Tag Archives: Tabernacle

Chapter-a-Day

Gathering

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But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go…
Deuteronomy 12:5 (NIV)

A few weeks ago I was working on a personal project assembling photographs of Wendy and me through the years. A little something for our 20th wedding anniversary on New Year’s Eve. As I was going through the photos I laughed when I got to the Covid years. I let my hair grow during the pandemic. It was the longest it had ever been in my life. Oh, the ways that the pandemic lock downs changed our lives. So many rhythms of life were interrupted.

One of those rhythm interruptions was certainly weekly gatherings for worship. Everything moved online for a while, and I will confess that there was something novel and enjoyable about cuddling in on the couch with Wendy in our pajamas to watch worship online. I know I was not alone. I observed that some people never returned to physical gathering.

This came to mind this morning as I meditated on today’s chapter. For eleven chapters Moses has been teaching Israel how to remember. Today, he teaches them how to desire. The mantra of “remember” has been his constant refrain. In today’s chapter, Moses shifts his gaze to the future.

Someday, when the Hebrews have taken possession of the land and settled down, God will name the place where they are to bring all of the prescribed sacrifices and offerings. The chapter communicates three important concepts for their spiritual health.

First, they are to rid the land of other gods and their forms of worship. Why? These other religions were appetite indulgence masquerading as religion—desire without discipline, pleasure without protection. God even calls out their practice of child sacrifice.

“This is not who I am. This is not who you are.”

Second, God prescribes centralized worship. The traveling tent temple known as the Tabernacle has been with them for forty years as they wandered. The Tabernacle was always at the center of their camp. Someday, Moses says, God will name a place in the land for a permanent location for His name.

Third, God makes a distinction between daily appetites and sacred offering. You may eat meat freely wherever you live—but sacrifice belongs only in God’s chosen place. Appetite is allowed. Worship is consecrated. Desire is honored—but not deified and indulged in unhealthy ways.

God’s prescription isn’t prudish. It’s ordered. It is God’s invitation to learn how to desire rightly, how to worship with our whole bodies without letting our appetites run the show. God doesn’t outlaw pleasure – in fact He created it and celebrates it. He shuns exploitation, however. Holiness protects from the unhealthy consequences of appetites run amok. It shields bodies from being used in the name of spirituality.

The prescriptive rhythm that I see in today’s chapter is God’s desire for gathering. You can have your daily life at home, but I want you to gather together with me and your people at a central location. We are one. We need one another. The entire Great Story leads to one final and eternal gathering of God and His people in one City. Jesus said He was going to prepare that place and would return to gathering everyone there.

After Jesus ascension to begin those preparations, God sent His Holy Spirit to indwell those who believe and receive. God’s presence shifts from tent to temple to the bodies of believers. My body is God’s Temple, His Spirit dwelling within me.

It’s tempting to think, therefore, that worship can be centralized wherever I happen to be. After all, I discovered during Covid that sitting on the couch in my pajamas is quite comfortable and enjoyable. Bedside Baptist. Pillowcase Presbyterian. Lounge Chair Lutheran. Recliner Reformed. I kinda like the ring of all of them.

Please don’t read what I’m not writing. I’m grateful for technology that allows people who are shut-in to feel like they are a part of things from afar in real time. That is, however, different than me choosing to do so because it’s easy, comfortable, and requires little or nothing from me. I observed during the pandemic that this can easily become a return to appetite indulgence wrapped in a blanket of spirituality.

Jesus gathered His followers around the table. Even when He sent them out on missions He sent them in twos, never alone. Then, He always had them return. They gathered. They shared a meal. They broke bread together. They passed a cup. They sang together. They prayed together. Being alone has never been God’s paradigm. Gathering and doing Life and Spirit together has always been the prescription and the plan from tent to temple to table.

On Sunday Wendy and I will join our own local gathering of Jesus’ followers as we do pretty much every week. Yes, we will sing, we will pray, and we will follow an ordered form of worship. But that’s just the surface motions. They are good, instructive, and beneficial. It’s what really happens in the gathering over the weeks and months and years that is where the good stuff happens. These are our people. We know names and stories. They know ours. We do life together. We walk through life’s struggles. We support one another, encourage one another, and serve one another. We break the bread. We pass the cup.

Each week becomes a communion of Life and Spirit—something that only happens when bodies gather, voices rise, and stories intertwine.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
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Chapter-a-Day

New Things Come

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Now the main point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being.
Hebrews 8:1-2 (NIV)

He walked up to me after I’d given a message about Sabbath rest. He wasn’t mean or angry, but he was definitely not happy with me. I live amidst a culture that has traditionally been religiously rabid about Sabbath keeping. I have heard so many stories from adults who spent their Sundays growing up sitting in chairs in the living room. The entire family listening to the clock tick. Other stories recount hair-splitting legalism worthy of Jesus’ day. Tossing a football was okay, but organizing a game was work and that broke the Sabbath.

