Tag Archives: Temple

Chapter-a-Day

At the Table

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“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Luke 2:12 (NIV)

In a couple of weeks I will celebrate my 20th anniversary of this chapter-a-day blogging and podcasting journey. I’ve been mulling that over a lot over the past year. The truth is that this was in many ways an overflow of a daily practice I carved out for many years before that. Each morning I crawl out of bed, I grab a cup of coffee and I show up at the table. There, I spend some time with God, meditating, praying, and thinking about where I find myself on life’s road.

Along this journey, I’ve observed that many people hope for a connection with God at their weekly church service. The hope is that being in a building they believe is God’s House, somewhere amidst the music, the spectacle, the communal worship, and the spoken word they will experience something special.

As a follower of Jesus I am called to gather with fellow believers regularly, and God does inhabit and work in-and-through the praise and worship of His people. I have observed, however, that this lends itself to wanting or expecting something amazing, emotional, and spectacular. Sometimes churches even try to create those moments intentionally — crafting services designed to stir powerful emotions.

My own experience is that this misses the point.

It wasn’t a conscious choice on my part to move from the story of Esther to Luke’s version of Jesus’ story. Yet, in the first two chapters I’m finding connections I’ve never seen before. In yesterday’s chapter, it was the fact that God raises simple, faithful, unassuming people into key players within the Great Story. In today’s chapter, it’s reversals. The story of Esther is known for all of its reversals of fortune. Wouldn’t you know it, today’s chapter is full of them, as well.

The best and the brightest of religious minds and thinkers expected God’s Messiah to arrive in pomp. The Messiah, it was believed, would establish an earthly throne, wipe out the Roman Empires and subdue the nations, reign in earthly glory in Jerusalem where the entire earth would come to worship him.

But through the prophet Isaiah God had already said:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.”

Building on yesterday’s chapter, we find that the Messiah enters human history quietly through unassuming people of simple faith. In today’s chapter, Luke methodically present this reversal:

What People ExpectedWhat God Actually Did
The Messiah would arrive in royal splendorA baby is born quietly to a young couple of simple faith
The King would be announced to rulers and priestsAngels announce Him to shepherds in a field
The Messiah would enter the world through powerHe enters through vulnerability, lying in a manger
The religious elite would recognize Him firstTwo elderly saints quietly recognize Him in the Temple
God’s presence would remain centered in the TempleJesus begins forming relationships around everyday tables
The kingdom would overthrow Rome by forceThe kingdom begins by transforming hearts

Jesus did show up at the Temple. In fact, He does so twice in today’s chapter. Once as a baby and then as a twelve-year-old. But God’s Son is already establishing that His ways are not the ways of religious institutions. His focus will never be the Temple, because He knows that the Temple will be rubble in 40 years. He even tells His disciples this. His focus is on the table…

  • The table he learns to craft with his earthly father’s training
  • The table he shares daily with family and community for thirty years
  • The table where he eats with His disciples
  • The table where he dines with tax collectors and sinners
  • The table where he has a midnight conversation with Nicodemus
  • The table where Pharisees host Him as a guest
  • The table where Lazarus throws a dinner party in His honor
  • The table where He celebrates one final Passover and blesses bread and wine

In the quiet this morning, Luke reminds me that a major paradigm shift has already begun. Jesus would go to the Temple for festivals, but His focus was never on the spectacle and bustle of the Temple. His focus was daily spent quietly at the table with others.

It’s no accident that Luke’s version of Jesus’ story begins with a baby laid in a feeding trough and ends with bread broken at a table. From the beginning, God was inviting us not to a spectacle, but to a meal.

My relationship with Jesus began in a church. Worship with my local gathering of Jesus’ followers is an essential part of the spiritual rhythm of my life. But it’s not the most transformative part. The most transformative part of my relationship with Jesus is here in the quiet of my office, every morning, at the table.

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

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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.

