is continually revealed outside of normative structures in other structures that are far less expected to reveal the presence of God – especially in any authoritative way.
Second, after Jesus dies the Temple curtain is ripped open. This could be figurative or literal. Either way, the lesson is that God is not contained in the Temple. Moreover, Jesus predicts that he, as the revealer of God's Kingdom which he thus makes "near" to the people, will destroy the Temple and rebuild it. This is after he cleanses it of the political and economic functions for which is had been used. The irony here is palpable, and the point is strong. If we expect God to remain in the Temple, God will destroy it. God does this because the Temple is not for people, it belongs to God alone.
If these stories of revelation were told today, where would God's Temple be? Would it be among the religious establishments? As religious structures reconfigure and traditions merge, mix, and mash-up to form new ones, keeping in mind that God cannot be contained in any social or material structure of human designs is important. In fact, it is also clear that the fullness of God cannot be contained even in structures of God's own making.
Even the sacraments and the place of the Church itself are always symbolic of God, not the authority for God's revelation. At any point God may reveal the Kingdom by destroying the Temples we have built. Are we humble enough to accept that verdict? Or are we too content in our collective blindness to attend to the reality of our own persistent limitedness in receiving the progressive revelation which God has offered to us by grace alone?
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Love this post, Drew. Sounds like you've actually been reading the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John. Jesus seems to be saying the same thing, over and over again, in the stories and sermons recorded for us by John.
I've been thinking a lot about how we try to do church as a "paint by the numbers" kinda work, and too often even our own lives that way – and then get bent out of shape when we "followed all the rules" to get what we were after and it didn't work out that way. I see this so much right now in all our seminary grads who are not fully employed as pastors. It's like a new dispersion of Christians from Jerusalem … and God will use it.
Continued prayers for all of us!
Your article is the perfect argument for the authority of the scriptures. Man-made institutions do indeed imprison the limitlessness of God. But in our efforts to break him out of prison, we need to be careful that we do not end up with hallucinations, wishfull thinking, and socirtal pressure. The mind is a great thing. But when claiming a new revelation from God, the mind can be a dangerous neighborhood. I think a lot of what is today being called a new emerging revelation is little more than settling into that dangerous neighborhood.
which is why i am skeptical of anyone claiming a "new" revelation. it's the same revelation seen through different fallible cultures and people. this also includes the authority of the scriptures. this notion consistently evolves through time. attention and discipline are needed to study the scriptures seriously as a spiritual practice. in eastern orthodox liturgy a constant refrain is "let us attend." this means let us focus on that which is not us and that which gives us being rather than on our own callous whims.
so it's a balance. you must always be aware of your own tendency to idolatry not just of social pressures, but of the pressures to consent to interpretations as if any one generation's interpretation of scripture is more valuable than another's. whether it's athanasius, augustine, aquinas, calvin, hodge, niebuhr, tillich, or barth, all contribute to unpacking a continuous revelation for their time which can inform how we approach that revelation for our time. but any over-zealous adherence to a particular doctrine is as damaging, or in some cases more so, than secular society telling us what is appropriate to believe. jesus dies because he acted in opposition to both sets of pressure. he called christians to follow him. tall order.
Oh yah!!!!????
Oh yah!!!!????