In my message, I taught that this kind of legalistic rule-keeping Sabbath worship was never the point, it was not what Jesus taught, nor does it resonate God’s intentions for us. Sabbath is about needing rest for our spiritual, mental, physical, relational, and communal health.

The man informed me that he held his family to strict Sabbath keeping and wanted me to know that I’d just thrown him under the bus in the minds of his children. I hope that the family conversation that afternoon was productive and healthy for all of them.

In today’s chapter, the author of Hebrews continues his discussion of Jesus as the cosmic, eternal High Priest of heaven. In fact, the author states that this is his main point. For the first-century Jewish believers to whom he is writing, this resonates deeply. It echoes their entire life experience. They intimately know the temple in Jerusalem, the priestly system of worship, offering, and sacrifice.

As a believer growing up in Protestant midwest Iowa, not so much.

And yet, this is part of a thread of the Great Story that is crucial to understanding all of it. If I miss this, it’s like watching the original Star Wars movie and thinking Luke and Darth Vader are unrelated antagonists. It’s like reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and thinking Snape is a cookie cutter villain.

The metaphor of temple is woven into the tapestry of the Great Story itself:

  • In Eden, the whole world was God’s temple.
  • In Exodus, God compresses His presence into a tent tabernacle.
  • In Solomon’s day, that becomes a stone temple.
  • In the prophets, God promises a greater dwelling.
  • In Jesus, the temple becomes flesh.
  • At Pentecost, the temple becomes the people. You and me.
  • In Revelation, the temple becomes the entire renewed creation—
    a holy city that is a Holy of Holies, illuminated from within by the Lamb who is the sanctuary.

Everything is moving toward union, presence, intimacy…
and the erasure of every barrier between God and humanity.

Notice, however, the changes that come with the progression. My legalist Sabbath keeper brothers and sisters want to live in an Exodus paradigm, when Jesus changed all of that. The author of Hebrews says it plaining in the chapter. First in quoting the prophet Jeremiah:

“The days are coming, declares the Lord,
    when I will make a new covenant…

It will not be like the covenant
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    to lead them out of Egypt…

I will put my laws in their minds
    and write them on their hearts.”

No longer a legal written code to be kept like a rule book. The new covenant Jesus made put God’s Spirit into our very bodies, minds, and hearts. It’s not about behavior modification from adherence to an outside set rules, but life transformation from God’s holy presence within me.

The author ends the chapter writing:

By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.

Old things pass away. New things come. The story of Scripture is not God demanding a temple and religious rule keeping.

It is God refusing to live without me.

It is God shrinking Himself from cosmos → tent → body → Spirit
so that He might enlarge me from dust → disciple → temple → bride → city of God.

Jesus said He was the temple. It was God saying:

“Where I dwell is not a building.
It is with you. It is in you.
And one day, my beloved,
it will be the whole world again.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Promotional graphic for Tom Vander Well's Wayfarer blog and podcast, featuring icons of various podcast platforms with a photo of Tom Vander Well.
These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
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Chapter-a-Day

Colors

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“Over the gold altar they are to spread a blue cloth and cover that with the durable leather and put the poles in place.”
Numbers 4:11 (NIV)

For Father’s Day this year, our daughter Taylor arranged for the two of us to have our portraits taken with a special camera that purports to capture the color of the energy that surrounds a person, commonly referred to as an aura. It was a fun and fascinating experience (there’s a link in the episode details to today’s post at tomvanderwell.com where you can see the results). I was pretty much covered in deep blue that faded to white above me and down the center of my chest. Taylor was surrounded with warm orange and scarlet. Together, the warmth of Taylor’s orange wrapped around us while my blue covered her.

A photo triptych showing three portraits: the left image features a man with a deep blue aura, the center image shows the man with a woman, enveloped in warm colors, and the right image depicts the woman with a warm orange and scarlet aura, smiling.

Here’s the summary of the interpretations.

Tom:
Highly intuitive and emotionally intelligent.
Likely introverted or reflective by nature.
Possibly a teacher, guide, or someone others come to for insight
On or seeking a deeper life path—spiritually, creatively, or intellectually.

Taylor:
Charismatic, confident, and emotionally intuitive.
Naturally creative—may excel in arts, communication, or leadership.
Likely very warm and approachable but with a fierce inner drive.
Possesses a radiant personal energy that can light up a room or inspire those around her.

Together:
The tryptic reveals a beautiful portrait of two strong individual spirits who meet in a space of warmth, love, and deep connection. Your daughter’s joy and warmth bring brightness to your contemplative depth, and your centered presence seems to ground her radiant energy. The central photo is not just a mix of colors—it’s a visual metaphor for a balanced, evolving, and mutually enriching relationship.