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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

Home Joy

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The two choirs that gave thanks then took their places in the house of God.
Nehemiah 12:40a (NIV)

It’s fascinating how things can so drastically change in the different seasons of life. Last night Wendy and I sat in the Vander Well Pub and enjoyed a drink together and debriefed about our day before dinner. As we talked about all of the things on the calendar in the coming weeks, I recognized within me an intense desire to have none of it, and to just be at home. That was a crazy thought. For most of my life, that desire barely existed inside.

I had a great home growing up that was safe and full of love, but I was an adventurous extrovert as a kid. Between all of the activities I was involved in throughout my school years, it was not unusual for me to leave the house at 5:00 a.m. and not get home until 10:00 at night. I kept weekends equally packed pursuing fun and always being on the go. College years were no different. I typically worked three jobs on top of classes and being constantly involved in campus activities and stage productions.

I have worked from a home office since 1994, back when no one worked from home. Our team didn’t talk about it with clients because they might think it was sketchy and diminish our reputation as a “real” business. For many years, I found myself venturing out to coffee shops and other public spaces every day to work. I needed the buzz of being around people and activity. I wanted the possibility of human connection even in casual, impromptu conversations with strangers. To be honest, home wasn’t always a joyful place for me to be in those years.

Life changes like the seasons. Yesterday I shared about the house that Wendy and I built ten years ago. Not only did Wendy design a beautiful and comfortable space to live, but I find in our home a Spirit of peace, love, and joy at all times – even the occasional contentious ones.

Today’s chapter is a bit like a homecoming at God’s House in Jerusalem. Nehemiah and the crew rebuilt the walls for the specific purpose of rebuilding and renewing the Temple worship prescribed by God in the Law of Moses. Solomon’s Temple had been destroyed and there had been no Temple, no offerings, and no sacrifices for some 150 years. With the walls rebuilt, the entire Hebrew community comes to Jerusalem. Two mass choirs with instruments march around the walls singing and playing in celebration. Everyone then ends their loud musical processional at God’s House. People bring the prescribed tithes and offerings, and the sacrificial system begins operation once again.

“Joy” is a recurring word in today’s chapter. In fact, the Hebrew root for “joy” (śmḥ) appears five times in verse 43 alone. The Hebrews had been through a season of exile. They were forced to make a home elsewhere, but the real home for their people and their community was always Jerusalem, God’s House, and the rhythms of life and worship that God prescribed and that had been at the center of their identity as a people for centuries. In today’s chapter, they are finally home. Joy flows.

Here I sit in the quiet of my home office. I was here all day yesterday from 5:00 a.m. until I met Wendy downstairs in the Pub at 6:00 p.m. I’ll be here all day working on projects and proposals again today. I’m okay with that. In fact, I downright joyful about it.

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

The Microscope & the Wide-Angle Lens

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“He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.”
Matthew 22:3 (NIV)

Along my journey, I have experienced many meetings in which what is really going on is not apparent to the casual observer or to those who might read a transcript of the meeting. What is really going on is happening in the sub-text of the words and the passive aggressive interplay between conflicting participants within the meeting. It happens in business. It happens in family. It happens in church. It happens in politics. It happens in community organizations. It’s part of any human system.

In Jerusalem, it is the biggest week of the year. It’s Passover week. The city is packed with Jewish pilgrims from all over the world who have come to celebrate the biggest festival of the year at the Temple, the epicenter of Judaism. Every day the courts of the Temple are packed with crowds. This year, everyone is buzzing about this preacher from the sticks, up north in Galilee. There was a big parade on Sunday when He came to town. Some say He’s the Messiah. He raised a guy from the dead just a week before in Bethany, just a few miles away.

This is the scene of today’s chapter and tomorrow’s. This is the final week of Jesus’ ministry. We’re in the home stretch and everything in these final chapters leads to the cross and the empty tomb. It’s important that I ponder all of the words and events of these next few chapters in this context to get at what is really going on. There is a conflict brewing between Jesus and the religious, political, and commercial power brokers in the Temple.