Fascinating. I think it described each of us and our relationship rather well.

I share this to make one simple observation. Stick with me here.

God is creator of all things, including the universe, its energy, and the entire spectrum of colors it contains. By the way, there are more colors than our eyes can see. Many people who have died and had Near Death Experiences (NDEs) report that in eternity everything was more colorful than they could possibly imagine and there were colors they’d never seen before.

As my followers may get sick of me repeating, God’s base language is metaphor. God layers everything with meaning. Therefore, it does not surprise me that color has meaning.

In today’s chapter, God has Moses and Aaron count the number of men between the ages of 30-50 in each of the Levite clans, then gives them instructions and responsibility for preparing and carrying the traveling tent temple known as the Tabernacle for transport. They are making preparations, after all, for their journey into the wilderness. God commands that the Ark [cue: Raiders of the Lost Ark Theme], the altar, and all the articles used in the sacrificial worship system are covered in cloth, then durable leather for safety during transport.

What struck me as I read today’s chapter is that God designated different colors of cloth for different items of the Tabernacle. Why? Because colors have meaning. For the ancient Hebrews:

Blue is associated with heaven, divinity, and God’s presence.
Red/Scarlet is associated with blood, sacrifice, and atonement.
Purple is associated with royalty, sovereignty, and nobility.

Together, these colors were metaphorical of God and His character. In fact, they still represent the same things today as they did back then. I have a purple shirt and the last time I wore it someone made a passing reference to me being royalty.

In the quiet this morning, as I meditated on these things, I was reminded that to this day I know that women will have their “colors done” to help determine the palette of colors in which they look best. Again, I find it fascinating and it made me wonder if there is possibly a connection between the color of the energy a woman emits and the colors she physically looks best in. It wouldn’t surprise me. Our creative God does things like that, layers them with connection and meaning we don’t even think about.

I head into my day today paying a little more attention to the colors in creation and being grateful to God for caring about such details. The words of Jesus are ringing in my heart:

“See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Promotional graphic for Tom Vander Well's Wayfarer blog and podcast, featuring icons of various podcast platforms with a photo of Tom Vander Well.
These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
A camera capture of auras around two individuals, showcasing deep blue and warm orange colors representing their energies.

Chapter-a-Day

Keep the Flame Burnin’

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Keep the Flame Burnin’ (CaD Lev 24) – Wayfarer

Outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, Aaron is to tend the lamps before the Lord from evening till morning, continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.
Leviticus 24:3 (NIV)

It was a bitterly cold night forty-four years ago last month. I was just a snot-nosed fourteen year-old kid. I was a middle-schooler for crying out loud. I walked down the aisle, knelt down, and prayed a prayer of total surrender. As did this, everyone sang,

“I have decided to follow Jesus. No going back. No going back.”

Young people, especially adolescents, make a lot of silly statements at that stage of their lives. If you had asked me then, I’d have probably told you that I was going to study Law and go into politics. Perhaps I would be President of the United States someday. That was what my yet to be fully formed brain was thinking before that night. But something happened in that prayer of surrender that penetrated far deeper than the fog of adolescent angst, dreams, and natural delusion.

“Though none go with me, still I will follow. No going back. No going back.”

Here I sit in the quiet, forty-four years later. I’m still following. The spiritual reality is that I’m following Jesus closer than ever, even though it looks very different than I could have even conceived forty-four years ago. It’s less religious and more relational. It is intensely personal and organic rather than being communal and tied to an organization. It is less sure and more real. It has grown in intimate mystery as I have slowly learned to relax my fingers clinging to human dogma. I’m loving far more, and judging far less than I ever have before. Forgiveness comes easier. So does generosity.

“I have decided to follow Jesus. No going back. No going back.”

A few days ago, in my post/podcast entitled Ritual and Spiritual, I talked about the 40-watt light-bulb inside the candleholder above the altar of the church in which I grew up. I was taught that it was “the eternal flame” that illuminated the altar always.

In today’s chapter of God’s priestly manual for the ancient Hebrews we learn where the Methodist church learned about eternal flames and altars. There were golden lamp stands that God had Moses and the Hebrews make and place outside the “Most Holy Place” of his traveling tent temple. Others stood by the altar outside the tent temple. Aaron the high priest, and his priestly sons were to tend the lamps and keep them burning around the clock. This required constant attention, making sure the wicks were trimmed and replaced and that they never ran out of oil. If they weren’t vigilant in these mundane tasks of checking, adding, replacing, and maintaining, the fire would go out.

What I once again find so profoundly simple is that God gave this metaphorical lesson to His people in the toddler stages of humanity that we humans might grow-up, mature, and learn the spiritual lesson that the metaphor had to teach us. Jesus made it clear that the lesson was not that we should replicate this practice of building altars in churches and hanging 40-watt light bulbs over them. This, by the way, requires nothing from the humans responsible for them other than telling the janitor to replace the bulb once every year-or-two to make sure it doesn’t burn out and no one notices until Sunday morning worship. That’s not quite the spiritual lesson of vigilance, discipline, and maintenance that God was giving Aaron and the boys.

The lesson of the “continuous flame” was a spiritual lesson for the day when Jesus would come, indwell, and illuminate my 14-year-old heart, mind, and soul.

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”
Matthew 5:14-16 (MSG)

How do I keep the Light of the World burning within and shining out in my words, actions, and relationships for forty-four years? This is where the routine of spiritual vigilance, commitment, investigation, and mundane perpetual maintenance that God taught Aaron and the boys comes in. Being a disciple of Jesus has not been simply a process of hooking up the wires, flipping the switch, and changing the bulb every few years. Keeping the spiritual flame burning and the Light shining has required more diligence, discipline, and perseverance than that. Not that I haven’t had my own struggles to maintain it in the ebb and flow of this life journey. I’m human like everyone else. Some seasons I’ve done better than others.

Still, here I am in the quiet this morning, still tending the internal spiritual flame. Another chapter, another hour of meditation, reflection, and internal conversation with God’s Spirit. Another day on this earthly journey.

“I have decided to follow Jesus. No going back. No going back.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Distinctions

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Distinctions (CaD Ezk 41) – Wayfarer

Then he measured the temple; it was a hundred cubits long, and the temple courtyard and the building with its walls were also a hundred cubits long. The width of the temple courtyard on the east, including the front of the temple, was a hundred cubits. Then he measured the length of the building facing the courtyard at the rear of the temple, including its galleries on each side; it was a hundred cubits.
Ezekiel 41:13-15 (NIV)

For the recently freed Hebrew slaves, everything about life had changed. All they knew about the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was what Moses had told them. But they’d witnessed what God could do in the ten plagues that had been inflicted on Pharaoh and Egypt. They’d seen God part the waters of the Red Sea so they could cross and then bring the same waters crashing down on the Egyptian army.

But they still know relatively little about God. But in Exodus 19, they are about to learn a whole lot more. Moses goes up on a mountain by himself. From below they watch as lightning strikes, then smoke starts billowing, and the whole mountain trembles. When Moses descends, he not only has the Ten Commandments, but he has the blueprints and instruction manual for a Temple, a priesthood, rituals, and sacrifices that prescribe an entirely new way of living with God and with one another in community.

One of the things that became quickly clear to the ancient Hebrews when God, through Moses, gave them instructions for a temple and its rituals is that God made distinctions. Again, this parallels the Creation poem in Genesis 1 and 2 where God made a distinction between “this” and “that” parts of creation. There are consistent structural designs from the tent tabernacle, to Solomon’s Temple, and to the Temple Ezekiel sees in his vision. With each, there were distinctions of space. There were spaces between the common and the sacred, the space that was everyday people, and the “most holy” space where God’s presence resided.

The Most Holy Place, sometimes called the “Holy of Holies” was a perfect square. The only person who could enter was the high priest.

Fast forward to Jesus, some 400 years after Ezekiel. In Luke 9, Jesus takes his three inner-circle disciples and goes up a mountain. Suddenly, Jesus is transformed into blinding, bright light. There is lightning and then there’s smoke everywhere and then Moses shows up in his glorified, heavenly body along with Elijah. Does this sound familiar?! Jesus would descend that mountain and consequently usher a completely new blueprint and new distinctions that build on the old.

Jesus subsequently told His disciples that the Temple would soon be reduced to rubble, and 40 years later it was. After His death and resurrection, Jesus sent His Holy Spirit. This is an important new distinction. God’s presence was in Jesus’ people. The human soul became the “Most Holy Place” where God’s Spirit dwells and the body is its Temple.

But wait, we’re not done. The night before Jesus’ was executed, He told His followers, “I’m going to prepare a place for you.” When John is given a vision in Revelation this place is revealed as a new Jerusalem. Just like with Ezekiel, John had to watch as it was measured and wouldn’t you know it, this heavenly city is perfectly square just like the Most Holy Place. The distinctions from beginning to end have been transformed and flipped inside out. What began as a small (about 15 feet square) Sacred Space with the distinction that only God’s Presence is holy enough to be there, becomes at the end of the Great Story a “Most Holy Place” that is 1200 miles square where all of God’s people dwell together with God because, through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, they have been made holy, as well.