In today’s chapter, Matthew shares five episodes:

Jesus tells a parable that points a finger at the religious leaders and their ecclesiastical forebears throughout history. The parable is fascinating because it sums up the relationship between God and His people through the entire Great Story to this point, and it foreshadows what is about to happen as Jesus’ Message expands beyond the boundaries of Judaism and to all peoples and nations. What His enemies hear is Jesus’ sharp criticism. It is truth, but it is offensive. Jesus takes the opening round. His opponents are 0 and 1 and it prompts them to counter.

The next three episodes Matthew shares are different constituencies of Jesus’ enemies coming to debate Jesus and trap Him into saying something they can use to dismiss Him, criticize Him, and tell the crowds why He is wrong. Matthew is careful to point out that these constituencies, though rivals within the religious power structure, are working together behind the scenes against Jesus.

First, it’s the most popular and powerful political party within the religious power structure: the Pharisees. They try to play on people’s hatred of Rome and Roman taxes. They ask Jesus about paying taxes. Jesus famously asks whose head is on the coin and then says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Ouch 0-2.

Next, it’s the rival political party in the religious power structure: the Sadducees. They are a smaller faction, but the High Priest is from this faction. It’s the old guard, the conservatives, who wield power and hang their hats on a religious belief that there is no life after death. They try to trap Jesus in a doctrinal debate about resurrection. Jesus responds with a scriptural argument for which they have no answers. His rivals are now 0-3.

Finally, they send a hot-shot lawyer to argue a legal matter of religious Law. Jesus handles the question easily.

Jesus deftly navigates every one of the their three (there’s that number again) argumentative mine fields. Adding on Jesus initial critical parable, His enemies are 0-4. They’re humiliated in front of the biggest crowds the Temple will see all year on their home court. They’re pissed off.

The chapter then ends with Jesus going back on the offensive. He refuses to let His enemies lick their wounds. He throws out a debate question of His own to which they have no good answer. They finish today’s chapter 0-5.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself reminded of my observation that most people take the episodes in any given chapter and focus on them individually. Even teachers and preachers do this regularly in messages. Just yesterday I gave the first of three weekly messages that I was assigned. Each week I’m assigned one episode from Luke’s version of Jesus’ story. It’s like looking at one of the five episodes in today’s chapter under a microscope to find the lesson within. There is a lesson there, of course. Metaphor is layered with meaning. For me, however, the most powerful spiritual lesson in today’s chapter is not under the microscope but in the wide-angle lens.

Jesus is touching on historic themes and realities that are rooted in Genesis, present in God’s relationship with the Hebrew people from Exodus through Malachi, and are foundational to the very conflict in which He’s engaged. The humiliating defeat is going to ramp up His opponent’s hatred of Jesus. Jesus is pushing all of their buttons.

Let me clue you in on tomorrow’s chapter. Jesus is not going to relent. He’s going to double-down.

He’s going to seal His own fate.

But there is something larger going on in today’s chapter that did begin in Genesis and will end with a new beginning at the end of Revelation. If I miss this, then I’m missing a major spiritual lesson. It is the spiritual lesson I find that I perpetually need on a Monday morning as I look at the task list for the coming week on my earthly journey. I can focus my spiritual microscope in on this week, this life, these current circumstances as if it’s the most important thing or the only thing. Or, I can look at this week with a wide-angle lens and understand that this week is part of a larger story of what God is doing in me in my life, and my story’s role in the larger story of what God is doing in the Great Story.

Suddenly, I see my week with a renewed perspective.

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

Time to Drive

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Time to Drive (CaD Ezk 44) – Wayfarer

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary, not even the foreigners who live among the Israelites.
Ezekiel 44:9 (NIV)

I was driving with our daughter Taylor in the car. It was a gorgeous, quiet day late in the afternoon. She was around eleven or twelve years old at the time. About a block from our house was this giant parking lot that sat completely empty. I pulled into the parking lot and Taylor was wondering what was going on. I told her we were switching seats and that I was going to give her an opportunity to drive the car.