In the quiet this morning, I am reminded that the tremendously precise and ordered details that Ezekiel describes are a part of how God metaphorically reveals Himself to us. He is a God of detail and distinctions who transforms chaos into order, death into life, and the common into that which is holy. Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth that if anyone is joined with Christ, that person is a new creation, old things pass away and new things come. In other words, I am a microcosm of the very thing that God is doing throughout the entire Great Story, transforming that which wasn’t holy into that which is eternally holy.

I am in process, and as my local gathering of Jesus’ followers continues to remind everyone, this journey is about progress, not perfection.

And so, I progress into another day of the journey.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Chaos and Order

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Chaos and Order (CaD Ezk 40) – Wayfarer

The man said to me, “Son of man, look carefully and listen closely and pay attention to everything I am going to show you, for that is why you have been brought here. Tell the people of Israel everything you see.”
Ezekiel 40:4 (NIV)

For the past quarter of a century, our family has had a place on Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. My parents bought the property around the time of retirement. The girls grew up there along with their cousins visiting Grandpa Dean and Grandma Jeanne. Wendy and I purchased the property from them and built a new house on it. It’s been a special place for us, our family, and friends.

In fact, our family long ago realized that our place at the lake was sacred space. It has been a place of rest away from the chaos of our everyday lives. It has been a place of healing and restoration. It’s where my sister retreated to recover from chemo in her battle with cancer. It has been a place full of life as children have grown up, families have vacationed, and relationships have been strengthened through countless conversations that would never have happened in the hectic worlds of our lives back home.

Over the next several chapters, the prophet Ezekiel describes a vision he was given of a sacred space, a temple. When this vision arrives, it has been fourteen years since the city of Jerusalem and the temple that Solomon built had been destroyed. Ezekiel and his fellow Hebrews are living in exile in Babylon. They are feeling lost and hopeless in the chaos of life in a foreign land where nothing is familiar. The rituals and routines by which they lived and measured life are gone. They are longing for hope and a future.

For casual readers, today’s chapter and the next several chapters are the kinds of passages that leave you scratching your head. Wait. What?! What can this ridiculously detailed description of an ancient temple possibly have any significance for my life in the twenty-first century? One of the things that I’ve come to learn about these kinds of passages is that I have to back up and look at the bigger picture of what God has done, is doing, and will do.

For the Hebrew people, this sacred space of a temple was not only a huge part of their story a people, but it was also a metaphor for the Great Story itself. Way back in Exodus when God is first introducing Himself to the Hebrews, He instructs them to create a mobile sacred space that could travel with them and be set up wherever they camped. The language that was used in the creation of this sacred space mirrored the creation poem in the first two chapters of Genesis. The creation poem begins with chaos and God creates order out of the chaos and then places humanity in this ordered place that is very good.

When God gave the Hebrews instructions for this sacred space they understood that it was like a new creation. An entire nation of people leaves the chaos and chains of slavery, they wander into the wilderness, and God is creating something new in them. What does God do in creation? He creates distinctions and order.

I have to believe that Ezekiel and his compatriots were recognizing that they had returned to chaos and slavery. They are longing for the hope that God will begin a new creation in them just as He had done in Genesis and in Exodus when He brought order and sacred space.

Everywhere I turn, people talk about lives being busy, crazy, frazzled, and hectic. There’s so much to do, so many distractions, and so much stress. Life happens and we feel worry and anxiety. How often do I feel the chaos of everyday life? And yet, Jesus said He came that we might know peace. What did Jesus do? He regularly went up a mountain by Himself where he would spend hours and sometimes spend the night praying. He sought out sacred space and spent time with God where He reordered His heart, mind, and soul.

Do you think that this ancient, recurring message about creating order out of chaos and having sacred space to order my life and world might have something to teach me about my chaotic twenty-first-century life today?

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The God Who Pitched His Tent

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The God Who Pitched His Tent (CaD Jhn 1) – Wayfarer

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 (NIV)

Starting last Wednesday, followers of Jesus around the world entered the long-held tradition known as the season of Lent. It is, in brief, a season of reflection and repentance leading to the annual celebration of Jesus’ execution on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday. With this season in mind, I thought it appropriate for this chapter-a-day journey to trek through John’s take on Jesus’ story.

Unlike any of the other three versions of Jesus’ story (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), John chooses to begin his account by introducing his readers to Jesus in one of the most beautiful passages in all of the Great Story. If you didn’t read the chapter this morning, I encourage you to read at least the first 14 verses. From the opening sentence, John establishes that he is not using the chronological, reporting style of the other accounts. He is writing thematically in presenting to us the Jesus he followed, witnessed, and intimately knew. He immediately connects Jesus with creation itself, establishing from the start that the Jesus he knew was exactly who Jesus revealed Himself to be: the eternal God of creation manifested in the guise of a flesh-and-bones human. The rest of John’s account is a presentation of his primary source evidence in support of this grand prologue.

For the casual twenty-first-century reader, a cursory reading of the beautifully penned prologue may not reveal the depth of meaning that John provides to his contemporary audience. John is not just connecting Jesus to the opening chapters of Genesis but to the entire Great Story.

For example, when John writes that the living Word became flesh and “made his dwelling among us” he uses a Greek word that means to “spread out a tent.” His contemporary Hebrew readers would immediately associate this with the story of the Exodus when God leads His people out of slavery and instructs them to construct a tent (known as “The Tabernacle”). This tent was a traveling worship center that was placed in the middle of the Hebrews’ encampment wherever they went. It was a reminder that God was “with them” and at the “center” of their lives and community.

What’s interesting is that David eventually planned for an actual temple to be built in Jerusalem, and his son Solomon built it. Yet, there is no record of God ever telling David, or anyone else, to build a bricks-and-mortar temple. When asked for a sign to prove He was the Messiah, Jesus told His enemies, “I will tear down this Temple and rebuild it in three days!” He was alluding to the fact that through His death and resurrection, He would become the center of worship. He would later tell His disciples that the impressive Temple would be destroyed in roughly forty years. It was, indeed, turned to rubble by the Romans in 70 A.D..

After the events of Pentecost in Acts 2, the followers of Jesus understood that Jesus had spiritually returned to the paradigm that God foreshadowed through the “tent” of Exodus. God’s kingdom was not about a fixed place of worship to which people must journey and make pilgrimage. The Kingdom of God was about being at the very center of a person’s heart, soul, and life. As the presence of the Tabernacle was always at the center of the Hebrews’ camp and went with them wherever they went, so Jesus came to “pitch His tent” in every human being through His indwelling Spirit. I don’t go to a Temple. I am the Temple. I don’t go to church. I am the church.

In the quiet this morning, I am reminded once again how the Great Story fits together. John’s prologue beautifully reminds me that the Story of Jesus did not begin in Bethlehem, or in Bethany. It began before time itself. The story he’s about to share is simply an episode in The Story that is eternal. Likewise, what God was doing in Exodus was both a revelation of who He was to His people at that moment and a foreshadowing of the very person of Jesus who would come to pitch His tent and embody “God with us.” I’m also reminded of that which the institutional church has repeatedly failed to help Jesus’ followers realize: The “church” is not bricks-and-mortar but flesh-and-blood.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day, Wayfarer Podcast

Tent to Temple to Table

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Tent to Temple to Table (CaD Ex 25) – Wayfarer

And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.
Exodus 25:8 (NRSVCE)

Our children posted a rather hilarious video of Milo over the weekend. At first, we couldn’t figure out what he was doing shaking his bum towards daddy’s legs. As we listened to the audio it became more clear that Milo was making like the Stegosaurus on his shirt and shaking his spiky “tail” to protect himself from the predator, played by daddy, whom I presume was cast in the role of a T-Rex. Yesterday, on our Father’s Day FaceTime, we got to witness Milo reprise his role for us a shake his little dino-booty for Papa and Yaya’s enjoyment.

It’s a very natural thing for us to make word pictures and games for our children and grandchildren to introduce them to concepts, thoughts, and ideas that are still a little beyond their cognitive reach. Even with spiritual things we do this. Advent calendars with numbered doors help children mark the anticipation of celebrating Jesus’ birth. Christmas gifts remind us of the gifts the Magi brought the Christ child. Wendy often recalls the Nativity play she and her cousins and siblings performed each year with bathrobes and hastily collected props which helped to teach the story behind the season.

In leaving Egypt and striking out for the Promised Land, Moses and the twelve Hebrew tribes are a fledgling nation. Yahweh was introduced to Moses in the burning bush. Moses introduced the Tribes to Yahweh through interceding with Pharaoh on their behalf and delivering them from Egyptian slavery. Yahweh has already provided food in the form of Manna and led them to the mountain. In today’s chapter, God begins the process of providing a system of worship that will continue to develop a relationship of knowing and being known.

As I described in my podcast, Time (Part 1), we are still at the toddler stage of human history and development. The Ark of the Covenant (yes, the one from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and the plan for a giant traveling Tent to house God’s presence, are all tangible word pictures that their cognitive human brains could fathom revealing and expressing intangible spiritual truths about God.