Taylor was completely freaked out by this, and that first driving lesson didn’t last very long, but she did it. She learned the basics of an accelerator and brake pedal, about shifting the car into gear, and she performed some basic turns with the steering wheel.

I not only had the joy of taking her completely by surprise, but I was also wanting to plant a seed in her soul. She was on the cusp of a new phase in life when she will find herself capable and responsible for things that were once forbidden to her. And while she was still a few years from having legal permission to drive a car, the truth is that she was already far more capable than she even knew – she’d never even thought about it.

In today’s chapter, Ezekiel’s vision continues and he is reminded of all the rules of the priests in the Temple that were established back in the book of Leviticus. In a previous post, I talked about God being a God who makes distinctions. And in today’s chapter, we are reminded that in that day there were distinctions between priests and non-priests, even between Jews and non-Jews. By the time Jesus appeared on the scene, the distinction had morphed into outright prejudice and religiously sanctioned racism.

But humanity grows and matures the way my daughter does. There was a time when the distinction was made “You are not to drive. Only daddy or mommy drives. That’s your seat. This one is mine.” But there comes a time when the distinction is removed. Jesus came to remove the distinctions and do something completely new.

Paul, who was himself a Jewish religious and legal scholar who became a disciple and apostle of Jesus, explained the removal of the distinction Ezekiel shares in today’s chapter between Jewish Levitical priests and “uncircumcised foreigners” to the believers in Ephesus:

(I know this is a long passage, but imagine yourself being one of the “uncircumcised foreigners” who was never allowed into the Temple and had been treated like a second-class citizen your whole life reading this for the first time.)

 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.

Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Ephesians 2:14-22 (MSG) emphases added

Jesus came to usher in a new age of humanity in which the Temple is no longer a bricks-and-mortar building but a flesh-and-blood organism. Everyone who is in Christ is a brick of the living, breathing Temple, and everyone who is in Christ is a priest of that Temple. We’re all included, we’re all a part of it.

In the quiet this morning, I am grieving the fact that for two thousand years the Institutional church has largely succeeded in putting the old distinctions back in place in which professional clergy are the only holy priests and the people in the pews are the unholy commoners. But that’s not what Jesus taught or intended. You and I, my friend, are a brick in the Temple and we’re Priests in this world to show others by our lives, our words, and our example the love and way of Jesus.

Jesus came to tell all of us “Get over here in the drivers seat, my child. It’s time to learn to drive.”

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

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

Lost Sheep, Living Hope

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Lost Sheep, Living Hope (CaD Ezk 34) – Wayfarer

I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.
Ezekiel 34:15-16 (NIV)

Zeke and his fellow Israelites are strangers in a strange land. Having been forced to make a thousand mile march some ten years before, they have been making due eking out a life for themselves far from home. There’s no temple for worship. The thing around which their entire lives were centered for centuries. There are no pilgrimages. No feasts. No sacrifices. Everything they had is lost. They themselves are lost.

For ten years there was at least the hope of returning home one day. Then, in yesterday’s chapter, word came that Jerusalem had been destroyed. Solomon’s temple had been destroyed. Even the little hope that remained is now lost. There is no longer a home. In short order there will be more exiles arriving. King Zedekiah, his eyes gouged out after witnessing the slaughter of his own children will arrive in chains with the other leaders and “shepherds” of their people.

There are no shepherds. The flock is scattered with no one to protect the lost sheep.

That’s the backstory of today’s chapter. It’s important to know what Zeke and his fellow exiles are feeling as the prophet begins to share his message from God.

God Himself will be their Shepherd. God Himself has always been their Good Shepherd.

The temple and the sacrifices were never really the point in an of themselves. They were an object lesson to point His people to something much larger. He said so Himself in Psalm 50.

I have no need of a bull from your stall
    or of goats from your pens,
for every animal of the forest is mine,
    and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains,
    and the insects in the fields are mine.
If I were hungry I would not tell you,
    for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
    or drink the blood of goats?