Along my spiritual journey, I’ve observed that as humanity has matured so has God’s relationship with us. Jesus pushed our spiritual understanding of God. “You have heard it said,” he would begin before adding, “but I say….” I have come to believe that Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection were like the “age of accountability” in which we talk about when children become responsible adults. Jesus came to grow us up spiritually and to mature our understanding of what it means to become participants in the divine dance within the circle of love with Father, Son, and Spirit. On a grand scale, God is doing with humanity what Paul experienced in the microcosm of his own life:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

1 Corinthians 13:11

I have also observed, however, that human beings have a way of getting stuck in our development. Many adults I know are living life mired in adolescent patterns of thought and behavior. Many church institutions are, likewise, mired in childish religious practices designed to control human social behavior, but they do very little to fulfill Jesus’ mission of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth. Again, Paul was dealing with this same thing when he wrote to Jesus’ followers in Corinth:

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh.

1 Corinthians 3:1-3a

There is a great example of this from today’s chapter. God provided the Ark of the Covenant, and a traveling tent called the Tabernacle, as a word picture of His presence and dwelling with the wandering Hebrew people. It was a physical sign that God was with them. Once settled in the Promised land, the temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem became the central physical location of God’s presence. When Jesus came, however, He blew up the childish notion of the God of Creation residing in one place. Jesus matured our understanding of God’s very nature and the nature of God’s presence. With the pouring out of God’s Spirit to indwell every believer, Jesus transformed our understanding of God’s dwelling and presence. “Wherever two or three are gathered,” Jesus said, “I am among them.” The place of worship transitioned from the Temple to the dining room table. After the resurrection, Jesus was revealed during dinner in Emmaus, making shore-lunch for the disciples along the Sea of Galilee, and at the dinner table behind locked doors where the disciples were hiding.

Wendy and I have this quote from Brian Zahnd hanging on the fridge in our kitchen:

“The risen Christ did not appear at the temple but at meal tables. The center of God’s activity had shifted – it was no longer the temple but the table that was the holiest of all. The church would do well to think of itself, not so much as a kind of temple, but as a kind of table. This represents a fundamental shift. Consider the difference between the temple and the table. Temple is exclusive; Table is inclusive. Temple is hierarchical; Table is egalitarian. Temple is authoritarian; Table is affirming. Temple is uptight and status conscious; Table is relaxed and ‘family-style.’ Temple is rigorous enforcement of purity codes that prohibit the unclean; Table is a welcome home party celebrating the return of sinners. The temple was temporal. The table is eternal. We thought God was a diety in a temple. It turns out God is a father at a table.”

In the quiet this morning I find myself thinking about the ancient Hebrew people struggling to mature their understanding from a polytheistic society with over 1500 dieties to the one God who is trying to introduce Himself to them in ways they can understand. I am reminded of the ways Jesus tried to mature our understanding of God even further. I find myself confessing all of the ways through all of the years of my spiritual journey that I have refused to mature in some of the most basic things Jesus was teaching.

As Wendy and I sit down together to share a meal together this week, my desire is to acknowledge Jesus’ presence. To make our time of conversation, laughter, and daily bread a time of communion with God’s Spirit. I think that’s a good spiritual action step.

Bon a petite, my friend. May you find God’s Spirit at your table this week.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Purpose and Legacy

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Purpose and Legacy (CaD 1 Ki 5) – Wayfarer

[Solomon wrote] “I intend, therefore, to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God, as the Lord told my father David, when he said, ‘Your son whom I will put on the throne in your place will build the temple for my Name.”
1 Kings 5:5 (NIV)

Wendy and I recently returned from a trip to Scotland where we visited our kids and grandkids living there. One afternoon we made a point of visiting a small pub in Edinburgh that had become a favorite haunt of ours on our last visit to Edinburgh. The White Hart boasts of being Edinburgh’s oldest pub, having opened for business in the year 1516 on a street below Edinburgh Castle just a stone’s throw from where official public beheadings and executions took place.

While enjoying a pint at the White Hart, we went to the internet to find out what was happening in the world in 1516. Henry VIII, who famously broke with the Roman Catholic Church and marries six different wives (two by beheadings that were not conducted down the street from the White Hart Pub), is on the throne in England. Martin Luther is a year away from nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg Door. Christopher Columbus’ cousin was doing his own bit of exploring in Asia after Chris had discovered the Americas just over a decade before. The Ottoman Empire was waging war against Syria. And, the White Hart pub was pouring pints for their first customers.

Wendy and I sat in the same pub, contemplating how much life had changed in 500 years.

In today’s chapter, the narrative switches from a focus on who Solomon was to a focus on what Solomon did. Namely, his major building projects. The major focus is on the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, but the text also describes the building of Solomon’s palace, as well.

The building of the Temple is a major event in the context of the Great Story that God is authoring from Genesis through Revelation. All the way back in the book of Exodus God gave instructions, through Moses, for the building of a traveling tent temple known as the Tabernacle. It could be repeatedly set up and taken down as the Hebrew people left slavery in Egypt and traveled through the wilderness to the Promised Land. The Tabernacle was always set up in the center of the Hebrew camp and their lives centered on the sacrificial system of worship that God established in the Law of Moses.

That was roughly 500 years before Solomon, the same amount of time that passed between our pub in Scotland opening its doors and our visit last month. The Hebrew tribes have been well established in the land of Canaan for about 400 years. Think about all that changes in 400-500 years. In all of that time, there’s been no central place of worship for the Hebrew people. The Tabernacle was still around, but it had moved from place to place and there’s some belief that the Ark of the Covenant (which was to be kept in the Tabernacle according to the Law of Moses) may have been removed and kept elsewhere which would have watered-down the entire system of worship. With no established Temple, sacrifices took place in different locations and the worship of God became mixed in with the practices of local pagan religions. The author of 1 Kings even mentions that Solomon was guilty of worshipping in the “high places” favored by local pagan deities (1 Ki 3:3).

Building a Temple, therefore, is a huge deal for the Hebrew people. It will be known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It will become the center of Hebrew worship for centuries. It will be destroyed and rebuilt. It will be where Jesus will drive out the moneychangers and draw crowds with His teaching. Jesus will also correctly prophesy that it will be ultimately torn down. The foundational remnants of the Temple are centrally sacred in Judaism to this very day.

In the quiet this morning, my heart and mind are pondering both purpose and legacy. The texts of Samuel and Kings make it clear that Solomon was purposed by God to build the Temple that would become an important thread of the Great Story. The legacy of Solomon’s Temple continues to resonate to this day as people gather this moment, around the clock, to worship and pray at the Western Wall, the foundation stones of the Temple that still remain on the western side of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Jesus’ taught His followers to live with purpose, prioritizing God’s Kingdom above the things of this earthly life. In doing so, He spoke of a legacy of things that will remain for eternity when every earthly treasure has long since burned away.

What do I purpose to do with this day?

What legacy am I building and leaving?

Good questions to ponder over a pint, and then act on it. The oldest pub around here, however, has yet to reach its tenth birthday.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Bigger Picture

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The Bigger Picture (CaD Rev 15) – Wayfarer

I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed.
Revelation 15:1 (NIV)

On a grand scale, the Great Story is about slavery.

I have observed that conversation about slavery in our modern American culture is typically confined to the injustice of American slavery with occasional nods to the slave industry that still exists around the globe. These are all earthbound conversations.

As I mentioned in a post last week, Jesus stated clearly that His mission on this world was about a Kingdom that is not of this world. And that mission was about freeing slaves:

“Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
John 8:34 (NIV)

On this chapter-a-day journey through John’s Revelation, what has struck me has been the continued parallels to the story of Moses, the Hebrews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt, the giving of the law, the tabernacle, and the journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

In today’s chapter, the Lamb (aka Jesus) and Moses stand by a “sea” in heaven and sing a victory song, just as Moses and the Hebrews sang a victory song after the defeat of their slave masters, the Egyptians, who pursued them and drown in the Red Sea. In Revelation it is the “beast” from the sea who pursued God’s people, but they overcame. John then sees a heavenly tabernacle, just like the tabernacle God had Moses construct in the wilderness. Just as the tabernacle of Moses filled with a cloud of God’s presence (Exodus 40:34), so is the heavenly tabernacle. Out of the cloud rises the final set in a trinity of judgments on the earth. We had the seven seals, then the seven trumpets, and now it will be seven bowls.

In the Exodus, ten plagues are sent on a hard-hearted Pharaoh and his people to justly free the Hebrews from their enslavement. In the same way, the plagues of Revelation are presented as a just spiritual reckoning for the Prince of this World (aka Satan), his hard-hearted followers, and the kingdoms of this world that have leveraged humanity’s enslavement to sin for their own pride, power, and pleasure. In Moses’ exodus, it was the “blood of the lamb” that protected the Hebrews from the angel of death. In Revelation, it is the “blood of the Lamb” that saves God’s people from the ultimate and impending “second death.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself once again looking at the forest and not the trees. Earlier in my spiritual journey, I would read and study Revelation with my mind myopically focused on the earthbound events described within the text and what they might mean in terms of the earthly realities. I was only intent on understanding the smaller picture of what would happen on this earth. This time, my mind is seeing the bigger picture. I’m seeing the events described in the much broader context of where and how they fit in the overarching Great Story.

Slavery is a terrible reality on this earth. Slavery to sin is a terrible reality in the spirit realm.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve sinned and were kicked out of the Garden into an earthbound existence, enslaved to sin, subject to the Prince of this World, and doomed to die a physical death. Revelation is the final just judgment on humanity’s slave masters and the ultimate, once and for all liberation of God’s people from the shackles of sin in order to be led to an eternal Promised Land.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.