In today’s chapter, God foreshadows the Good Shepherd, the Messiah. There are so many parallels to Jesus’ teaching and parables I hardly know where to begin.

“When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

“I am the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.”

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

“Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’”

Right at the moment when Zeke and his compatriots are feeling hopeless, God reminds them where their true hope lies. Their hope is ultimately not in an earthly city or a temple made with hands. Their hope is in the living God who has always been a Good Shepherd

Who led Abraham to Canaan and made a covenant with him

Who led His people out of slavery in Egypt.

Who provided for His people for 40 years of wilderness wanderings.

Who led His people to a Promised Land.

They may no longer have a nation, or a city to call home, or a temple around which to worship, but it was never ever about the rituals or the religion. It was always, and still is, about the relationship. They still have a Good Shepherd who will “search for the lost and bring back the strays” who will “bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking back to stretches of this life journey when I was lost and trying to find my way. I often hear people say that they found God, but the spiritual reality is that God found me. I was the lost sheep, but I have a Good Shepherd and because of that I have a living hope no matter where I find myself, even if like Zeke I find myself a stranger in a strange land.

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

Chapter-a-Day

A Life in One Phrase

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A Life in One Phrase (CaD 1 Chr 26) – Wayfarer

The lot for the East Gate fell to Shelemiah. Then lots were cast for his son Zechariah, a wise counselor, and the lot for the North Gate fell to him.
1 Chronicles 26:14 (NIV)

Over the years, I have dug into my family’s history. Working on a family tree, you deal with a lot of names that have little or no meaning. They are just names without context, kind of like reading through the list of Hebrew names compiled by the Chronicler in today’s chapter.

I have found it interesting, however, that certain individuals in my family have a reputation that has always been passed down with the name. Typically, I’ve noticed that what gets remembered is not the good things.

“He was a drunk.”
“No one had a good word to say about him.”
“She was always mean.”

One of my great-grandfathers, William, was one of multiple ancestors whose name was rarely mentioned without being followed by the fact that he was a drunk. When I inherited my mother’s collection of family photos and ephemera, I found a book that my great-aunt had written about his life. It would seem that she personally took it upon herself to learn her father’s story to try and understand the man with whom she never had much of a relationship.

The story was heartbreaking. His mother had been hired out to a family on a farm miles away from her home when she was just a young girl. She was treated like a slave. One of the sons seduced her and promised her the moon to have his way with her, but broke every promise. When she wound up pregnant she was dismissed and destitute. Her sister, married off to a well-to-do businessman, finally took her in with the condition she was to stay out of sight and no one would ever know they were sisters. An unwanted pregnancy of an illicit affair to a man who wanted nothing to do with the destitute young mother and her offspring. Welcome to the world, little man.

William’s life was tragic from the beginning. Despite his best efforts, tragedy seemed to follow him like a stray dog. He certainly made a number of mistakes in life that compounded his troubles, but I certainly began to understand why he learned to drown his sorrows. Perhaps the crowning tragedy of his life was that a rather complex and compelling life story was reduced to a simple “He was a drunk” to all of his descendants.

In today’s chapter, the Chronicler lists all of the families in the ancient Hebrew tribe of Levi who were assigned to be gatekeepers and treasurers in Solomon’s Temple. As I read through the long string of rather meaningless names, I was struck when the Chronicler mentioned a gatekeeper named Zechariah and then followed the name with “a wise counselor.” He didn’t mention any positive or negative character qualities about any of the other names. What made Zechariah such a “wise counselor” that the Chronicler was compelled to mention it? How cool to think that Zac, an otherwise forgettable ancient gatekeeper, had a reputation for giving wise advice that would be remembered for over 3000 years.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself asking a simple question: When my great-grandchildren see a photo of me and ask, “Who’s that dad?” What words will follow “Oh, that’s your great-grandfather Tom. He….” What will my descendants remember about me? Into what short phrase will my life be reduced by those who knew me?

Every day I contribute to the reputation by which I will be remembered.

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